(PS6-C62) A Helping of Maladaptive Eating: Parental Sensitivity to Child Anxiety and Anxiety Sensitivity as Predictors of Child Feeding Concerns and Control

Numerous studies have documented the role parents play in children’s eating behaviors (Rodgers & Chabrol, 2009; Spiel et al., 2016).  Factors found to impact this influence include parents’ knowledge for body image and eating patterns in children as well as parents’ body image attitudes (Damiano et al., 2015; Hart et al., 2016). However, there remains a need to better understand what shapes parents’ feeding practices and concerns related to their young children as this developmental stage is crucial for imparting healthy body image and eating patterns (Golan et al., 2004; Rogers et al., 2009). Anxiety sensitivity (AS), a marker of distress intolerance and phobic response to the symptoms of anxiety, has been associated with maladaptive eating behavior in adults (Hearon et al., 2014; Otto et al., 2016), yet no studies have examined the influence of parent AS on child feeding concerns and practices. Additionally, as Wissemann and colleagues (2018) point out, adults who catastrophize their own experience of anxiety may respond similarly to signs of anxiety in their child. Thus, parental AS and parent sensitivity to child anxiety may serve as novel predictors of maladaptive child feeding practices beyond the variance explained by parent knowledge for body image and eating patterns and parent body image attitudes. A total of 70 parents with children aged 3-5 years completed a battery of questionnaires through Prolific data collection systems. This battery included demographic information, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3 (ASI-3; Taylor et al., 2007), the Parent Sensitivity to Child Anxiety Index (PSCAI; Wissemann et al., 2018), Knowledge for Body Image and Eating Patterns in Children (KBIEP; Damiano et al., 2015), Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire – 4 (SATAQ-4; Schaefer et al., 2017), and the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ; Birch et al., 2001). Parents with more than one child in the 3-5 age range were asked to report on their oldest child within the range. The parental concern and parental control subscales of the CFQ were used as dependent variables, and no variance inflation factors exceeded 2.0. A stepwise linear regression with parent and child gender and parent age entered on the first step and our predictors of interest on the second step (ASI-3, PSCAI, KBIEP, SATAQ-4) predicting parental concern about child eating behaviors revealed that ASI-3 scores were the only significant variable in the model (b = .09, t = 3.16, p < .01). In an identical model predicting parental control of child eating behaviors, parent gender (b = 2.77, t = 2.81, p < .01), parent appearance attitudes (b = .21, t = 2.11, p = .04), and PSCAI (b = .30, t = 4.35, p< .01) were significant such that male parents, greater focus on physical appearance, and greater sensitivity to their child’s anxiety predicted exertion of more control over child eating. Taken together, these findings suggest that parent AS and parent sensitivity to child anxiety may serve as novel treatment targets for impacting child feeding concerns and practices in early childhood, prior to the development of body dissatisfaction and other disordered eating risk factors.