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Parents' Issues
Mini-Articles
So, Who Actually IS to Blame?
Men should watch what they say to their daughters
Is your Teenage Daughter Spinning Out of Control?
Taking a Detour from Autonomy's Linear Path: Using the Parent/Child Connection to Accommodate Entanglements with Eating Issues
Laissez Faire Mores may Lead to Body Image Havoc
Parents' Issues
So, Who Actually IS to Blame?
So many parents feel guilty for causing their child’s eating disorder by either being too controlling or too laissez-faire, too involved or too detached. They blame themselves for not having discovered their child’s eating disorder sooner, before it took its toll physically and emotionally on a child’s life. What is even more confusing is that many health professionals are equally misguided on these counts, assuming that parents are in fact to blame, and that parents’ continuing involvement with the child around these affairs could only make matters worse.
In fact, parents are NOT to blame for their child’s eating disorder; the roots of these problems lie in heredity. What parents can do however, even when a child may be naturally susceptible through genetics or temperament or personality structure to developing an eating disorder, is to protect the child against these diseases through what they say and what they do. Enlightened and empowered parents are largely responsible and highly influential in shaping a child’s positive attitudes, beliefs and behaviors around food and eating.
Men should watch what they say to their daughters
Men, particularly fathers of daughters, typically do not realize the power of their own words, and of their messages communicated to their children. The father who casually criticizes the appearance of an actress accepting an Academy Award, the father who, with tongue only slightly in cheek, suggests to his five year old daughter that if she continues to put butter on her bread she'll grow up to have a "Buddha belly," or the father who is preoccupied about his own weight if not continually working out or restricting food can have a lasting and harmful effect on his child's eating lifestyle and physical health.
Kids learn from what they see and hear. Parents are potent teachers to their children, whether they choose to be or not. When kids mimic their most powerful role models and go on diets, they damage their metabolisms and are at greater risk for eating disorders and obesity in their adult years.
Is Your Teenage Daughter Spinning Out of Control?
Perhaps the most common aspect of adolescent lack of control is food abuse. 5% of adolescents have clinical eating disorders, 40-50% of them are at risk to develop eating disorders through dieting, restrictive and quirky eating patterns.
The notion that parental laissez -faire is the best way to create an independent child is a widespread and defeating myth. From my professional and personal vantage point, I have seen that:
- When parents remain emotionally connected with their teenage girls, their kids become more capable of self-control and responsible self-care and decision-making. The nature of emotional connection can and must change through the child-rearing years to accommodate the growing child's increasing capacity and need for autonomy...but a quality connection of some sort must remain a constant. When a child has lost control, it is for the parent to step in and reestablish a sense of being "in charge," if only until such time as the child is able to resume a degree of self-control.
- A quality connection is nurtured and maintained through active listening, a skill that allows the parent to better know the child and the child to better know herself. Nature abhors a vacuum; when parents remain uninvolved and remote, kids will turn to each other or to sometimes pernicious forces on the internet to learn how to conduct oneself.
Taking a Detour from Autonomy's Linear Path: Using the Parent-Child Connection to Accommodate Entanglements with Eating Issues
Smart parents accommodate their child's ever-growing need for autonomy through changes in the nature and quality of the parent/child connection. When kids are ready to conduct themselves in responsible ways, responsibilities must be offered to them commensurately. This essential parent/child connection must at times diverge from its linear course to accommodate the child's entanglement with eating and weight related issues.
Kids needs parental input and guidance into their teen and young adult years in order to sustain good values in the face of adverse societal pressure. If a child were to become ill with cancer or diabetes, parents would have no question but to intervene to promote the best care and treatment for the child. In cases of disordered eating and eating disorders, parents mistakenly believe that they have no choice but to back off for fear of "butting in" where they do not belong, making matters worse through intrusions that could interfere with the need for independence.
Children with malnourished brains lose the capacity to make rational and intelligent care-taking choices about themselves. Their perceptions are off, their judgment questionable, their capacity to learn, to enjoy friendships and life are all compromised. Nature abhors a vacuum. Where there is a void, menacing outside influences of peers or the media will take on a greater significance in the child's life.
Laissez Faire Mores May Lead to Body Image Havoc
Eating disorders and body image preoccupations have become a most prevalent and pernicious force in the lives of so many of these young people today, taking lives and compromising life quality. The media takes the rap for a lot of this. My sense is, however, that it is events such as co-ed sleep-overs, the mores that support them, and most important, laissez-faire parental attitudes and messages that promote distorted value systems and pathology, both emotional and nutritional that are to blame.
Young girls who sleep side by side with young males make it their priority to be lovely to look at, as well as delightful to hold. Their bodies become a commodity, community property, leading to popularity and acceptance. Young women seek transformational life experiences and meaning for their existence. Without the guidance of parents, self-centered titillation and superficial values focusing on thinness and external appearance will invariably fill this gaping vacuum.
About Abigail H. Natenshon
Abigail H. Natenshon, MA LCSW has been a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in the treatment of eating disordered individuals and their families for the past 28 years. She is co-founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois; A Clinic without Walls, and the author of When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers (Jossey Bass, San Francisco, October, 1999). Visit her web sites at www.empoweredparents.com and www.empoweredkidZ.com
CONTACT:
Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW
Telephone 847-432-1795
Fax: 847-266-9233
Highland Park, Illinois 60035
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