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Understanding Feeding Disorders

If your child has a feeding disorder, you’re not alone. As many as 50 percent of children experience some degree of feeding difficulties, and 3 to 10 percent develop severe feeding disorders. A failure to eat adequately can result in a failure to gain weight or in actual weight loss for a developing child. In addition, other symptoms of a feeding disorder in a child include constipation, vomiting, excessive crying, irritability, and apathy.

Children who do not consume enough calories for healthy growth or who exclude entire food groups from their diets are at greater risk for nutritional deficiencies such as anemia. Over time feeding disorders can have serious consequences, including a failure to thrive, developmental delays, behavioral problems, and a strain on family relationships.

Concerns and Symptoms

Feeding disorders can also prompt a variety of immediate symptoms such as:

• Trouble chewing and swallowing different food textures
• Eating a very few types of food
• Tantrums or crying at mealtimes
• Sensory-based problems
• Gastrostomy (G tube) or nasogastric (NG tube) dependence
• Vomiting

Contributing Factors

There are many medical, psychological, and behavioral factors that can contribute to feeding disorders, including:

• Gastroesophageal (pronounced gas-tro-ih-sah-fuh-jee-ul) reflux disease (GERD): A disorder that results from stomach acid moving backward from the stomach into the esophagus.
• Gastrointestinal motility disorders: Often called GI disorders, are a wide variety of digestive disorders affecting the movement of food through the digestive system.
• Food allergies: These can cause wheezing and difficulty breathing, itchy skin rashes, including hives, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain, and swelling around the mouth and in the throat.
• Palate defects: Such defects may cause chewing or swallowing to be physically uncomfortable or impossible.
• Delayed exposure: If a child’s exposure to a variety of foods, such as solid foods or fresh fruits and vegetables, is delayed, it can make it difficult to introduce those foods at a later time.
• Behavior management issues: These issues include allowing a child to persistently disrupt mealtime and escape eating by throwing tantrums at the table or spitting out or throwing up bites of food.

Feeding Disorders and Developmental Disabilities

Feeding disorders are already complex, but when a child also has a developmental disability, such as prematurity, reactive airway disease, short bowel syndrome, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, autism spectrum disorders, and genetic and metabolic disorders, it is even more critical to work with a special team that understands the unique needs of the child.

Learn more about Feeding Disorders and how to recognize and treat them by reading our Feeding Disorders Q & A.