Adoption Nutrition

Nutrition and Adoption

Adopted children – especially those adopted outside the United States – often do not receive enough food or proper nutrition during their time spent in an orphanage or foster care placement.  Food in many overseas orphanages is bland and mushy and the menu can be repetitive.  Sometimes, institutionalized children will not be exposed to fresh fruits and vegetables at all.  Also, institutions frequently take shortcuts in order to ensure all the children get fed.  For example, caretakers frequently enlarge the holes in bottle nipples so the children can eat more quickly.  Caretakers have also been known to keep children on a bottle well after the age of one because it is easier to ensure the children get fed.

These and many other features of institutionalized living can create growth, feeding, and behavioral issues in adopted children.  For example, an adopted child may hoard food and gorge on food at meal times.  An adopted child may also refuse to eat anything but formula from a bottle, may choke easily, may not know how to chew, and may not even be able to swallow anything other than liquids.  Because of their living situations prior to adoption, some children may even be malnourished.

It is common for adoptive parents to want to compensate for their child’s potentially poor nutritional start in life by immediately feeding them a varied diet of healthy foods.  This, however, can be very difficult for an adopted child to handle – especially if they are suffering from under-developed facial muscles that can make chewing and swallowing difficult if not impossible.  Even if a child can chew and swallow properly, texture and taste issues or an unfamiliar method of feeding can cause lots of stress at meal time. 

If you are facing any nutrition or feeding issues or if you are in the process of completing an intercountry adoption and you want to learn more about the issues you and your child may be facing, please consider visiting two websites dedicated to helping families learn about and work through these types of issues:

-         Adoption Nutrition (http://adoptionnutrition.org/)

-         Spoon Foundation (http://spoonfoundation.org/)