A child’s good appetite cannot but please parents, because it is so pleasant to watch how the baby devolves a dish prepared by his mother (grandmother) by both cheeks. In addition, this indicates that the child is completely healthy. If suddenly the baby begins to refuse cereals and soups, vegetables and fruits, devouring only bread, pasta and sweets, the thought arises that he is not eating correctly. A child's growing body needs vitamins, minerals and other beneficial substances, and we adults understand this very well. But how to explain this to a baby? And is it so bad that he doesn’t eat anything? What is the cause of poor appetite in children?
False decreased appetite: causes and methods of control
A false decrease in appetite manifests itself in situations where improperly organized nutrition and other circumstances that shape the lifestyle and environment in which the child is located are to blame. In such cases, parents can and should influence what is happening. Below are the main reasons why a child refuses to eat:
1. Snacks between main meals. The baby had a bad breakfast, and an hour later he got hungry and ate a cookie or an apple, then drank juice or tea, and then when it was time for lunch, he didn’t want to eat again. Sound familiar? The way out of the situation is obvious: do not let the child eat between meals. Only in this case does he have a chance to get hungry and finally have lunch (breakfast, dinner) normally.
2. Selective appetite. The child eats certain foods and ignores others. For example, he happily eats cottage cheese and fruits, and spits out porridge and meat every day.
Option 1. It happens that new taste preferences reflect the body’s current needs. This suggests that the child now needs more calcium and vitamins. In this case, you can make a temporary change in diet.
Option 2. Once again, the baby demands juice and cookies instead of porridge. This is not a question of appetite, but rather of behavior. The baby is looking for an opportunity to eat only what he wants. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with the fact that today the baby ate little porridge. Maybe he was just tired of her. Adults often get tired of eating the same thing over and over again. You can try removing porridge from the diet for two or three days, and then offer it again. If this is the reason, the child will have time to get bored and will willingly eat what is offered.
Does breakfast keep flying out of your little mouth? Most likely, the baby decided to manipulate his parents in this way so that they offer only those dishes that he always eats with pleasure. It’s easy to guess that such a diet will harm any body, especially children’s.
In this case, you can do this: whenever the baby refuses to eat what is offered, the meal for him stops, and the next one comes strictly according to the daily routine. It is important that in the intervals no one feeds him and there is no opportunity to have a snack on his own. Maybe the little one will skip lunch or dinner more than once before the result appears. But this is the only way he can become truly hungry and start eating normally.
3. Lack of physical activity. The child runs, jumps, walks a little and does not do exercises. He simply does not have time to spend energy, and his metabolism slows down. This leads to decreased appetite and excess body weight. Parents should analyze the child’s daily routine and dilute it with active activities. Children who move a lot do not have problems with appetite.
4. The child is distracted. Parents should make it a rule: no toys, jokes, cartoons or tablets during meals. When attention is focused on extraneous things, a good appetite, unfortunately, is out of the question.
5. The baby eats while listening to cartoons. This is not only a distraction, but also a habit of eating in certain conditions. It often happens that without cartoons, a child refuses to eat at all, so initially it is better not to accustom him to this.
6. Food is too hot or cold. The temperature must be checked every time before giving the product to a child.
7. Violation of the usual routine, when in the morning porridge suddenly appeared instead of cottage cheese or food intake suddenly shifted to the time of daytime sleep. If necessary, the regime should be changed gradually. Otherwise, until the little one gets used to the new order, a temporary loss of appetite may occur.
8. Loss of interest in food. For some time the baby ate everything - and suddenly stopped. Such problems arise when the baby is fed separately from everyone else and is not given a spoon, fork, or plate. A child learns new things through imitation of adults; do not take this opportunity away from him. For a long time, children do not associate the absorption of solid food with satisfying hunger and eat food from the common table out of curiosity.
If you lose interest in food, you need to start over:
- Stop all extraneous activities at the table. This applies to both the baby and the parents.
- Take the baby with you: move a high chair to the adult dining table or sit the child on your lap.
- Give him children's cutlery and dishes. You can offer food, but do not push or persuade.
- When the child understands that there is no longer pressure on him, he will slowly begin to be interested in food again.
9. Individual characteristics. Even children of the same age have different metabolisms, builds, energy expenditures for physical and mental stress and life support. In other words, a child may have a small appetite by nature, and then this should be taken for granted, and not fight against poor appetite.
