Early Feeding and Weaning Practices of Indian Children with Early Childhood Caries: A Qualitative Exploration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To describe the early feeding, weaning, and oral hygiene practices of children with early childhood caries (ECC), their parents' knowledge and attitudes regarding infant feeding, and the feeding-related challenges faced by the parents. METHODS: This descriptive qualitative study involved parents of children with ECC who sought dental treatment at an academic dental college in India. Data were collected though focus groups conducted with the 27 parents of children with ECC, using a focus group discussion guide. Data were analyzed using the content analysis method. RESULTS: Community norms, such as learning from the older women in the families or neighborhoods, guided the feeding method, duration of feeding, and weaning. Breastfeeding or bottle-feeding at bedtime beyond 12 mo of age and feeding sugary drinks during weaning were standard practices, despite knowing the risk for dental caries. Parents faced multiple challenges regarding weaning and were unaware of the significance of infant oral hygiene practices. CONCLUSION: In children with ECC, infant feeding practices included prolonged breastfeeding or bottle-feeding beyond the required age, feeding at bedtime, and feeding sugary drinks. Although the parents knew that these feeding habits could increase the risk for caries, they lacked the self-efficacy to translate their knowledge into action during weaning. Also, they lacked awareness regarding infant oral hygiene practices. KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER STATEMENT: The study provides information on the feeding habits of infants that can increase the risk for caries, the challenges faced by the parents of these children in altering these risky habits, and their lack of knowledge on infant oral hygiene practices. Policy/decision makers can advocate for pediatricians and pediatric dentists to incorporate anticipatory guidance or motivational interviewing techniques to tailor the preventive program for ECC for Indian children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".