A child's good appetite is a source of endless joy for parents. There is nothing more pleasant than to see how a child happily devours a cooked lunch, dinner or breakfast. But more often it is the other way around. Mom and grandmother tried to cook, and not just like that, but exactly what the little one loves. And the baby stubbornly refuses food and is capricious.
In some families, every meal turns into a real battle between the "unwilling" one and his persistent parents. The child is persuaded, they try to deceive with various maneuvers and tricks, they insist and threaten that he will not receive candy if he does not eat the soup. Is it necessary to try so hard and what to do if the child has a bad appetite, says the famous children's doctor Yevgeny Komarovsky.
Appetite is different
Life is impossible without food, but appetite does not always come with eating. Natural appetite occurs when the body needs food to replenish its energy reserves in order to survive. And the selective one accompanies the modern person much more often. The child wants cookies because he likes them, and does not want porridge because cookies are better.
Selective appetite reflects the real picture of needs only in an infant, at 8-9 months he intuitively feels that he needs calcium and refuses to eat soup. Not because the soup isn't tasty, but because milk is healthier. At the age of 1 year, 2 years old children prefer dairy products for the same reason.
If a one-year-old child basically does not eat meat, this does not mean that at 3-4 years old he will not begin to eat it with pleasure. It's just that vegetables and fruits, cottage cheese and milk are more important for a 12-month-old baby. And he understands this on an intuitive level.
Closer to 3 years, the problem of selective appetite, according to Komarovsky, is far-fetched - if a child does not eat vegetable puree and only requires chocolate and sausage, this is a common pedagogical mistake of mom and dad, and you should not look for any medical reasons for such behavior.
Why isn't the child eating?
If the toddler refuses to eat, he, according to Komarovsky, may have two reasons: he cannot or does not want to eat.
It cannot - this means that the appetite is present, but it is physically difficult to eat. For example, mom's milk is tasteless (the woman ate something wrong), the hole in the nipple is too small, and the porridge does not suck, etc. In infants, quite often during sucking, the intestines begin to work actively, at the wrong time its peristalsis is activated ... The tummy twists, the baby hurts, he stops eating and cries.
Quite often, the root of a child's appetite problem lies in the mouth. Stomatitis, sore gums during teething, micro-trauma to the gums (scratches from toys that have been in the mouth, or nails) - all this makes the process of absorbing food rather unpleasant.
Sometimes there is no appetite during colds or SARS. If the nose does not breathe, then during sucking, access to oxygen is blocked, which is uncomfortable, and the child stops eating. If the throat hurts and it is unpleasant to swallow, refusal to eat will almost always follow.
Sometimes the child does not like the food offered itself - it is hot or too cold, salty or unsalted, large or pureed.
It all depends on the personal preferences of each particular child. If moms and dads managed to understand that the child wants to eat, but cannot, then it is best to consult a doctor to find and remove the obstacle that prevents the baby from eating normally.
If a child does not eat well or does not eat at all because the food intake gives him unpleasant sensations, then he simply does not want to eat. However, you should not immediately accuse him of hooliganism and insist that the porridge be eaten. The reluctance to eat also has its reasons:
- Disease. Even if the parents have not yet noticed that the baby is getting sick, he himself, as a rule, begins to feel negative changes in his body in advance. In this case, a child who does not eat anything simply "turns on" the defense mechanism - on an empty stomach it is easier for the immune system to fight the causative agent of the disease. You should not force feed the baby, he does everything right, as his natural instincts tell him. But this is only true for acute infections. If a child has a long-term chronic illness, lack of appetite is a bad symptom, but this is rare.
The child's body easily gets used to new conditions for itself, and therefore, with a protracted illness, the baby begins to eat, as usual, and with some ailments, for example, diabetes, even an increased appetite is observed. Komarovsky gives certain recommendations on how to feed a sick child: in no way, until he asks. And mom should not be at all ashamed that she does not feed the sick child. This is the best that she can do now for his speedy recovery.
