Baby difficult feeding

How to tell if your baby has a feeding problem

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November 26, 2019 | by Alexis Rodriguez, M.D.

Categories: Healthy Driven Moms

Some babies have trouble eating and drinking at first. They may spit up, avoid new foods or refuse to eat certain foods. They may have trouble holding food and liquid in their mouth. These issues are usually normal and temporary.

A child with a feeding problem or disorder will keep having trouble. Twenty-five percent of all children will experience feeding difficulties during infancy and early childhood that can affect their overall health and development.

When a baby doesn’t like solids, it’s easy to assume they are a “picky eater.” But poor feeding is different from picky eating, which doesn’t usually start until your baby becomes a toddler. A baby may have a feeding problem when they can’t eat or drink enough of the right things to stay healthy.

Feeding problems may include difficulty swallowing, called dysphagia. This is the inability of food or liquid to pass easily from the mouth to the throat, through the esophagus and into the stomach. Dysphagia can result in aspiration, which may cause pneumonia and/or other serious lung conditions.

How do you know if your baby has a feeding problem or disorder? Some common red flags include:

Refuses to eat and drink
Isn’t gaining weight or growing as expected
Arches back or stiffens when feeding
Cries or fusses when feeding
Regularly takes a long time to eat (more than 30 minutes)
Falls asleep or isn’t alert when feeding
Avoids foods with certain textures
Drools a lot, coughs or gags when feeding
Has problems chewing and swallowing
Has trouble breathing while eating and drinking
Frequently spits up or vomits
Has a hoarse or raspy voice during or after feeding

Feeding difficulties in babies may happen because of breastfeeding challenges. Lactation consultants can teach you how to feed your baby and help with latching difficulties, painful nursing, low milk production and other issues.

Poor feeding may also be caused by temporary illnesses, including ear infections and colds. These can make feeding uncomfortable for babies and will normally stop when the illness is treated. Other factors that may affect a baby’s ability to feed are stress, pain from teething and medication side effects.

Babies with certain health problems or conditions may also have feeding difficulties. Some possible causes for infant feeding and swallowing problems include:

Prematurity, low birth weight
Certain traumatic birth injuries (cerebral palsy)
Structural abnormalities (cleft lip, cleft palate)
Reflux or other stomach problems
Lung or respiratory problems (asthma)
Heart disease
Nervous system or muscle problems (muscular dystrophy)
Developmental delays or disabilities (autism)

If left untreated, feeding problems can negatively affect your baby’s health. Malnutrition is a top concern. Babies need to feed and digest the necessary nutrients to develop and grow properly. If they don’t get the necessary nutrition, it can lead to a condition known as failure to thrive.

Feeding issues can also put infants at risk for dehydration, aspiration, pneumonia or other lung infections, and delayed physical and mental development which can lead to speech, cognitive and behavioral problems.

The earlier the problem is addressed, the better the long-term outcome. Treatment for feeding disorders varies based on what’s causing the issue and the symptoms involved. A team approach, including the child’s doctor, dietitians and speech-language pathologists, is often the best way to treat these issues.

For instance, babies and children with dysphagia are often able to swallow thick fluids and soft foods better than thin liquids. A speech-language pathologist can suggest techniques for feeding that may help improve swallowing problems.

Treatment may also include medicines for reflux, trying different foods or textures, changing the temperature of food, changing the feeding schedule (e. g., smaller, more frequent meals), changing your child’s position while eating, and/or switching feeding methods. In severe cases, your child may need to get nutrition in other ways, such as through a feeding tube.

If you think your baby is having trouble with feeding, let your child’s doctor know right away. While feeding problems are usually minor, your doctor will want to rule out an underlying medical issue.

Some warning signs of feeding problems include wetting fewer than four diapers per day, infrequent or hard stools in the first month, your baby becomes more yellow instead of less during the first week.

If your baby shows any signs of emergency, such as a fever over 100 degrees, wheezing, bloody vomit or stool, or constant crying, get immediate medical attention. Signs of an allergy or digestive disturbance include vomiting after feeding, frequent loose or watery stools, blood in the stools or a severe skin rash.

