There are two major issues that parents regularly seek help with. What to do when my child eats very little, and only certain foods – I’m just afraid of not feeding him, and my child eats a lot, I’m afraid that his health will suffer from overeating.
Of course, each situation and each child is unique, but there are a few general points worth discussing. These two questions are asked by parents who have the opportunity to feed their child enough, and ideas about what a healthy diet is. Statistics show that 90% of children in developing countries still do not have such a choice, and their parents are concerned about simply feeding the child. Malnutrition is a serious problem that starts at an early age. Low birth weight occurs in approximately 25% of children in parts of Asia and Africa. It causes the death of almost 10 million children every year. More than 200 million children under the age of 5 in developing countries do not develop fully, mainly due to chronic malnutrition. The parents of these children do not think about the usefulness of nutrition, their children usually do not suffer from selectivity in food, and few people think about food allergies when deciding questions of survival.
Our children in developed countries are the first or second generation of people who do not starve and have a fairly large food choice. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that people who have survived with a lack of food, and have always been looking for ways to get food to feed their children, will not have adequate skills to cope with a situation where food is now always in abundance. Rather, they will either suffer that they cannot feed their children in any way (just like their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers during times of famine), or worry that children eat too much – compared to mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers in their childhood. That is why the skills of parents regarding the nutrition of children often have to be artificially regulated, coping with overwhelming anxiety and not hoping that in parents these skills are activated automatically immediately upon the birth of a child.