Common reasons for refusing food
Colic in babies
Poor appetite does not always indicate a manifestation of character; measures can only be taken by understanding the reasons for refusing food.
The most difficult thing to determine is what causes dissatisfaction in infants.
Even with a good appetite, a child’s mood quickly deteriorates and interest in food disappears if it is too hot or too salty. Let's not discount the active intestinal motility that breast milk triggers, which causes colic, sleep disturbance, and inflamed gums during teething can also be the cause. Breast milk and formula can cause a baby to refuse with a stuffy nose; it is simply uncomfortable for him to suckle in such conditions, which makes him cry.
Disease
The development of an acute infectious disease is the main cause of loss of appetite in children of all ages.
It is quite understandable why he refuses to eat. It is easier for the body to eliminate the symptoms of the disease without being distracted by the digestion of food, which additionally causes discomfort when swallowing or chewing. There is no point in persuading a child to eat soup, light porridge or chicken broth, much less worry that the sick child will become completely weak from hunger.
As soon as the child’s body defeats the infection, it itself will require a means to restore strength.
New environment
The socialization of a child requires providing him with communication with peers, but the other side of the development of communication skills is often imitation in refusing to eat, which often happens in the garden, or the emergence of strong beliefs about the need to follow a diet to correct their figure, which in most cases occurs in girls aged 7 years.
Eats without appetite
A healthy child also eats poorly because he has not yet worked up an appetite, for example, in the case of a slow metabolism due to low physical activity.
There is no need to force you to finish eating everything on your plate, this will make the situation worse.
True decreased appetite: where it comes from and what to do about it
A true decrease in appetite occurs due to objective reasons. For example:
1. Incorrect feeding organization:
- too little break between meals (including between breastfeeding and regular meals);
- The baby ate more densely than usual at the last feeding (the volume was too large or the calorie content was high).
Appetite varies
Life is impossible without food, but appetite does not always come while eating. Natural appetite occurs when the body requires food to replenish energy reserves in order to survive. And selective accompanies modern man 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 is tasteless, but because milk is healthier. At the age of 1 and 2 years, children prefer dairy products for the same reason.
If a one-year-old child does not eat meat on principle, this does not mean that at 3-4 years old he will not begin to eat it with pleasure. It’s just that for a 12-month-old baby, vegetables and fruits, cottage cheese and milk are more important. 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 demands only chocolate and sausage, this is a common pedagogical mistake of mom and dad, and there is no need to look for any medical reasons for this behavior.
Does breastfeeding cause a baby's loss of appetite?
I think that among those reading this article, there will definitely be mothers (or fathers, or specialists) wondering - could a lack of appetite be caused by breastfeeding? Can't a child simply get enough of his mother's milk? No, it can’t - it’s neither physiological nor logical from an evolutionary point of view. Just the opposite: “chest hanging” is a consequence, not a cause. Breast milk is the safest and most easily digestible food for a child, therefore, if it is impossible to eat adult food (for any reason), babies compensate for the lack of nutrients through milk. And by weaning your child from the breast, you are “treating the symptom, not the disease.” Yes, there is a chance that the child will start eating better, but this does not mean that he will get more benefits from it. In addition, there are children for whom weaning is so traumatic that they not only do not begin to eat more, but also carry this negative experience throughout their lives without even realizing it. This is one of the variants of perinatal attachment trauma. Therefore, it is worth continuing to breastfeed the child as long as he requires, while simultaneously resolving the issues of “reason”. In general, I recommend simultaneously addressing issues of the child’s health and the presence of psychological problems related to nutrition.
I asked Maria to tell her story of overcoming a child’s refusal to eat. This is a real story without embellishment: it contains achievements, mistakes, their consequences, and specific advice on how you can help your child and cope with the consequences of your mistakes. Each family has its own experience, its own situation, but how important it is for everyone who has this problem to learn the experience of those who have already gone through this problem and helped their child. How important it is to understand that you are not alone, that there are families who understand you and can pass on their experience. How important it is to see mistakes in order to prevent them. And I am grateful to Maria that she shared her experience - past experience, mistakes made and conclusions from them that will help other families solve the problem and, even better, prevent it.
Why doesn't the child eat?
If a toddler refuses to eat, according to Komarovsky, there may be two reasons for this: he cannot or does not want to eat.
