Impact of Parental Feeding Practices upon Autistic Child's Body Mass Index at Autistic Centers in Baghdad City

Abstract

The study aim to: Assess parental feeding practices of the children with autism. Creating new standard growth curve concerning BMI with reference to autistic child's body mass index. Identify the association between parental feeding practices and demographic variables of parents, and the association between parental feeding practices and demographic variables of children with autism. Investigating the relationship between parental feeding practices and body mass index (BMI) for autistic children. descriptive design was made on parents of autistic child in Baghdad city. In our study, out of n=100 autistic children with his parents in centers of autism, Analysis of such characteristics presents that most of the autism children are early school age males and they have not been diagnosed for longtime period. Those, who have first and second orders among their siblings, are accounted for almost one third of them. Their parents are middle age adults, who have marriage at the age of (30–34) years old. Throughout the course of data analysis, the study findings depict that healthy feeding practices are affected by father's and mother's age, married age, family type and mother's occupation.