eating is common in early childhood. Estimates of picky eating vary widely, but it is highest (14%–50%) in preschool children and tends to decline with time (C. M. Taylor, Wernimont, Northstone, & Emmett, 2015). Parents of picky eaters report that their children consume a limited variety of foods, require foods to be prepared in specific ways, express strong likes and dislikes, and throw tantrums over feeding. Children who are picky eaters are likely to consume fewer calories, fruits and vegetables, and vitamins and minerals than other children. This behavior often raises parental concerns about nutrition (Berger, Hohman, Marini, Savage, & Birch, 2016). Pediatricians tend to view picky eating as a passing phase, often to the frustration of parents.
The overall incidence of picky eating declines with time, but for some children, it is chronic, lasting for several years. Persistent picky eating poses risks for poor growth (C. M. Taylor et al., 2015). One longitudinal study of Dutch children assessed at 1.5, 3, and 6 years of age suggested that persistent picky eating was associated with symptoms common to developmental problems such as attention-deficit disorder, autism, and oppositional defiant disorder at age 7 (Cardona Cano et al., 2016). Another study found that sensory sensitivity predicted picky eating at age 4 and at age 6 (Steinsbekk, Bonneville-Roussy, Fildes, Llewellyn, & Wichstrøm, 2017). Children who are more sensitive to touch in general are also more sensitive to the tactile sensation of food in their mouths, whether the food is crispy or slimy, thick or with bits, for example (Nederkoorn, Jansen, & Havermans, 2015). They then reject foods of a particular texture. Likewise, children with a difficult temperament at 1.5 years of age are more likely to be picky eaters 2 years later (Hafstad, Abebe, Torgersen, & von Soest, 2013).
Persistent picky eating illustrates the dynamic interaction of developmental domains. Physical and emotional factors, such as sensory sensitivity and temperament, can place children at risk for picky eating, which in turn influences physical development. Moreover, picky eating tends to elicit parental pressure to eat, which is associated with continued pickiness, suggesting that picky eating is sustained through bidirectional parent–child interactions (Jansen et al., 2017). Interventions for picky eating can help children learn to tolerate tactile sensations and help parents to understand that parental responses to pickiness can influence children’s behavior and sustain picky eating (K. Walton, Kuczynski, Haycraft, Breen, & Haines, 2017).
In most cases, picky eating is a normative phase in preschool, with no significant effect on growth (Jansen et al., 2017). Regardless, picky eating is an important concern for parents and may remain so through much of childhood.
What Do You Think?
1 Were you a picky eater? Do you know a child with picky eating habits? What factors do you think influence picky eating, in general?
2 What would you tell a parent of a preschooler with picky eating habits?
Young children require a healthy diet, which can be accompanied by an occasional junk food splurge.
Israel images / Alamy Stock Photo
Young children require a healthy diet, with the same foods that adults need. Most children in developed nations eat enough, and often excessive, calories, but their diets are often insufficient in vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamin D, calcium, and potassium (Hess & Slavin, 2014). In one study of 96 child care centers, 90% served high-sugar or high-salt food or did not serve whole grains in a day’s meals (Benjamin Neelon, Vaughn, Ball, McWilliams, & Ward, 2012). Replacement of current snack choices with nutrient-dense foods could lower the risk of nutrient deficiencies and help lower excess nutrient consumption. Increased consumption of low-sugar dairy foods, such as yogurt, could increase intake of important micronutrients without contributing to dietary excesses.
Brain Development
Early childhood is a period of rapid brain growth. The increase in synapses and connections among brain regions helps the brain to reach 90% of its adult weight by age 5 (Dubois et al., 2013). In early childhood, the greatest increases in cortical surface area are in the frontal and temporal cortex, which play a role in thinking, memory, language, and planning (Gilmore, Knickmeyer, & Gao, 2018). Children’s brains tend to grow in spurts, with very rapid periods of growth followed by little growth or even reductions in volume with synaptic pruning (see Chapter 4) (Jernigan & Stiles, 2017). Little-used synapses are pruned in response to experience, an important part of neurological development that leads to more efficient thought.
The natural forming and pruning of synapses enables the human brain to demonstrate plasticity, the ability of the brain to change its organization and function in response to experience (Stiles, 2017). Young children who were given training in music demonstrated structural brain changes over a period of 15 months that correspond with increases in music and auditory skills (Hyde et al., 2009). Plasticity enables the young child’s brain to reorganize itself in response to injury in ways that the adult’s brain cannot. Adults who suffered brain injuries during infancy or early childhood often have fewer cognitive difficulties than do adults who were injured later in life.
Yet the immature young brain, while offering opportunities for plasticity, is also uniquely sensitive to injury. If a part of the brain is damaged at a critical point in development, functions linked to that region will be irreversibly impaired. Generally speaking, plasticity is greatest when neurons are forming many synapses, and it declines with pruning (Stiles, 2017). However, brain injuries sustained before age 2 and, in some cases, 3 can result in more global, severe, and long-lasting deficits than do those sustained later in childhood (V. A. Anderson et al., 2014), suggesting that a reserve of neurons is needed for the brain to show plasticity. Overall, the degree to which individuals recover from an injury depends on the injury, its nature and severity, age, experiences after the injury, and contextual factors supporting recovery, such as interventions (Bryck & Fisher, 2012).
Lateralization, the process of the hemispheres becoming specialized to carry out different functions, continues through early childhood and is associated with children’s development (Duboc, Dufourcq, Blader, & Roussigné, 2015). For example, language tends to be lateralized to the left hemisphere in adults, and lateralization predicts children’s language skills. Young children who show better performance on language tasks use more pathways in the left hemisphere and fewer in the right than those who are less skilled in language tasks (M. Walton, Dewey, & Lebel, 2018).
Myelination contributes to many of the changes that we see in children’s capacities. As the neuron’s axons become coated with fatty myelin, children’s thinking becomes faster, more coordinated, and complex. Myelination aids quick, complex communication between neurons and makes coordinated behaviors possible (Chevalier et al., 2015). Patterns of myelination correspond with the onset and refinement of cognitive functions and behaviors (Dean et al., 2014). Myelination proceeds most rapidly from birth to age 4, first in the sensory and motor cortex, and then spreads to other cortical areas through childhood into adolescence and early adulthood (Qiu, Mori, & Miller, 2015).
Motor Development
The refinement of motor skills that use the large muscles of the body—as well as those that require hand–eye coordination and precise hand movements—is an important developmental task of early childhood. In this section, we describe the typical sequence of development of gross and fine motor skills.
Gross Motor Skills
Between the ages of 3 and 6, children
