Fussy Children Should Be Encouraged To Play With Their Food

The NICE guideline aims to improve diagnosis, assessment and monitoring of children with faltering growth and to help GPs and health visitors support parents and carers to develop a management plan together.

Professor Gillian Leng, deputy chief executive and director of health and social care at NICE, said: “Having a child with faltering growth can be distressing for parents and carers. However, simple things such as encouraging relaxed and enjoyable feeding and mealtimes, eating together as a family or even allowing young children to be ‘messy’ with their food can help encourage them to eat.

“This guideline should also help healthcare professionals identify more complex cases of faltering growth for referral to specialist services. This should give all infants and children with faltering growth the best chance of reaching a healthy weight.”