Pica Is Common Behavior in Children with Autism and Other Birth Defects

Have you heard about pica? Unless you are actively dealing with this disorder, then the odds are good that you probably are not familiar with this term. It denotes the excessive compulsion to consume items not intended for ingestion by humans. While this may cause some inward groans – after all, just this morning your toddler tried to eat the dog’s kibbles and later on the dryer lint – the condition is far more pronounced than the occasional handful of dirt of other oddity you manage to snatch away from your child’s hand.

Pica is a common behavior in children with autism and other birth defects that may cause cognitive abnormalities, retardation, and developmental problems, such as a missed or severely delayed milestone. While in some cases the child’s reaching for a non-food item may be the result of an honest mistake, such as mistaking a round pebble for a piece of breakfast cereal or a small bit of chalk for a mini marshmallow, true pica is characterized by the repeated and obvious reaching for clearly non-consumable items like discarded tea bags, wood chips, glue, crayons, twigs and leaves, pet food, paper, and in severe cases also the child’s own feces.

Embarrassed parents may try to laugh off the sometimes startled expression of onlookers by joking that the dead beetle the child just swallowed would add some much needed protein to her or his diet, but in all honesty this habit is dangerous and could be potentially deadly. From a nutritional point of view, your child’s inability to choose proper food items may lead to vitamin deficiencies and the bodily symptoms that go hand in hand with them. Poisoning is a very real possibility, since many non-food items are manufactured with paints, lacquers, and other materials that have adverse effects on the stomach lining and also the kidneys and liver.

Even as pica is a behavior more than it is a symptom of a birth defect, the fact that the two are so closely related make it hard to ascertain where one begins and the other ends. If you are concerned that your child’s eating habits are bordering dangerously close on pica, it is wise to consult your physician for an evaluation. There is medication available that will help you to break your child of the habit while working with her or him to make different food choices.

As part of a medical evaluation, your child’s doctor will most likely want to run a test of the child’s fecal matter to ensure that while engaging in the behavior of pica, she or he did not inadvertently pick of a food borne parasite. Similarly, a blood test will reveal elevated levels of lead or mercury, while an MRI will ensure that your child’s bowels are not obstructed or injured by the ingestion of non-food items. If your child is afflicted with this behavior, it is important to note that you do have the power to stop it, yet only with your doctor’s help, and with a big dose of patience and supervision of the child.