Positive Deviant Behavior and Nutrition Education

Abstract

Dr. Joe D. Wray in his 1972 Tropical Pediatrics editorial asked Can we learn from successful mothers? His question had not previously appeared in a scientific journal possibly because it may have embarrassed many professional scientific nutrition teachers to consider it seriously. Nutritional surveys often discover well-nourished children in poor families that inhabit villages where nearly all children are both poor and malnourished. Such well-nourished children are evidence that some mothers despite poverty can feed and care for their children successfully. Wray pointed out that in order to teach useful child-care and feeding practices to poor mothers we need to learn what local successful poor mothers are practicing. No one published any answers to Wrays question but many of us who read it looked for successful mothers and listened to them. In 1976 Sam Wishik and Susan Van der Vynckt of Columbia University proposed a project to identify positive deviant (PD) families in order to observe their care and feeding behaviors. They intended to teach those behaviors to mothers of malnourished children and finally to evaluate the teachings impact on childrens nutritional status. (excerpt)