Poster #104 - Early Childhood Feeding Disorders: Do They Affect (Over Time) Adolescents’ Perceptions of Their Physical Appearance?

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Health, Growth, Injury

Integrative Statement

Feeding disorders (FD) are one of the main difficulties for which parents of young children seek help. Children are diagnosed with FD when they fail to gain age-appropriate weight or growth. Because FD may have long-term consequences, longitudinal studies aiming to understand risk and resilience from infancy onward are important. One worrying implication of child FD is that adolescents with higher levels of disordered eating seem to have a less positive perception of their physical appearance.
The parent-child relationship appears to be related to child FD; previous research suggested that maternal worries about underweight children were related to the more negative quality of the parent-child interaction among families of children with FD. Additionally, adolescents with lower levels of paternal support reported more eating difficulties. These findings support the idea that both children and parents may bring certain characteristics into the relationship that influence and accelerate child FD.
Longitudinal studies of child FD have mainly concentrated on early childhood and have not addressed implications during later childhood and adolescence. Our study investigated the long-term implications of infant FD, specifically examining whether parents’ worries and perceptions of their child’s underweight and undereating would affect their child’s self-perception of physical appearance during adolescence.
A sample of 52 families were followed up. All families participated in a study 8-11 years ago, when children were 1-3 years old (T1), of which 30 children were diagnosed with FD and 22 children were healthily developed (control group). At the time of the second assessment (T2), most children had already started adolescence (mean age = 12.8 years). To evaluate child eating habits, mothers answered the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ; Wardle et al., 2001). Mothers also answered (both at T1 and T2) the concern about child underweight and undereating subscales; fathers completed the perceived weight subscale (PFQ; Baughcum et al., 2001). Children answered the physical appearance subscale from the Self-Perception Profile (Harter, 2012); child’s BMI was calculated.
Results indicated that mothers’ worries concerning their child’s undereating persisted over time only in the FD group (r=0.42, p< .05). Additionally, in the FD group, mothers’ worries measured at T1 and T2 were both significantly correlated with their child’s current eating habits (r=0.427, p< .05, r=0.603, p< .01, respectively), showing that higher levels of maternal worries indicated poorer eating habits. Furthermore, child’s self-perception in the control group was correlated with BMI score (r=0.51, p< .05), whereas in the FD group, it was correlated with paternal perception of child’s weight (r = 0.51, p< .05). Moreover, fathers’ perceptions of their child’s weight were statistically affected by mothers’ worries about their child’s underweight. These findings suggest that elevated levels of maternal worries regarding child underweight indicated lower child perceived weight as reported by fathers, which in turn, correlated with more negative self-perception reports of child’s physical appearance. These findings show that FD have long-term correlates with the overall family dynamic. The role of the father, along with the importance of addressing the triadic relationship when treating infants diagnosed with FD will be discussed.

Authors

• Porat Yakov, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Presenting Author

• Naama Atzaba-Poria, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Non-Presenting Author