Help! My baby won't eat!

Lots of babies, once they have reached the age of 1 year, go through a critical stage in which they refuse to eat. This makes parents worrying and drives them to seek help to specialists in educational psychology dynamics.

Indeed, mums get seriously worried when their babies start to refuse food and transform meal time in real food fights especially if they have always eaten heartily overcoming the weaning time smoothly.

Why does she refuse to eat?

During its first year, every child triples its weight: this is a growth rhythm that has no equal in life.
It is logical that in order to meet such a huge calories requirements, the baby will always eat heartily seldom refusing the baby bottle.
From the first year on, growth starts to assume a slower pace, calories requirements diminish and consequently the amount of food the baby needs diminishes as well.
The baby will naturally eat less and you, like any other mother, will inevitably start to worry about your child’s health.

Food’s refusal is a problem that goes far beyond the change in the baby’s growth pace: indeed it may depend on many different reasons such as baby’s age, emotional condition and attitude.
Nutrition is indeed where the baby reflects her inner emotions of life and consequently the parent-son relationship. That means that often at the root of lack of appetite there may be a child’s desire to communicate an intimate trouble that parents must meet properly.

Just think about that baby’s nutrition starts soon after birth with breastfeeding that takes on a special significance: in its first months the newborn is used to have mother’s milk while she holds him in a safe hug.
When this close intimate relationship ceases, food’s acceptance or refusal may takes on important psychological meanings.
Meal time has to be a joyful moment as the breastfeeding was: it is necessary thou to create an atmosphere of confidence and avoid to make those mistakes that risk to compromise the moment of meal.

Another reason that may lead the baby to refuse the food is a overly concerned family that convey anxious emotions and feelings.
Indeed, mealtime is not only aimed at nutrition itself but the moment in which mother and baby have an important and delicate relational exchange and the baby absorbs all the emotions that parents convey.
No needs to say that a hungry baby who eats everything her mum cooks, gives mother a great sense of satisfaction and acceptance of her role.
In order to satisfy this need to feel approved, mother may risk to give meal time excessive importance. Indeed, since babies also communicate their feelings with food, it is highly probable that they refuse to eat to show a discomfort when a negative behaviour of their parents occurs.
Children clearly perceive if their mother is concerned about meal time and they may feel so annoyed that they refuse even to sit at the table for this reason.

In this case, the best approach may be that mother learns to recognize and respect her baby’s refusals and to understand that she, as anyone else, may have her personal tastes.

Here is some specific suggestions:

- Use natural products in your cooking according to the time you have at your disposal and what is available on the market in that season. A home-made food is the greatest gesture of love.
- During the first months, do not force your baby to eat. It is not necessary that weaning starts the 6th month and a slight delay will not affect your baby’s overall nutritional contribution.
- Once the weaning time has started, pay attention to respect your baby’s needs complying with her tastes and feeling of satiety. Coaxing or forcing her will just have the opposite effect.
- Make your baby sit in a comfortable position so that the food is within reach.
- Get her used to a more diversified diet even though she doesn’t seem to accept positively the change. In this particular period, most of the babies tend to require always the same kind of food and then suddenly abandon it for what they have always refused.
- If mealtimes are pleasant your child may begin to eating with all the other family members. It may be useful to sit at the table all together. Try to offer your child a spoon of your food and let her play with it.