Factors Associated with Maternal Worry about Her Young Child Exhibiting Choosy Feeding Behaviour.

Pauline Emmett,Nicholas Hays,Caroline Taylor

doi:10.3390/ijerph15061236

Abstract

Choosiness in young children is a normal behaviour that sometimes worries parents. The study aimed to investigate factors that are associated with a mother being worried about her child’s choosy feeding behaviour. Parents of singleton children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (n = 5710) completed a questionnaire assessing perception of their child’s choosy feeding behaviour at 15 months of age and whether this choosiness worried them. Feeding behaviours and practices throughout the first 15 months were captured. Multinomial logistic regression models with three levels of worry (not at all, a bit and greatly) as the dependent variables tested associations with variables from pregnancy and infancy. Half of the children (56%) were described as choosy at 15 months; of these 27% had mothers who were a bit worried and 5% greatly worried. Mothers showed greater odds of being worried if the child was first born, difficult to feed or refused solids by 6 months of age. Worried mothers had shown greater odds of introducing lumpy foods late (after 9 months). Feeding vegetables regularly by 6 months was associated with lower odds of worry at 15 months. Support and advice to parents at the start of complementary feeding could help to alleviate worry. Parents should be reassured that choosiness is a normal part of child development.

Highlights

During the introduction of complementary foods infants learn to consume new tastes and textures and some children find this more difficult than others
Of the children studied at 15 months (n = 5701) 56% had mothers who described them as being choosy with food (n = 3214). These mothers were asked if the choosiness worried them 27% indicated that they were a bit worried and 5% were greatly worried
The strongest associate with worry was the child being first-born, with the mother having more than twice the odds of being greatly worried about choosiness as for children who were not first-born

Summary

Introduction

During the introduction of complementary foods infants learn to consume new tastes and textures and some children find this more difficult than others. Parents do not always find this an easy process and by the age of 3 years many children are perceived as ‘picky eaters’ by their parents [2]. The parent being worried by their child being choosy with regard to foods in toddlerhood has been shown to be highly associated with the child being perceived as a picky eater at age 3 years [3]. Parental worry has been investigated only in relation to the perception that the child is under-eating [6] or underweight [7], not in relation to child choosiness or picky eating. It is important to understand how the parent-child relationship around feeding develops during the early years because this is likely to determine whether the child eats a balanced diet during childhood and beyond [1]

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