Parental Stress and Sensory Integration Disorder as Risk Factors for Eating Disorders Poor Nutrition and Growth Delay Among Toddlers

Selective eating among toddlers is a well-known phenomenon which is characterized by varied factors including nutritional deficits and a unique and challenging sensory profile. Our clinical experience in a multidisciplinary feeding and eating clinic, in Hadassah Medical Center of Jerusalem binds specific feeding and eating patterns with high levels of parental stress ll. Parental stress is combined by three domains: parental general approach of satisfaction, the quality of interaction with child and child’s temperament, as perceived by parent. Our cross-sectional research includes 42 pairs of parents and their children, referring the clinic due to selective eating and suspected sensory integration disorder. Our study includes a broad nutritional assessment, questionnaires testing parental stress (PSI-4) and questionnaires testing sensory integration (Toddler Sensory Profile-2) and anthropometric indices. Our study’s results are relevant family physicians and pediatricians working in the community, who address diagnosis like autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, developmental delay, and learning disabilities that interface with domains of parental stress and experience of parenting interaction and child temperament, as well as sensory integration and limited eating and nutrition. Research results are significant in the field of locating babies and families needing early intervention and as a base of promoting intervention programs of prevention and treatment of toddlers and their parents. It is important to apply suitable intervention programs based on a reflective manner about dyadic and triadic eating and feeding relations, in the family unit, considering the cultural context.