10 Ways to Help Your Child develop a Healthy Relationship with Food and Body
In this culture, unfortunately, many of us eat diets that aren’t very healthy, and we don’t get enough exercise. That’s true for our kids, too. In fact, experts suggest that this is the first generation that’s less healthy than their parents.
Even worse, when you mix our cultural obsession with thinness with emotional immaturity and how disconnected we often are from our own bodies, it’s a perfect storm for eating disorders.
Luckily, parents have a lot more power than they realize to prevent eating disorders, but our intervention works best when it starts early. Intervening in adolescence, when kids need to assert their right to control their own bodies, is more complicated and less effective.
What can you do to prevent your child from developing an eating disorder? Help your child develop a healthy body, a healthy emotional life, a healthy attitude toward food and exercise, AND a healthy body image.
Consider your attitude toward your own body.
most of us have been influenced by our culture’s obsession with thin, and we judge ourselves harshly. So when we see our child starting to put on weight, all our self-judgment kicks in, and we project it onto our child, worrying that she’ll have a life-long struggle with her weight. Unfortunately, our kids pick up on our fear, and they assume something’s wrong with them. So use this as an opportunity to develop a healthier relationship with your own body, so you don’t perpetuate that feeling of shame and “not good enough” onto another generation.
Educate your child about how the media presents thinness as equated with everything positive and perpetuates unrealistic images.
Point out that all the models on the magazine covers have been air-brushed; they simply aren’t real. Terrific videos to show your daughter — and son! — are the Dove Evolution of Beauty Video (an ordinary young woman air-brushed into a billboard model) and Diet.com’s The PhotoShop Effect (showing how pervasive photoshop is, and how it has created an unrealistic standard of beauty against which we all judge ourselves.) Discuss the fact that people with bodies that meet cultural standards of desirability are not any happier.
Commit yourself to model good eating and exercise habits, with flexibilty not obsession
Whatever you do, your child will do. If you enjoy being outside and moving your body, your child will want to join you. If you drink soda, they’ll drink soda. If you snack on that ever-present bowl of carrots, so will they.
Don’t talk about dieting.
In fact, don’t diet, just eat healthfully, and make exercise an automatic part of life for everyone in the family. Research shows that dieting doesn’t work; it creates feelings of deprivation and longing that cause binge eating. And it changes body chemistry so that not only do dieters almost always regain the weight, but losing it the next time is even harder. Only long-term healthy eating and exercising helps people lose weight and keep it off.
Want to teach your child self-control? Start with the idea of listening to your body: “Are you hungry for more?” When your child wants sweets, instead of just saying no, which can build up feelings of deprivation, assure your child that sweets will be available another time: “The bakery is always here…we go there for special occasions, not every day.” Research shows this reduces longings and binges.
Learn the latest in nutrition.
The risk of gaining excess weight is rising, accompanied by similar rises in incidence of eating disorders. Culprits include our sedentary lifestyle, high stress levels, large food portions, and our evolutionary propensity to eat (and store) extra food to protect us from starvation.
But nutritionists increasingly suspect that processed foods are the biggest contributor to our weight issues. Consumption of saturated fat has actually decreased during this period of extreme weight gain (and low fat diet trend), while consumption of processed foods, rich in transfats and sugar, has increased dramatically. They can cause cravings and inflammation which can affect our metabolism. But you know what can affect cravings and metabolism as well, stress. So strictly banning processed food and sugar at the expense of the child emotional and social wellbeing, might not help either.
Don’t make your child self-conscious by commenting on it if you notice that he or she is getting heavier.
First, be aware that kids fill out before they shoot up (prepuberty tummy in girls is just NORMAL). Second, consider whether your child is actually living a BALANCED lifestyle. Does she get enough time running around outside in fresh air? Is he eating a balanced diet? If you decide some changes would be desirable, don’t single out your child. Instead, ratchet up the physical activity level and healthy eating for the whole family. Changing food and activity habits is challenging for anyone, and to expect a child to give up treats that others in the house are eating is simply unreasonable.
Teach kids that treats can be a small part of their meals
Experts say that deprivation often leads to binging, which leads to guilt and a whole cycle of disordered behavior around food. So instead of forbidding treats, teach your child that they can enjoy some treats in moderation (home made cakes and cookies for example) and some other treats (including processed food) in special occasions.
Never comment on other people’s bodies.
If you’re always saying how thin someone looks, or how fat, your child learns that body shape is what’s important, and they feel like people are always looking at THEIR body.
Reduce Stress and Increase Emotional Intelligence.
Kids who have higher levels of stress hormones in their bodies are less healthy physically, including the tendency to put on more weight. Kids who have a hard time expressing emotions in words are more likely to eat to soothe upsets, and also are more vulnerable to eating disorders. So consider if there are ways to decrease the stress level in your child’s life, and support your child to develop more emotional intelligence.
Accept your child exactly as she is.
Every child needs to be loved unconditionally. Never, in any way, communicate to your child that you think they would be prettier, more acceptable, or more lovable if they had a different body shape. Instead, clearly communicate that what matters is who we are inside and the choices we make about how we show up in the world.