The Edward-Elmhurst Health Pediatric Feeding Clinic takes a comprehensive approach to the full spectrum of feeding disorders in children of all ages and concentrates on feeding, nutrition and growth. Our multidisciplinary team includes a pediatric dietitian, pediatric speech-language pathologist, pediatric gastroenterologist and a pediatric nurse. For questions, please call 630-527-5409.

Explore children’s services at Edward-Elmhurst Health.

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Featured Expert

Alexis Rodriguez, M.D. Specialty: Pediatric Gastroenterology

Dr. Rodriguez specializes in pediatric gastroenterology. Read More >>

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Feeding Problems | Pediatrics

Feeding can become a problem when your child is losing weight or having trouble gaining the right amount of weight for their age. Your child or baby has feeding problems when:

They can’t eat or drink anything.
They can’t eat and drink enough of the right things to stay healthy.
They choose not to eat or drink enough of the right things to stay healthy.

With a baby, you might have breastfeeding problems. Other baby feeding problems might come from your baby not being able to suck, chew, or swallow.

Eating disorders in young children are called feeding disorders. They might also be called toddler eating disorders. (Usually, the term eating disorder is used for pre-teens, teenagers, and adults.)

Sometimes problems with eating get better without treatment. Sometimes your baby or child will need to be seen by a doctor.

With treatment, feeding disorders can get better. Eating can turn into a safer, easier, and happier experience for your child and the rest of the family. Treatment can also help your child become healthier.

Sometimes feeding problems are due to a child not being able to suck, chew, or swallow. This might stem from a physical problem such as a cleft palate or tongue tie. When the cause is less clear, you can look for these signs:

Not gaining weight well
Coughing, choking, or gagging when eating or drinking
Throwing up often
Choking on food or drink once during a meal and not eating again
Eating and breathing coordination problems
Not eating baby food purees by 8 months old
Not eating table foods by 12 months old
Not using a cup by 16 months old
Eating baby foods at 16 months old
Avoiding foods with a certain texture or from a certain food group (such as fruits and vegetables)
Eating fewer than 20 kinds of food, especially when they stop eating certain foods and don’t replace them with other foods
Crying or arching the back at most meals
Taking more than 30 minutes to eat meals on a regular basis

Other signs within your family can include:

Arguing with your child about food and feeding
When feeding your child is difficult for everyone
Eating problems you have that your child may get from you

If your baby or child is losing weight or having trouble gaining the right amount of weight for their age, you should see a doctor. While some feeding problems can get better without treatment, it is best to make sure that the cause isn’t serious.

If your baby is very uncomfortable when eating or their spit up is green or bloody, you should take them to a doctor right away.

Feeding disorders are more than picky eating. Feeding difficulties in children are almost always caused by some other medical problem, including:

Gastroesophageal reflux [GAS-troh-ih-SOF-oh-JEE-uhl REE-fluhks]. This is a condition where acid from the stomach flows back into the esophagus, the tube that connects your child’s mouth to their stomach.
Eosinophilic esophagitis [EE-oh-sin-oh-fil-ik EE-sof-a-jai-tis] or inflammation of the esophagus
Other stomach or intestine problems
Seizures
Nervous system problems
Premature birth
Sensory system problems
Autism
Craniofacial [CRAY-nee-oh-FAY-she-awl] syndromes or abnormalities of the face or head
Heart or lung problems
Face and mouth muscle problems
Problems swallowing certain liquids and food textures

When a baby has a problem with breastfeeding, these medical problems might not be the cause. Breastfeeding doesn’t necessarily come easily for everyone. You may have difficulty with positioning your baby or have sore or tender nipples. Your baby might be spitting up. Some spitting up is normal for all babies. It happens when they eat too fast or swallow air. Remember that it takes practice and patience to find a pattern that works best for you and your baby.

Your child will have a clinical feeding evaluation at a therapy center. The feeding specialist (either a speech-language pathologist or an occupational therapist) will talk with you about:

The foods your child eats
Where and when your child eats
Who feeds your child

The therapist will look at your child’s mouth and face. They will watch your child eat or be fed. By watching children eat, the specialist can learn how they move their mouths, think while eating, and control their bodies. They can also see a child’s general ability to eat. If the therapist thinks your child may not be swallowing safely, they will schedule another evaluation.

