Elsevier

Appetite

Volume 56, Issue 3, June 2011, Pages 689-692
Appetite

Short communication
Relationships between temperament and eating behaviours in young children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2011.02.005Get rights and content

Abstract

This study examined the associations between eating behaviours and temperament in a sample of young children. Mothers (N = 241) of children aged 3–8 years completed measures of their children's eating behaviours and temperament and reported their child's height and weight. Children with more emotional temperaments were reported to display more food avoidant eating behaviours. Shyness, sociability and activity were not related to children's eating behaviours. Higher child BMI was related to more food approach eating behaviours but BMI was unrelated to child temperament. Future research should explore more specifically how emotional temperaments might influence child eating behaviour.

Introduction

Examining the factors that influence children's eating behaviours is an important priority given the prevalence of childhood obesity (e.g., Lobstein, Baur, & Uauy, 2004). One factor which might be associated with young children's eating behaviours is their temperament. Temperament has been defined as “personal characteristics that are biologically based, are evident from birth onwards, are consistent across situations and have some degree of stability” (Schaffer, 2006, p. 70). Differences in individuals’ temperament may determine why some children, but not others, are at risk of overweight or feeding problems, why certain children have better emotional relationships with food than others, and why parents use particular feeding practices with their children.

Previous research has established links between temperament and eating behaviours in infants. For example, difficult infant temperament has been associated with negative mealtimes and food refusal in young children (Farrow & Blissett, 2006), and with the feeding practices that parents employ (e.g., Blissett & Farrow, 2007). In addition, feeding difficulties have been found to be more prevalent in children who are unsociable, difficult or demanding (e.g., Hagekull et al., 1997, Pliner and Loewen, 1997) and parental reports of having a shy, emotional child have been related to children's unwillingness to try new foods (Pliner & Loewen, 1997).

Temperament traits have also been related to obesity and overweight in children and to disordered eating attitudes and behaviours in infants, adolescents and adults. For instance, children's emotional temperament has been implicated in the development of overweight, having been shown to mediate the relationship between child and parent overweight (Agras, Hammer, McNicholas, & Kraemer, 2004). Furthermore, temperamental differences have been identified between toddlers with ‘infantile anorexia’ and a healthy eating control group (Chatoor, Ganiban, Hirsch, Borman-Spurrell, & Mrazek, 2000), with toddlers with infantile anorexia being described by their caregivers as more difficult and more negative. In addition, childhood temperament (specifically higher levels of negative emotionality) has been related to the development of later eating concerns (Martin et al., 2000). Finally, in adults, temperamental traits such as impulsivity have been linked with disordered eating attitudes and behaviours (e.g., Wonderlich, Connolly, & Stice, 2004). Thus, there is evidence to suggest that an individual's temperament may be associated with later eating-related problems.

While some work has examined temperament and eating in infants, or with older adolescent or adult samples, there is a paucity of literature which has examined these associations in school-age children, when children's autonomy over eating becomes more evident. The current study therefore aimed to address this gap in the literature by first examining associations between young children's temperament, as reported by their parents using a well-established measure, and a range of typical eating behaviours, assessed via the Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ; Wardle, Guthrie, Sanderson, & Rapoport, 2001). A second aim was to examine associations between children's BMI with parents’ reports of their children's eating behaviours and temperament. In line with other research that has used the CEBQ (e.g. Webber, Hill, Saxton, Van Jaarsveld, & Wardle, 2009), children's eating behaviours were considered in terms of children's food approach eating behaviours (i.e. those eating behaviours previously found to link to greater food intake and higher weight in children, e.g., enjoyment of food) and food avoidance behaviours (those behaviours that are related to lower food intake and lower weight status, e.g., food fussiness). In relation to the study's first aim, it was hypothesised that children who were reported as having a more difficult temperament (e.g., more emotional, less sociable) would have more food avoidant and less food approach eating behaviours (e.g., higher levels of fussiness, lower levels of enjoyment). For the second aim, it was hypothesised that children with a higher BMI would have higher reported levels of food approach eating behaviours (e.g., more food responsiveness) and also more emotional temperaments.

Section snippets

Participants

Two hundred and eighty-two parents of children aged 3–8 years completed and returned questionnaires. Participants were excluded if information was missing about the age of the child (n = 14) or either parent or child gender (n = 10). Questionnaires completed by a father/male caregiver (n = 17) were also excluded given previous findings that suggest mothers eat more frequently with their children than fathers do (e.g., Haycraft & Blissett, 2008). This left a final sample of 241 mothers. The mean age

Results

Descriptive statistics for the children in this study can be seen in Table 1.

Scores on the CEBQ and EAS for children in this sample are in line with previous studies using these measures in similar samples (e.g., Mathiesen and Tambs, 1999, Wardle et al., 2001).

Associations between children's temperament and eating behaviours, after controlling for child age and gender, can be seen in Table 2.

Shyness, sociability and activity were not significantly related to any eating behaviours. However,

Discussion

This study aimed to examine the associations between temperament and eating behaviours in a sample of pre-school and school-age children. Some support was found for the hypothesis that children with more difficult temperaments would have more food avoidant eating behaviours, with several significant relationships being identified between a more emotional child temperament and food avoidant eating behaviours in this sample. The prediction that children with a higher BMI would have greater

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We thank Laura Williams and Sophie Howes for their assistance with the data collection.

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