Introduction. Historical perspective of failure to thrive. -- Failure to thrive: definition, prevalence, manifestation, and effect. Psychosocial short stature: emotional stunting of growth. Feeding/eating behaviour of children who fail to thrive, and parental feeding styles. Parent-child interaction in failure-to-thrive cases. Child-parent attachment behaviour of children who fail to thrive and parental responsiveness. Fabricated or induced illnesses and failure to thrive -- Section II. The framework of assessment. A framework of assessment of failure to thrive cases: ecological approach -- Section III. Intervention and treatment of failure-to-thrive children and their families. Levels of intervention. Some theoretical approaches to failure-to-thrive intervention. Multidimensional/integrated model of intervention in failure-to-thrive cases. Approaches to failure-to-thrive intervention programmes. Considerations arising from failure-to-thrive intervention research