Emotionally Healthy Parents
Raise Healthy Eaters
By Abigail Natenshon

Is Your Child at Risk to Develop an Eating Disorder?
When food is used to resolve emotional problems, the behaviors may be considered “red flags”.
Consider some of these possible early signs. Does any combination of these signs describe your child?

• Does your child have a poor self-image?
  
• Does she feel fat? Is she ashamed of her size or shape?
  
• Does he or she diet, or in any way restrict food?
  Does your child skip meals?
  
• Is he or she reluctant to eat together with the family or embarrassed to eat in front of others?
  
• Has your child lost or gained a significant amount of weight lately?
  
• Does he or she spend a lot of time in the bathroom during or after meals?
  
• Has your child become moody and irritable of late? More socially isolated?
  
• Has your daughter lost her menstrual period?
  
• Is your child consistently unaware or unable to express his or her true feelings?
  
• Is she reluctant to face problems directly, to seek effective solutions courageously and proactively?

If a number of your answers were “yes,” there is a great deal you can do to avert troubling attitudes and/or behaviors before they become intractable habits that could lead to eating disorders or disordered eating.


What Parents Can Do
Parents need to spend quality time with their child. By spending quality time with their child, by promoting positive assets in their child, and by modeling a healthy eating lifestyle, parents can promote and enhance their child’s healthy body image.

A parent writes, “It disturbs me that I find myself being so consistently critical of my 9 year old daughter because she wants to wear nail polish, indecent halters tops, high heel shoes and take no lunch to school because “nobody eats lunch.” I wish I could find a less confrontational way to communicate what I feel is important.”

In response, I suggested that she consider replacing verbal prohibitions with more positive ways to engage with their child. Time spent together is critical. Lunching and shopping may not be as valuable for the child’s emotional development as field trips together to the planetarium, volunteering on a Saturday morning at a neighborhood nature preserve, distributing meals to the homeless, discussing movies or theater they attend together, or attending religious services together. Such activities offer children a vision of the world around them as being greater then themselves. While connecting with parents, kids engaged in such activities develop a sense of meaning in life, of healthy passions that extend beyond the self. A child’s self-esteem derives less from one’s appearance, and more from a sense of gratification derived from making a contribution, or “giving back” to society. Children need to learn a love for learning and doing, for work, and for making an impact on the lives of others. Body size acceptance has been shown to be not a function of weight or actual body size, but of self-esteem and emotional health.

Parents need to develop positive assets in their child, protective and sustaining qualities that give a child emotional resiliency and the internal resourcefulness she needs to solve problems effectively and to live a productive existence. Positive assets for youth might include communication skills, feelings-awareness, healthy problem-solving, meaningful values, and participation in societal institutions.

Parents need to understand and model a healthy eating lifestyle.
Healthy eating is moderate, balanced and varied eating. It includes all the food groups and takes the form of at least three meals a day. Healthy eating fuels the body, satiates hunger and facilitates sociability and a connectedness with others. Communal eating is part of the matrix of healthful family function. Healthy eating comes of healthy human connectedness; eating disorders represent a disconnection from the self and from others.

To accomplish these ends, parents must mentor their child through talk and action.

1. Parents need to become careful observers of their child’s eating behaviors and attitudes towards food and body. Food preferences or quirky eating are not abnormal and in most instances will not be a cause for concern, unless they take on an element of excessiveness, compulsivity or choiceless rigidity.

2. Parents need to become careful observers of themselves, aware of their own attitudes and behaviors around food, weight and eating.

3. Parents also need to become aware of their own attitudes and behaviors as seen through the eyes of their child.

4. In lieu of trying to effect change in the child, parents might do well to look to making changes within themselves first in their effort to stimulate the child’s changes.

5. “Talk the talk.” Parents need to understand what healthy eating is, to teach it, talk it, and expect their child to embrace it. They need to intervene and actively engage the child in discussions about healthy eating and positive body image when appropriate, to understand that a problem cannot be resolved unless and until it is first defined, and to stay emotionally connected to the child through conversation.

6. “Walk the talk,” modeling healthy eating behaviors, particularly for the young child. Action speaks louder than words; parents need to live their values, making healthy eating a backdrop to a loving family existence. In addition, they need to provide the conditions, the opportunity, and the means for the child to engage in healthy eating habits.

7. Make family dinners. Expect all family members to attend as often as possible. Currently, only 50% of American families eat dinners regularly together.

8. Sit down to meals together with your child. There is no better way to get to know how your child eats, and even more importantly, how your child thinks and feels.


Parents who understand and who live an authentic healthy eating lifestyle themselves can virtually immunize their child against the eventual onset of eating disorders and other food-related dysfunctions.