Eating Disorders in the Context of Parental Stress and Venues of Intervention

Feeding difficulties in infancy relate to eating disorders in childhood and adolescence, and therefore call for early intervention. Feeding which is basically an everyday act may become complicated under circumstances. Challenges appear in situations with parental anxiety and developmental delay. We treated a toddler who minimized drinking amounts and hesitated in general and during meals. Intervention lasted eighteen months.

The combination of slow physical growth, suspected developmental delay and parental factors, caused high risk for further social and emotional difficulties. Mother was anxious and failed to count on her daughter and on the preschool and clinic staff. Second order risk factors included unresolved personal and mutual conflicts and gap between parental and child`s needs.

Our main therapeutic goals included meeting mother`s needs as seeking control over feeding episodes while providing child`s needs for age appropriate autonomy, mediating gaps between different needs and parental conflicts and specifying mother`s anxieties as the feeling of being criticized.

We had to treat the tendency of splitting of the caregiving staff and the general attitude of over medicalization, as well. We addressed existing parallel processes between mother`s manner of being uncertain toward the therapy staff versus child`s difficulties relating with adults and children.

Our basic tools were observations and counselling. Those enabled dialoging, compassion and creating positive contact with mom, and were achieved in an optimal intervention setting while weaving home motives with clinical data and integration with preschool routines.