How Parents Deal with Kids and Food
One of the most common questions I hear from parents is “What can I do to prevent issues with food in my children?”
How do they talk about food or deal with food in their homes so that they do not expose their children to eating disorders?
Over the years approaches have shifted, but I have landed on what I believe to make the most sense and what is most supported by the science of eating disorder development.
Parents need education and support around the concept that the world and our society can often view those in bigger bodies with bias.
However, this bias cannot inform our behavior. Parents must courageously reject the cultural pull to encourage their children to restrict their food intake. It is clear that this goes against what parents believe they should be doing. Parents believe that it is their duty to have their children achieve optimum health.
Part of the vision of health is a body that fits perfectly on the growth chart- the “normal” height and weight percentiles. This growth curve that we watch religiously from the moment our children are born. Yet, this introduction of diet and restriction is far more dangerous than living at the higher end of the percentile range.
Parents must choose instead to honor the hunger their children experience, and allow them to eat with more freedom. Balanced freedom.
A full plate that covers all the food groups - eating dessert after lunch and dinner. We must not emphasize “you have had enough” or stew with silent worry about body size. An adolescent medicine doctor I work with states- the best way to prevent issues with eating is to start eating disorder psychoeducation during Tanner Stage 1; for the layman- this is prior to the onset of puberty- preadolescents.
As we grow, the real physiological issues connected to weight and mortality are far more connected to weight that swings up and down. This swing forces young bodies to re-calibrate over and over, never allowing their physiological system to acclimate to a constant healthy stable weight.
This “swing” which ultimately becomes the diet cycle causes them to physiologically be working in overdrive, constantly adapting to different criteria for survival.
This process of weight cycling slows their metabolism down, because their bodies are trying to act protectively. As animals we cannot understand food restriction as “choice” we view it as scarcity.
As a result, when we CHOOSE to not feed ourselves when we are hungry, our brain believes that the food simply does not exist. This results in a heightened preoccupation with food and we become more and more fixated on finding food and eating as much of it as we possibly can. This happens in adults and children alike.
The concept of food restriction and diet is far more damaging to children than validating the culture of food abundance and learning how to make choices.
As parents we must encourage our children to move. To set their devices aside- take a walk after dinner. Get them on bike rides, explain to them that we must have our bodies be active because that is what they are meant to do.
Food is our fuel for movement. It is the fuel for creativity and activity. Food and meals are a way we gather as a community, and connect with each other. Abundance and Choice not Restriction and Limits. That is the way forward.