Meet tot who ate her bedroom carpet underlay due to rare Pica medical condition

Over the last year Jessica Knight has eaten the sponge underlay beneath her bedroom carpet and foam padding inside an armchair

A four-year-old girl is literally eating her parents out of house and home due to a rare medical condition.

Jessica Knight has been diagnosed with eating disorder Pica, which causes sufferers to develop an appetite for non-food substances.

The youngster started by eating a faux leather child’s chair bought for her when she was two.

She also munched small chips of cement, sand from play areas and the filling of her little sister’s rocking horse.

When worried mum Kelly, 36, tried to stop Jessica the youngster became more secretive about her habit.

Over the last year she has eaten the sponge underlay beneath her bedroom carpet and foam padding inside an armchair.

Mum-of-two Kelly said: “I was really shocked when I realised just how much she was eating. If you lift up the carpet in her room now you can see there is no underlay left.

“We are at our wits’ end. We try to keep her busy so she doesn’t do it but if we try to stop her she will find a way to do it.

“To stop her I would have to remove everything from my house, including all chairs and sofas.

“Doctors always said it wasn’t a problem and it’s taken two years for them to finally listen to me.

“The GP sent Jessica to a paediatrician and we’ve been referred to two others since but she hasn’t had any help.

“We’ve been told they can’t help her until she is six and has reached the appropriate cognitive development.”

People suffering from Pica frequently crave and eat substances with no nutrition, such as dirt, paint, ice, sand, glue and chalk.

Jessica refuses to eat foods with any sauces and Kelly is limited to giving her plain sausages, cheese strings, rice pudding, bread, Weetabix and fish fingers without breadcrumbs.

The youngster gets stomach cramps and constipation from her habit and was once left unable to stand and screaming in pain.

Staff at Jessica’s preschool told her parents she was licking her hands and placing them onto sand so it would stick and she could eat it from her fingers.

Kelly, of March, Cambs., said: “We would rather she ate the carpet because it’s non toxic. If we try and stop her we fear she will eat something worse with chemicals in it.

“Doctors said she likes it because she likes the texture. But it’s always confused me because sponge, stones and sand all have completely different textures.

“If I ask her ‘did you play in the sand pit today?’ when she comes home from preschool she says ‘yes but nobody saw me mummy’.

“She hides cement stones and sand in her pocket and eats it discreetly because she knows it’s not normal.

“She shuts her sister out of their shared bedroom sometimes and we said to her she can’t because it’s both their bedrooms.

“But she replied ‘I don’t want her to copy me because I don’t want her to be poorly.’”