After the feeding evaluations, the therapist may recommend several ways to help your child, including:

Putting your child in certain safe eating and drinking positions
Giving your child certain drinks and foods that are safe for them
Helping your child to eat a wider variety of foods, and drink assorted drinks
Teaching you and your child safe feeding and drinking skills
Coordinating services with other medical and therapy professionals

Most causes of feeding problems cannot be prevented. Some steps you can take to make eating a healthy time that your child likes include:

Not arguing about food
Making food fun
Avoiding power struggles over food
Being patient when giving your baby or child new foods to try

Healthy Children

Your child or baby has feeding problems when they can’t eat or drink or when they can’t eat and drink enough of the right things to stay healthy. If your child is losing weight or having trouble gaining the right amount of weight for their age, they might have a feeding disorder. With treatment, feeding disorders can get better.

© 2018 Intermountain Healthcare. All rights reserved. The content presented here is for your information only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, and it should not be used to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease. Please consult your healthcare provider if you have any questions or concerns.

Breastfeeding on demand

You can often hear from a nursing mother: "I feed on demand, my baby requires a breast every 3.5 hours." Or: “I have always fed on demand. In a year, we already had 1 feeding in the evening, and my child calmly refused to breastfeed. Before talking about the demand of the child, it is necessary to find out what modern women mean when they say - "I breastfeed."

Modern mothers consider breastfeeding necessary for feeding their baby. Just for feeding. Breast milk is food, the mother supplies the baby with the nutrients necessary for growth and development. When a baby suckles at the breast, he eats. Breastfeeding makes sense only as a process of supplying proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and microelements.

During suckling, the baby receives the nutrients it needs with mother's milk. This is the absolute truth. There is another unconditional truth, which is not given any importance in modern society, it is not taken into account and is not considered. Breastfeeding for a child is communication with the mother. We need to figure out how the child understands feeding on demand? Can he understand anything at all? Is there any difference for him how he is fed, for 15-20 minutes after 3.5 hours or in some other way?

What is on-demand feeding

On-demand feeding of a newborn baby means putting it to the breast for every squeak or search. Squeak and search movements in newborns, even as early as the second or third day of life, begin to appear much more often than after 3. 5 or 2.5 hours. The need for attachments increases rapidly, and by the 10-12th day of life, the need to attach to a child may occur 15-16 or more times a day. Applications vary in duration. The baby can fall asleep and sleep while sucking for, for example, 1.5-2 hours. Can release the breast after 1-2 minutes. And then ask her again. Why does a child need such frequent contact with his mother's breast?

That's why. Being in the mother's belly, in a calm, familiar environment, listening to the noises of the mother's body, being in a warm, cramped, confined space, the baby sucked his fist, fingers, loops of the umbilical cord, swallowed amniotic fluid. Learned to suck and swallow. After birth, experiencing discomfort for any, the most insignificant reason, the baby tries to get rid of it. You can get rid of discomfort by getting into the usual conditions of a comfortable stay. The only place where the baby after birth can feel the sensations familiar to him is in the arms of the mother. The only familiar action is sucking. The only familiar taste and smell is the taste and smell of milk and lube in the areola. Milk and lubricant have an odor and taste similar to the taste and smell of amniotic fluid. Therefore, experiencing discomfort, the baby squeaks, or begins to look for an object to suck with his mouth. Ideally, it is immediately applied to the chest. The baby becomes warm, cramped, he hears the beating of his mother's heart, breathing, grumbling in the intestines, he sucks and feels the familiar taste and smell. If such an action happens constantly, the baby gains confidence, no matter what happens, he will solve all his problems with his mother. The place of comfort is now under the breast, and you can suck on the breast.

This whole process is biologically justified. A newborn child does not feel the feeling of hunger, this feeling is not formed in him. It will begin to form at about two months of age. How to feed a creature that does not experience hunger ?! How to encourage him to take some action to get food? This can be done only at the expense of some other incentives. This stimulus for the newborn is constant bodily discomfort, thanks to which he wants to suckle all the time! The most intense, frequent and prolonged sucking in infants is observed in the first two or three months of life. It is in these first months that the main weight gain of the baby occurs.

