Managing a fussy baby or a determined toddler can be a daily test of patience and endurance for parents and caregivers. New research into the origins of emotional overeating in 3-year-olds suggests that the way caregivers respond to infants' and toddlers' negative emotions, such as disappointment, fear and anger, influences the development of emotional overeating in children.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign followed more than 350 children from birth to age 3 and found a direct link between infant temperament and the development of emotional overeating at age 3. However, caregivers' supportive and unsupportive responses to children's negative emotions also had a significant impact.
Emotional overeating was defined in the study as consuming food to cope with feelings, rather than in response to hunger.
When assessing the children's temperament, the researchers looked at their orienting responses: their ability as infants and toddlers to attend to, maintain, and disengage their attention from external stimuli.
“Our findings show that if a child has a greater ability to orient their attention and regulate their emotions during infancy, caregivers are more likely to implement supportive responses — and therefore, the child is less likely to turn to food for self-regulation,” said first author Sehyun Ju, a graduate student in human development and family studies. Ju’s co-authors were Kelly Bost and Samantha Iwinski, a professor and graduate student in the same department, respectively.
Supportive responses from caregivers included using problem-solving strategies to alleviate a child's distress, validating and addressing the child's feelings, or offering encouragement. Conversely, unsupportive responses include caregivers punishing a child for expressing his emotions and minimizing or dismissing his feelings.
Previous research has shown that emotional eating is driven by people's ability to regulate their emotions, rather than the feelings themselves, according to the new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology.
Accordingly, parents should be aware that emotional overeating is a complex behavior influenced by caregivers' responses to the child's emotional expression, as well as by the child's temperament and ability to control his or her feelings, Ju said.
All children and their caregivers participated in the U.S. STRONG Kids 2 birth cohort study, a research project investigating various family environmental factors and biological characteristics that influence children's weight and feeding habits from birth to age 9 years.
When the children were 3 months, 18 months and 3 years old, a survey was conducted among their parents or caregivers about their children's eating behavior. For example, whether they ate more when they were bored, sad or angry. They were also asked about their personality traits or typical behavior, such as how often they were happy or sad. They were also asked about their ability to regulate their emotions and how they responded to external stimuli.
Using twelve hypothetical scenarios in which the child expressed negative emotions, such as sadness, fear, anger, or disappointment, caregivers indicated how likely they were to respond using supportive methods, such as problem-solving strategies, or nonsupportive methods, such as punishing the child.
The researchers found that 3-month-old babies with high levels of cheerfulness, sociability and spontaneity were more likely to overeat emotionally three years later. The children's eating behavior was also significantly predicted by their ability to adapt to external stimuli and self-regulate their emotions. But the children's likelihood of consuming food as a coping mechanism was significantly influenced by their caregivers' responses to their negative emotions.
“The findings highlight the importance of the family system,” Iwinski said. “We see that things influence each other at multiple points in time. Behavior at 3 months of age can have consequences for children when they are 3 years old.
“We need to think about the optimal times to implement interventions and provide assistance. From these findings, we see that assistance may be needed at multiple developmental milestones,” she said.
Ju said emotional overeating is an obesogenic behavior that can contribute to unhealthy weight gain, potentially increasing young children's risk of developing serious health conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
She said responding supportively to children's negative emotions is essential for promoting both their psychological and physical health. It influences the way in which young people learn to deal with their feelings and their attitude towards food.