He can’t - this means that the appetite is present, but it is difficult to physically eat. For example, a mother’s milk does not taste good (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 actively work, and their peristalsis is not activated in time . The tummy is twisting, the baby is in pain, he stops eating and cries.
He's in pain!
When my son Nazar was about 2 years old, we were on vacation in Crimea. On the way to the sea, probably on the train, he contracted stomatitis - these are small but very painful ulcers in the mouth. It was very painful to swallow and chew food, and therefore for 6 whole days Nazar did not eat anything, only drank water. The infection went away on the fourth day after special treatment and treatment, but for another two days my son was simply afraid to eat. Knowing that his favorite things were dumplings and French fries, my husband and I took him to his favorite cafe and got both dishes, as well as ice cream, cake—anything he might like. At first, my son refused to eat - we didn’t persuade him, we just said that we were hungry and decided to eat, but he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. We ate dumplings and watched our son: at first he just sat, then he burst into tears, and only then, after probably 40 minutes, he carefully ate the dumpling. Then again and again... We were happy - now the main thing was not to overfeed, because Nazar’s appetite woke up and he was convinced that the pain was gone!
When a child is sick, the body does not perceive food - all its strength is spent fighting the source of the disease, and the brain simply does not send signals of hunger. This is why the child does not want to eat. But as soon as the baby begins to recover, the brain immediately sends a signal: it’s time to eat!
Parental errors
Very often parents try to treat a non-existent disease. If no serious acute pathologies or infections are detected in the child, it can be difficult for parents to admit that the child is not eating because he was not raised that way. And tests begin, and diagnoses are always found that “seem to not exist” and treating them is a waste of time and money.
Komarovsky advises to stop dragging your child around clinics and laboratories, leave him alone and simply change your daily routine and lifestyle - introduce longer walks, cool baths, and play sports.
Many parents force their child to eat.
Evgeny Komarovsky also includes his favorite tricky tricks among these actions: “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 that is not according to age. If a child does not eat in pieces during the year, requiring pureed food, this may be quite justified.
If he has only 2 teeth in his mouth, then there is simply nothing to chew the pieces with. However, mothers who have read that the pieces will definitely stimulate the remaining teeth to grow faster, immediately sound the alarm: they say, they have lost their appetite. Komarovsky calls for a realistic assessment of your child’s capabilities. No one asks him to puree his food until he is 5-7 years old, but making it digestible, at least until 6-8 teeth come out, is quite within the power of any parents.
Is food evil?!
For various reasons, we adults sometimes don’t want to eat either: troubles at work, it’s hot, we’re busy with something interesting, we’re just not hungry yet... But for some reason we are sure that children are simply obliged to always eat with appetite! And therefore, we are ready to spend hours persuading the child to eat, and if persuasion does not help, we begin to entertain - cartoons, talking dolls, dancing relatives... Threats also do not help - you won’t go for a walk, you won’t buy a toy, you won’t watch your favorite cartoon, you won’t get up from the table until you eat... Once in my childhood I sat like that all day over a plate of borscht and by the evening I was already hungry, but I never asked to eat, because somewhere inside I understood that if I ate, I would lose and I would have to eat forever .
We ourselves teach children that food is boring, that it is violence, that it is evil...
What to do? Just understand that a child, like us, may have many reasons why he does not want to eat at the moment, and be ready to feed when he has an appetite. It's so easy - take a bottle of milk, yogurt, puree, fruit or even a thermos with your favorite soup with you on a walk and feed your child quickly and easily when he gets hungry, right on the street! Fortunately, civilization provides us with all the opportunities for this: wet wipes, dishes, thermoses...
Komarovsky's advice
If your child refuses soup for lunch, you shouldn’t rush to cook him something else. There's no point in scolding either. Let him “work up” his appetite. The only thing that can overcome selective appetite is the feeling of hunger. When it becomes real and strong, the poured soup will cause a lot of delight and will be quickly eaten without any persuasion. The main thing is to offer your child the same soup at the next meal, and not another dish.
A child who suffers from lack of appetite should not have any snacks between meals: no apples, no oranges, no sweets.
Such “easy prey” should not be within his reach. This rule must be followed by all family members, it will be especially difficult for grandparents, but we must stick to it.
You should not impose your eating routine on your baby - your breakfast, lunch and dinner may not coincide with his routine. Try not offering him food at all for at least a day. At the same time, walk, play in the air, but don’t say a word about food. The child will ask for food himself and will eat everything you offer him with excellent appetite.