Feeding in the first month

Baby falls asleep with breast in mouth, sleeps sucking for a while. Falling asleep deeply, lets go of the chest. After sleeping for a while, he wakes up, and is applied on waking. After sleep, he can stay awake for some time, for example, an hour and a half. During wakefulness, he may feel discomfort 2-3 times, for example, from a completely natural desire to pee, and having called his mother for help, having kissed for a couple of minutes, he will do his deeds. Then he will want to sleep, feel discomfort and, kissing his chest, will again fall asleep sucking. After some time, he will wake up and attach again. Then again a little "walk". And after some time, he will fall asleep at the chest again.

The daytime naps of a one-month-old infant feeding on demand vary in duration and number. There can be 4-6 dreams during the day, and they can last from 5-15 minutes to 2-2.5 sometimes 3 hours. "Around" each dream, the baby is applied to the chest, and applied between dreams several times. At night, the child falls asleep at the breast. Usually in the early morning hours, he begins to fuss and apply. In the morning, he almost never fully wakes up. The baby sleeps, from time to time, sucking on his mother's breast. Waking up in the morning, the baby is again applied to the chest. If you count all the attachments that have happened in a baby of one month of age, then approximately 16-20 attachments are obtained. This is how a newborn human cub behaves if it is given the opportunity to behave in accordance with physiological and psychological needs, which, by the way, are genetically determined. The child of the first months of life does not separate his personality from the personality of the mother and from her breast. Mom and her breasts, and everything connected with them, are the universe of the baby and himself.

In most cases, a modern woman, being afraid to “accustom a child to hands”, strives to limit his requests for sucking. A pacifier and a bottle of tea or water come to her aid in this matter. They, too, can be sucked ... The need for sucking seems to be satisfied. But only the need for communication with the mother during suckling is not satisfied, the peculiar chain of mutual assistance and cooperation between mother and baby is destroyed, the formation of maternal affection and concentration is disrupted. Is the difference in the two actions noticeable to the reader: the baby cried, the mother took him, put him to her chest and started rocking him, or gave him a pacifier and started rocking the stroller, even with the words “Why are you crying, my sun?”

The modern woman who gives a pacifier and pumps a stroller is not a bad person deliberately harming an infant. She is simply in captivity of prejudices regarding the relationship between mother and baby. She does not know how to behave correctly, does not know what to do in accordance with the natural needs of the child. If you tell her what the child really needs, she will exclaim in horror: “What is it, don’t let him get away with?!” Indeed, the child of the first months of life must not be let off the hook. For a woman who does not know how to comfortably carry a baby, and who does not know how to feed him in various positions (sitting, lying, standing and even moving), this can be very difficult. Especially if she is not sure of the correctness of her actions.

An action that should become automatic for the mother of a newborn: when the baby cries or shows other signs of anxiety, put the baby to the breast.

What's next?

The baby is growing. A fairly stable rhythm of daytime sleep begins to form in him, and a 3-4-month-old baby behaves quite differently from a newborn. Feeding on demand at this age looks something like this...

