Prevention of eating disorders in children

Children's discomfort today tends to express itself through a distorted use of food and the act of eating or by structuring a real eating disorder; anorexia, bulimia, obesity are on the rise even in childhood!

Why does a child get sick with anorexia or bulimia? Why does he become obese? What is the significance of these diseases in childhood?

To respond, Pollicino and Centro Crisi Genitori was born, a non-profit association that intends to offer listening and support to families and proposes to public and private institutions projects of awareness-raising and prevention interventions aimed at parents, teachers, educators and childcare workers in general. .

Anorexia, bulimia, obesity during childhood are a message sent to parents; they are a protest against an impossibility to say and be heard and recognized as people, subjects. They are a defense against the doubt of not being desired and respected for being different people. But anorexia, bulimia and obesity are also a staging of a refusal: a way of saying no. I am a cry that says “Look at me! I'm here and I'm suffering!"

It's thinking you can fill the emptiness of your heart by filling your stomach with food or by starving yourself.
They are a dangerous thought that says: "I don't ask for anything anymore, I give up, I do it alone: I eat everything or I don't eat anything".

Prevention is better than cure and in childhood it is possible! For the Association, prevention means "adding first.." that is, knowing, knowing in order to take precautions.

Prevention means helping parents and childcare workers who have concerns about children's eating behavior to recognize the signs of distress and to grasp the hidden message that children's eating behavior conveys.

The Pollicino Association and Parent Crisis Center Onlus offers a service Green number:
800 644.622, attentive listening and specific acceptance of the concerns of parents and other childhood reference figures regarding childhood eating disorders, promoting a possible understanding of children's signs of distress.