You will learn more about what to do if your child does not want to eat in the following video.
- Doctor Komarovsky
- Vitamins for appetite
- Doesn't eat vegetables
medical reviewer, psychosomatics specialist, mother of 4 children
A well-known children's doctor tells us when poor appetite is normal, and in what cases there is reason to be wary.
Any mother perceives a baby’s refusal to eat as an alarm signal. After all, the desire to feed our offspring is one of the strongest instincts inherent in us by nature. That is why in families where so-called “little children” grow up, parents and grandparents know a thousand ways to cram food into the baby. But how correct is this?
The famous children's doctor, candidate of medical sciences, TV presenter Evgeniy Komarovsky will talk about this.
“If the baby is healthy and cheerful, but does not eat anything or eats little, this is not his problem, but yours,” emphasizes Evgeniy Olegovich. – Do not compare your child with others. The most important question you should ask yourself is: “Does the child not want to eat or cannot?” The first is absolutely normal, but the second, as a rule, means that the baby has a health problem.
Fine
- The child refuses to eat because he is busy (playing, watching a cartoon), has just woken up and is not hungry yet, and is too excited to eat.
- The baby does not eat because he is sick . When the body is fighting an infection or virus, a decrease in appetite is natural. Do not force your child to eat; it is better to make sure that he drinks more, and focus on treating the disease, and not on pushing soup or porridge into the baby.
- Selective appetite, especially in the first year of life. Usually it reflects the body's need for certain products. Many children at 6-10 months refuse vegetable dishes, preferring dairy dishes, and this is quite normal. However, the older the child becomes, the more often selective appetite is a consequence of acquired habits. If a mother offers a preschooler soup, but he persistently demands fried potatoes and in the end receives them with a scandal, then next time he will not even look at the soup. What to do? Avoid eating between main meals. Do not feed until baby is hungry enough to eat soup.
- The child does not eat because he spends almost no energy . This is why many children are much more willing to eat whatever is offered to them on the weekends, when they get out and move more.
- Appetite can change periodically - for example, it can increase under the influence of growth hormones when metabolic processes in the body are activated.
Abnormal
Sometimes the child wants to eat, but cannot. Most often this applies to infants. The reasons may be different:
- problems with food intake: flat nipple, “tight” breasts, etc.;
- problems in the oral cavity when sucking, chewing or swallowing causes pain: stomatitis, thrush, inflammation of the gums due to teething, just toothache, inflammatory processes in the pharynx (tonsillitis, pharyngitis);
- problems in the intestines: sometimes in infants, after the start of sucking, intestinal motility sharply increases, and with increased gas formation, a tendency to constipation, and the presence of inflammatory processes, this can provoke abdominal pain;
- breathing problems: if the baby has a “clogged” nose, then during the sucking process very noticeable discomfort appears, since breathing through the mouth becomes impossible;
- the taste of food (the soup is too salty, the nursing mother ate garlic, which affected the milk, etc.) or individual intolerance to a particular product (your child cannot swallow even a spoonful of semolina porridge - don’t force it!);
- physical characteristics of food: hot, cold, large pieces, but we haven’t learned to chew yet, so we choke.
Parents can solve some of these problems themselves, and some with the help of doctors. In any case, this is again not a reason to force-feed a child.
How much should a healthy child eat?
Pediatricians use weight and height standards for different ages, as well as daily food intake standards. These values are highly averaged, so you shouldn’t despair if your little one eats little and gains weight poorly, while maintaining good rates of physical and psychological development.
The main factor determining the volume and frequency of food is appetite. It, in turn, depends on three factors: metabolic characteristics, the intensity of hormone production and the level of energy expenditure.
Each child's metabolism has its own characteristics. Some children eat little, but quickly gain weight, while others look thin, although they eat large portions of food. The extent and speed of absorption of nutrients obtained from food depends on metabolism.
The production of hormones is also individual for each baby. Hormone production is most active before one year of age and during adolescence. In summer, production intensifies, which helps increase appetite, but in winter, on the contrary, it slows down, and a little less food is required.
The level of energy expenditure is determined not only by maintaining normal rates of growth and development, but also by physical activity, as well as maintaining body temperature. The more actively your child spends energy during the day, the stronger his appetite will be, and the easier it will be for you to feed him.