At three months, the baby has 10-12 feeds during the day and 2-4 at night. There are frequent applications for a short time, but their number is reduced. There may be a long night break in feedings, about 5 hours, but this is very rare. Much more often the night break is 2.5-3.5 hours. By this age, the baby's body is noticeably rounded.
At four months, the baby begins to breastfeed noticeably less frequently. The main feedings are associated with sleep: the baby suckles before bedtime, during awakening and during sleep, both daytime and nighttime. In this regard, he has a fairly accurate feeding regimen. And many babies stop breastfeeding when they wake up after daytime sleep, sometimes as early as 2.5-3 months.
At five months, the baby has 8-10 daytime feedings and 2-3 nighttime, attachments as well as in the fourth month of life, are organized around dreams - the baby eats when going to bed and some babies suck during awakening.
At six months, the feeding regimen changes. The most active sucking shifts to the last 2-3 hours before waking up from a night's sleep. The period of daytime wakefulness can be divided into two periods: in the morning, when the baby sucked during the night is rarely applied to the breast, and in the evening, when attachments become very frequent. In total, there can be 7-10 day applications and 3-4 night applications. At this age, the baby begins a period of acquaintance with new food - pedagogical complementary foods. Sometimes there are attachments associated with the introduction of complementary foods, the baby “washes down” samples of new food with mother's milk. But many children do not want to drink complementary foods. When complementary foods are introduced to an on-demand baby, it is never meant to replace feedings with complementary foods. This is practically impossible, because the main feedings of the baby are associated with sleep, and mother's breakfasts, lunches and dinners, during which the baby gets acquainted with new food, are located between the baby's dreams, during his wakefulness.
At seven months, the frequency of application is about the same.
At eight months, the feeding regimen changes. Since the baby shows high motor activity and is very busy exploring the surrounding space, in the daytime he forgets to breastfeed. In this regard, the number of daily feedings can be reduced to 6-8 times. The baby compensates for the reduction in daytime feedings by increasing the frequency and duration of nighttime feedings up to 6 times.
In the second half of the year, babies who stopped breastfeeding when waking up after daytime naps recall this habit again. The baby’s daytime sleep in the second half of life, as well as in the region of a year and older, looks something like this: the baby falls asleep sucking, sleeps quietly for a while, for example 1-1.5 hours, then starts tossing and turning, fiddling, worrying, at this moment the mother lies down next to , gives him a breast and the baby can fill up 10-15-30 minutes sucking. Mom may well use this time for her own rest - lie down, read, while the baby sleeps while sucking. I know my mother, a lover of embroidery, who used this time specifically for embroidery ...
Breastfeeding becomes more frequent at nine to ten months. In the daytime, this is 4-6 full feedings and about the same number of attachments for various reasons. The baby has new reasons for attachment. If, during active actions to master the world, the baby fills a bump or gets scared, he calms down with his mother's breast. There may be situations when you can comfort the baby by sitting next to him and hugging him. At night, 4-6 feedings remain, the baby begins to suckle more actively in the morning between 3 and 8 hours.
At eleven months, a baby can already have 2-3 complete complementary foods. Initiation to adult food in the mind of a child is not associated with breastfeeding: attachment to the mother's breast is something other than the desire to get enough of the product they like. As a rule, after the baby has eaten, he feels the need to attach himself to the breast. The number of daily feedings remains the same in the child, but the number of short-term attachments increases. There are active mid-morning feedings between 4 and 8 o'clock in the morning.
At ten or twelve months, the baby, if he is already walking, can sometimes breastfeed every time he comes to his mother, i.e. about every 15-30 minutes. Attachments around dreams and night sucking persist. Therefore, if a mother says that a child suckles once or twice a day, this means that there is no feeding at the request of the child. There are restrictions imposed by the mother, with which the baby has come to terms. He treats breast sucking like food, sucks on a dummy or finger to fall asleep or calm down, or falls asleep just like that, without calming down.
At twelve months, the baby is applied in about the same way.
At the age of one and a half years, there may already be one daytime nap, so there are fewer attachments associated with sleep. Preserved for morning sucking. The baby is very free with his mother's breasts. Sometimes it happens that he comes up to suck just for fun. For example, like this: he comes up, climbs on his knees, looks into his mother’s face, smiles, starts to swarm in his shirt, gets breasts, smiles at his breasts, sucks for 30 seconds and leaves.

As for the number of feedings per day when feeding a child on demand, their number is almost never less than 12. A newborn has 12 or more attachments, mostly they are all associated with dreams. And a child, say 1.5-2 years old, can also have about 12 attachments, only 3-4 are associated with sleep, and the rest are short-term attachments for various reasons. I suggest to all mothers reading this text - do not count the application, do not notice their duration. Breastfeed your baby as often as he asks, when you feel the need to.

Moms who don't think about breastfeeding without looking at the clock may get the impression that when breastfeeding on demand, the mother can do nothing but feed the baby. This is wrong. After the birth of a baby, a mother begins another life, she is called life with a baby. That's all. The child is with the mother, not the mother with the child! Feel the difference! You need to be able to organize your life in a different way, in the first months, of course, the help of loved ones is very necessary. In the tradition of many peoples, it was customary for the first 40 days after childbirth to remove a woman from any housework and household chores, she was engaged only in a child. In some nations, objects that the mother of a newborn touched were considered “unclean”, therefore, they preferred to protect the mother from the rest of the household, allocating her a separate “corner” of the house, where no one bothered her and she did not interfere with anyone. Among the Slavs, such a restrictive custom was called a six-week. By 1.5-2 months, the rhythm of daytime dreams begins to form, and the baby has a kind of “regime”, the mother becomes more free.

