Eating Disorder In Children

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After birth, mothers with ED can encounter difficulty establishing positive eating behaviors for their children. It is evident therefore that eating disorders have the potential to negatively impact parenting and influence child development in a number of ways.12 Research shows that mothers with ED, particularly BED and BN disorders, commonly struggle with feeding amounts, restrictive or excessive. ED mothers also can experience difficulty accurately responding to physical hunger and satiety cues from their children. Research supports psychological and physical manifestations in result of altered infant feeding practices. Environmental and emotional factors impact the development of healthy eating patterns later in life. Dietary patterns during …show more content…

In a personal account of meal time interaction for mothers, it was suggested that food and mealtimes with children are an uncomfortable experience for women with eating disorder histories.13 Unsupportive responses are linked to ineffective emotion regulation in children, as well as emotion-focused feeding, and pressuring children to eat. It is also believed that mothers with ED are less likely to eat in front of their children. Theoretical integration of the emotion socialization and energy-intake regulation literatures may be crucial to understanding how feelings and food interact in the family system.21 Mothers with eating disorders were found to be more intrusive than controls during both mealtimes and play. The intrusiveness involved the mothers cutting across or disrupting (or both) what the infant was doing, as well as missing the infant’s cues.13 Parents categorized as authoritarian are demanding and directive with low levels of responsiveness. Permissive parents are less likely to be demanding and to require mature behavior, but exhibit high levels of responsiveness.1
Exposure to disordered feeding styles manifest physical and emotional effects. BN and BED mothers had children with higher weight-for-age. Although a general finding was that the children of mothers with eating disorder weighed less than controls and this was related to the amount of mealtime conflict.13 Subjects with BN had a birth weight below the 10th percentile significantly more often than controls, 30% vs 17%, respectively, as well as a birth length below the 10th percentile significantly more often than controls 17% vs 9%, respectively, and subjects with AN 17% vs 6%,

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