“Help! My Child Eats Badly”: children's eating behavior analysis

Abstract

Children’s eating behavior has been the focus of scientific concern and the estab- lishment of new public policies. Although child behavioral analytical therapy is useful in the production of literature, publications involving interventional strategies for infant feeding behavior are scarce. The present article aims to operationalize what the nutritional and medi- cal literature has called adequate and inappropriate eating behaviors, listing their most typical antecedent and consequent contexts, as well as raising hypotheses about possible therapeutic strategies. To this end, the authors used a national television program that proposes to treat infantile feeding difficulties as material for analysis, interpretation and exemplification of how the robust conceptual analytical-behavioral body can serve as a basis for future interventions in different areas of health. as psychology, nutrition, endocrinology and pediatrics. Program clippings were listed and discussed, from which intervention strategies based on basic behav- ioral principles were discussed. It is suggested that future studies focus on the operational- ization of the therapist’s repertoire in charge of implementing the intervention strategies for childhood eating behavior.