For a mother who can't imagine breastfeeding without looking back at the clock, and who is sure that the “right” baby is the baby lying quietly in her crib all the time, feeding on demand will be a complete hassle. It will be much easier for such a mother if she stops looking at the clock and ties the baby to herself with a large scarf or uses a patchwork holder (sling). It will become easier for her if she stops running between the nursery and the kitchen, but takes the baby with her to the kitchen and carries him around the house with her, doing chores, in a box, a cradle, a special chair, if she tries not to put him off more often, and pick up as soon as possible, postponing the baby only in case of emergency and not for long.

Breastfeeding is not the same as house arrest. In the conditions of modern society, it is possible to organize the exit of a nursing mother to work from about 6 months of age of the baby. If necessary, you can start working from the age of 4 months, but, of course, it is better not every day of the week and not full time. It is the responsibility of a breastfeeding consultant to help a mother organize her return to work.

Sometimes, when I advise mothers on breastfeeding, I suggest that they forget for a second that they are already living in the 21st century. I propose to return, for example, to the cave and ask what they will do if the child woke up at night, how to calm him down? If you are walking through the forest and trying not to attract the attention of predators, how to make the baby silent? If the child is thirsty, what will you give him? What is the baby used to, for thousands of years of its existence? To the fact that he sleeps on his mother while she wanders through the forest with a digging stick in search of roots, and wakes up when mother stops. Since mom stopped, then there is time to wake up and suck. Therefore, even now the child sleeps well, tied to the mother with a patchwork holder, wakes up when the mother, having done a few household chores, sits in a chair to take care of the baby.

Some mother, reading about the cave, will be offended, saying that she is a civilized creature. But please think. Man, mother's breast and mother's milk have been created by evolution over millions of years. They are made for each other. Baby food has created progress and more recently. The skills of motherhood and breastfeeding have also been lost by our society quite recently. A person is not physiologically adapted to artificial feeding and a pacifier. The mother's breast will not produce enough milk at 6-7 feedings per day. Nature did not know, when creating man as a mammal, that the time would come when the need for breastfeeding would be satisfied by some kind of pacifiers and nipples.

Changes that occur during the formation of the personality of a child who did not have full contact with the mother during prolonged breastfeeding are noted by modern research by psychologists and sociologists. These are changes with a minus sign. It would be better if they were not, these changes.

Breastfeeding is important not only for the baby, it is also important for the mother. During on-demand feeding, the woman's feelings change, a stronger attachment to the baby is formed, the woman becomes more sensitive to the needs of the baby. Deeper affection and understanding are not only preserved in infancy. They persist for life. For clarity, imagine what happens to a woman’s feelings if she tries to “withstand” a child, endures his crying, anxiety. What happens to a woman if she uses the recommendation from one very popular parenting book: "Go to the child if he cries for more than 15 minutes"? Speaking in abstract terms, humanity is interested in reviving the practice of breastfeeding. The revival of this practice is impossible without mothers realizing the true reasons for the child's need for attachment to the breast.

Lilia Kazakova, pediatrician,
leader of lactation and childcare counselors

Long-term breastfeeding: implications for the mental development of the child

There are many different advices on forums and websites for moms when to stop breastfeeding. Someone advises to do it as early as possible, someone vice versa. Our blogger, child psychologist Olga Kondrashova, explains why breastfeeding should not be delayed.

The human brain, unlike the animal brain, develops based on lifetime experience. There are pre-prepared biological schemes, but they can only develop in the presence of external stimuli from the real world. This is the reason why we are so qualitatively and many times superior to the instinctive behavior of animals. It is due to this that we have the consciousness of our own "I", free will and a variety of life strategies-scenarios. Moreover, a child can develop and turn into a person only in the environment of his own kind, that is, in communication with other people.

What do we mean by communication?

Representatives of the animal world can brilliantly feed and hygienically “work out” a child. But what is human communication? A study by psychologists from Yale University has shown that even six-month-old babies endow relationships with purely human meaning (Social Assessment of Pre-Speech Infants, Karen Wynn, Paul Bloom, Kaylee Hamlin, 2007). If in the scene played out in front of the child, the circle tries to climb a small hill, and the triangle at the slope of the hill, pushing, helps the circle, and, in turn, the square on the top prevents the circle from climbing the hill, then after the end of the scene, the child unambiguously chooses (holds out his hand) to a positive hero, that is, to a good and kind triangle. In baby houses, very tiny babies fell into depression and refused to eat if the women caring for them carried out only mechanical actions for care and feeding, not giving the children warmth, attention, some kind of personal human relationship, loving contact.

