Editorial: Feeding Difficulties in Children and Adolescents

[摘要] Some months ago, together with Frontiers Pediatrics, we decided to launch a new topic of discussion about a common problem in childhood, often addressed in the pediatric consultations around the world: Feeding Difficulties. We expected to open a new field to discuss one of the most important problems in pediatric consultations globally. Informal data from many regions of the world showed that parents are concerned about children's feeding, in almost 50–60% of the cases, and that those numbers increase if the child has a neurodevelopmental problem. One of the initial concerns that we discussed at the launching of the topic, was that the majority of the papers on this theme were related to consequences of gastrointestinal problems and as result of oral motor issues, after hospital discharging. We wanted to show that feeding difficulties do occur in most of the regions around the world, in the so called normal children, as part of normal development. Although more prevalent in children with organic problems or developmental disabilities, this multifactorial disorder also affects children with typical development behavior. Feeding difficulties ranges from errors in interpretation of amounts of food to be given to children to patients that may show several inadequate eating behaviors, like anorexia and hyper neophobia, besides impaired sensorial processing and delayed motor skills development. All of this problems could interact and an organic cause to feeding problems could lead to an important modification of the dynamics of families, transforming it in a behavioral situation (1, Ramos et al).

[学科分类] 儿科学

[关键词] childhood;eating disorders;feeding problems;infancy;multidisciplinary communication;phobic disorders;selective intake