- Refusal to eat "by conviction". This happens to teenage children, especially girls. If she suddenly decides that she has become “fat”, and it is necessary to “urgently do something about it”, offer the child lighter and healthier foods (salads, boiled meat, fruits, milk). If the girl refuses to eat even this, then starvation becomes pathological and is quite comparable to a symptom of mental illness, which leads to anorexia and the slow death or disability of the girl. In this situation, feeding with force is also not an option, says Komarovsky, since the real cause of the hunger strike must be eliminated. A psychiatrist and adolescent psychologist or psychotherapist will help with this.
- Refusal to eat for no reason. There are also children who eat little or practically do not want to eat without any illnesses. They, according to Komarovsky, still have their own reasons not to want to eat, such as the individual characteristics of metabolism. Indeed, in one child, digestion is faster, nutrients are absorbed and assimilated faster, while in others the process is slower. Therefore, such a "slow" child refuses cooked lunch, because he still has breakfast in the process of processing.
Appetite depends on hormone levels.
If a child grows faster (his mom and dad are tall), that is, he will be bigger and more often than his peer, who genetically does not "shine" with high growth.
The level of energy consumption also affects the presence of appetite. If a child runs and jumps in the fresh air, then it will get hungry faster than if it sits in front of the TV and watches cartoons.
To restore the child's appetite, it can be enough just to adjust the energy consumption - to walk more, to enroll the child in the sports section. After all, going for an evening walk before dinner with the whole family is sure to give a positive result.
Parental mistakes
Very often, parents try to treat a non-existent disease. If no serious acute pathologies and infections are found in a child, it can be difficult for parents to admit that the child does not eat because he is not raised that way. And the testing begins, and diagnoses are sure to be found, which "as it were," and their treatment is a waste of time and money.
Komarovsky advises to stop dragging the child to clinics and laboratories, leave him alone and simply change the daily routine and lifestyle - introduce longer walks, cool baths, and play sports.
Many parents force their child to eat.
Yevgeny Komarovsky also refers to these actions as his favorite cunning tricks: “Look, the spoon flew and flew”, “Eat, otherwise we won't go to the park!”, “I'll tell dad everything!”. A cornered baby will eat under pressure, but without appetite. This means that less gastric juice will be secreted, the liver will cope with its part of the work more slowly, and digestion will be difficult. The benefits of force feeding are less than the harm.
It is also wrong to give food not for age. If a child does not eat in pieces a year, demanding pureed food, this may be quite justified. If he has only 2 teeth in his mouth, then there is simply nothing to chew on the pieces. However, mothers, who have read that the pieces will definitely stimulate the rest of the teeth to grow faster, immediately sound the alarm: they say, the appetite has disappeared. Komarovsky calls for a realistic assessment of the capabilities of your child. No one asks to wipe his food until he is 5-7 years old, but any parents can make it digestible, at least until 6-8 teeth come out.
Komarovsky's advice
If a child has given up soup for lunch, do not rush to cook something else for him. Scolding is also not worth it. Let it "whet" your appetite. The only thing that can defeat selective appetite is hunger. When it becomes real, strong, the poured soup will cause a lot of enthusiasm and will be quickly eaten without any persuasion. The main thing is to offer the child the same soup, and not another dish, at the next meal.
A child with a lack of appetite should not have any snacks between meals: no apples, no oranges, no candy.
Such "easy prey" should not be within his reach. This rule must be observed by all family members, it will be especially difficult for grandparents, but we must hold on.
You should not impose your meal schedule on your baby - breakfast, lunch and dinner may not coincide with his schedule. Try not to offer him food at all even for a day. At the same time, walk, play in the air, but do not say a word about food. The child will ask for food himself, and will eat whatever you offer him with excellent appetite.
You will learn more about what to do if the child does not want to eat in the following video.