However, only in humans do attachment relationships intersect with the sphere of cognition, mastering the principles and patterns of the surrounding world, including also the psyche of another as part of this world around. The child uses the idea of the existence of another person's psyche in order to cognize the world, and not vice versa! It is very important! The human being-baby is born already prepared for interaction in the social environment, among people. During the first three months, there is a development and mastering of a social smile, the ability to distinguish and imitate facial expressions of an adult, to focus on it as an indicator of how to respond to something unfamiliar in the environment. For example, in one of J. Sours' experiments, one-year-old children were placed in the path of their movement with a visual abyss, and when the mother showed a frightened expression, none of the children crossed the visual abyss. A study of infant face perception shows that newborns prefer to look at a schematic representation of a human face, rather than at its individual details, circles, dashes (Friedman, 1974). By the age of two months, children are able to remember and distinguish the faces of strangers (Blass and Camp, 2004). As children develop, they begin to distinguish between expressions of different emotions. Already in 4-6-month-old children, there is a different reaction to a happy and surprised face, and a completely different one - to a sad and frightened one (Mayer, 1981, Nelson, 1087). In addition, babies look longer at happy facial expressions (Izard, 1999).

The experiments of Michael Tomasselo clearly show that by the age of one, a child already requires communication, cooperation of a purely human quality (M. Tomasello, M. Carpenter, J. Call. Understanding and sharing intentions: sources of cultural knowledge, 2005). So, after the child received a toy that was previously used for the experiment, as a prize in the game with an adult, one-year-old children often returned the toy to the experimental apparatus and demanded that the adult continue joint actions, joint play. That is, one's own egoistic desire - to own a toy - faded into the background, and the value of joint activity with an adult prevailed.

For a child of about a year old, it is no longer enough to simply satisfy his vital needs - to eat, to be dry, to be safe

He already wants other people to share his intentions, to perceive the situation the same way as he does, to be at one with him. Remember how a one-year-old child pulls you to show something or calls you somewhere where he has something interesting, and how his eyes shine when you respond and begin to interact with him! All this speaks of the extraordinary and integral role of social contact in the development of the psyche and, accordingly, the intellect of the child.

Moreover, as the child grows up and masters reality (at first the hands began to work, then the legs turned on, then speech) contact with an adult becomes more complicated, the situational repertoire is replenished, the content of the contact is enriched with various types of activities. To which, of course, the emotional coloring of the contact is attached. For a child, a vital thing is an orientation towards approval and acceptance from others. Otherwise, do not survive! “I must be liked” is the psychic slogan of an infant literally nurtured by evolution.

Man is extremely vulnerable compared to animals: there is no wool to escape the cold, no horns, claws, fangs to get meat, you can’t really run on two legs, and climbing trees is also problematic. Nature itself in the course of evolution, due to the fact that human individuals could survive normally only in a flock and only thanks to cooperation and mutual assistance, laid in a person a mechanism for complicating the brain due to the development of precisely those areas that are responsible for social interaction, communication, approval and acceptance from others. sides of their own kind. Thanks to this, in the human brain (partly in the brain of primates) the default system of the brain was formed and reached the highest level of complexity, which is responsible for the human perception of other people, for the representation and richness of social connections, for the variety of scenarios and patterns of relationships between people (Marcus Rachel, 2001 ). The child, as he grows up, fills this relationship matrix with a large number of characters and a repertoire of interaction with them, focusing on the approval / disapproval from others. Otherwise, you will be rejected, which means that there is a risk of not surviving alone - everything is clear, from the point of view of evolution. According to the latest data from psychological research, it is this system - the default system of the brain - that is responsible in a person for his general ability to think, to solve complex intellectual problems of any quality and content. That is, the more complex, branched, richer this system is for a person, the more a child is lucky enough to create us within this system of neural connections, the better and more efficiently his brain will cope with various types of intellectual tasks, ranging from resolving life's difficulties to tasks from the field of mathematical analysis the more successful and efficient such a person will be in life!

