Eating disorders from 0 to 6 years: what to do when they occur at an early age

Requests for help quintupled in the 0-6 age group and almost tripled in the 7-16 age group, from 2020 to today. Eating disorders are not limited to adolescence and are not limited to the female gender. Data from the Observatory ofPollicino Onlus Association– which it promotes prevention and intervention initiatives on psychological distress in developmental age and in particular on eating disorders from 0 to 16 years – show how, especially in early childhood, children with a distorted use of food are in a higher percentage than girls. With the entry into puberty, an evolutionary moment characterized by changes and transformations of the body, the percentage of females taken in care is instead greater.

But where does eating disorders arise at an early age, how are they recognized and, above all, how is it possible to intervene? We talked about it with the doctor Pamela Pace, president of Tom Thumb, psychotherapist and author of Feed me, essay published in 2009, which in the last edition of Bookcity was re-presented in a new updated and expanded version.

Feed me it is considered somewhat the “manifesto” of the Association: what does it contain in this new edition?
«The essay was enriched with further reflections, both theoretical and clinical. Thanks to the Observatory we have been able to notice an increase in food selectivity patterns in children and a restrictiveness that today can involve in a precise framework called ARFID, a food opposition that is expressed in an increasingly extreme selection of foods and which also affects on the growth curve, promoting a toxic circuit that feeds itself into family relationships and that creates significant problems even within the school canteen. A renewed text, therefore, starting from what we have been able to meet and study from 2009 to today, with an eye to the pandemic and the lockdown, in which there was also a worrying increase in eating disorders “.

Exactly what age does your support refer to?
«It starts at 0 and reaches pubertal age and the beginning of adolescence, therefore the 0-16 range. The largest percentage of calls we receive on ours national toll-free number (800 644622) mapped by the Ministry of Health, however, it concerns boys and girls, infants from 0 to 3 years. It is mainly mothers who call us, although in recent years grandparents have also joined us “.

We don’t often talk about ailments in such young age groups …
“The pioneering originality of bothTom Thumb Association, both of this publication, lies precisely in having shed light on an area of ​​the childhood clinic that is still in shadow and in having highlighted how the onset of eating disorders concerns adolescence but not only. In Feed me there is a diagnostic reading perspective that goes beyond the binary concept of eating disorders as a mainly adolescent manifestation, as well as specifically linked to a relationship problem with the mother. Until a few years ago anorexia was conceived as the anti-mother; in reality, a causal relationship between eating disorders and parents has not yet been established with respect to eating disorders in adolescence and those in childhood.

When is there an actual eating disorder?
“We tend to distinguish between food discomfort e food disorders. The first are ftransitory footprints present not for long alteration of the child’s relationship with food and / or with the table and manifest in evolutionarily healthy subjects who do not present particular discomforts and who maintain a lively dialectical relationship, albeit oppositional and / or protest, with the family environment. The other way around, eating disorders send messages of protest and often persist over time. Not only that: the child generally also shows other attitudes of discomfort and discomfort and often stiffenings, closures or even a certain aggressiveness appear in intra-family and external relationships “.

Is a simple phone call to your Center enough to understand the extent of a discomfort?
“The Parent Crisis Center Di Pollicino has as its heart the welcome and listening to the parents’ concern, whatever it may be. For us, a parent who cares is in a crisis with their child and needs help regardless. Any fear, fatigue, question that is presented to us with a phone call has a welcome and in general we invite you to come to the association or to meet us online for further information ».

How do you proceed after the first contact?
“The first interview is always free and on this occasion the psychologist has the task of understanding the state of this concern and therefore making proposals, such as support interviews for the parents, so as to take charge of the same parents and the child. The pediatrician also has a central role, being basically the first professional figure that the parent contacts, therefore we have a preferential relationship with the pediatric clinic with which we always deal, also to verify that the child does not have psychological fragility and disorder food has not already affected its growth curve “.