What does this have to do with breastfeeding after one and a half to two years?

By the age of one, a child already demands and is set up specifically for communication with an adult. His brain is ready and needs to develop further, effectively unfolding its mental programs laid down by nature to adapt to the environment and the reality surrounding it, both social and objective. Previously, up to a year, his mother’s breast was practically “undivided” for him: “I don’t know where I end, where my mother begins”, a complete symbiosis. His brain was in a similar undifferentiated state at the level of polar stimuli: I feel good/I feel bad. The mother's breast was food, safety and love in one bottle - three in one. After a year, he already has resentment, and fear, and joy, and anger, and surprise, and interest, and curiosity, his mother is already an object of the world for him, a singled out and recognized “other”, that is, a person separate from him. And you give him just a little - just a chest, "on, eat me!". Here, the child was frightened, began to cry, all specialists in long-term breastfeeding insist: “Give the child a breast, and he will calm down!” He will calm down, yes, but did he need breasts, did he want to eat? What was the unsatisfied need behind the crying? Nobody remembers or even thinks about it. The goal is to calm down and remove the problem. Whose? Mother's comfort. For a child, this is not what he needed for development, this is a regression!

What happens if you don't breastfeed your baby? That's right, he will continue to cry, scream, hysteria, you will have to force yourself to look for a way out, how to calm down, how to help, understand the needs of the child, find a way to distract or how to negotiate. It's already more difficult.

It is often completely impossible to wrest from a mother the idea of breastfeeding, which is extremely beneficial for her health and the health of a child (up to four or five years old)

This is understandable. You see what's going on in social networks. Try to hint that it is strange to breastfeed a child up to four or five years old, you will immediately be bombarded with accusations of monstrous inhumanity and selfish attitude towards the child, misunderstanding of the principles and foundations of the child’s health, the mother’s reproductive system, the laying of immunity, ignorance of the psychology of child development!

The brain is wildly lazy, aiming to save energy anytime, anywhere. Finding a solution to a conflict or difficult situation with a baby is a mental activity and a cost for the brain, so it is much more convenient for a mother to comfort herself with the idea of the most powerful effect of breast milk on the health of the child and the magical effect of the feeding situation on strengthening the healthy psyche of the child. All this is true, but it takes place up to a year and a half. As a result, excuse me, laziness and unwillingness of the mother to strain, look for options for a different interaction with the child, corresponding to a different level of development, the idea of prolonged breastfeeding will be fueled and "canonized" passionately, mercilessly and zealously. On the other hand, during feeding, dopamine (the hormone of pleasure) is produced in the mother and child. This is another factor in the reluctance to stop this pleasant process for both - at this particular moment, both feel so good! The question is what will happen to your child later.

Thinking develops, as I wrote at the beginning, when interacting with other people, as well as in the presence of obstacles and conflicts in this interaction. At the moment a child has a problem, you do not help him solve it, but with your own hands hinder the natural development of the child, the growth and complication of his psyche and intellect. Instead of letting the child face discomfort, feel and experience the emotion, help him realize what caused it, what unmet need was behind it, help him find a way to realize it or experience that its satisfaction is currently impossible, and learn to cope with similar discomfort, in order to have such a skill in your behavioral repertoire for the future, to maintain and maintain contact with a close, dear and loving person at a difficult moment, you simply give him a "sedative". Thus, the development and complication of the psyche, its default brain systems are going to hell. In addition, an extremely destructive and undesirable pattern of coping with discomfort is assimilated - to fill your mouth with food and go into bliss. At an older age, alcohol, drugs, endless pastime in computer games, social networks, videos on YouTube can become such a "calming" and means of getting out of difficult situations and jumping out of reality. These remedies do not solve the problem of a person, but only postpone the experience of pain and unpleasant situations, but cannot make them disappear!

I am not at all against breastfeeding specialists. They really help mothers to establish the process of feeding, provide the necessary information, and provide invaluable psychological support. However, as with many things, there is a downside: the longer you feed, the longer you need them - of course, not for free. Consider this.

Adequate cessation of breastfeeding (about one and a half years) has another plus. It is by this age that, due to natural physical development and primary separation from the mother (he can take something, reach something), the child already finally forms the idea of \u200b\u200bmother as a different person.