The Skinny on Raising Daughters to Become Healthy Eaters

                                      By Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP

As summer draws to a close, children returning to school find school play grounds, passing corridors, and lunch rooms to be breeding grounds for their obsessions and disturbed attitudes about food and eating, thinness, and body image, catapulting them into dieting behaviors, disordered eating, and for some, the onset of clinical eating disorders.  In a recent survey, young girls claimed that they would rather have cancer, see their parents divorce, or live through a nuclear holocaust than to be fat.  A great many young girls today believe that if they are not stick-thin they will not be accepted by peers, but instead rejected, unloved, and lonely. Others believe that eating could lead to a loss of self-control not only in the face of food, but in other life spheres as well.  These children have become victims…of misunderstanding and of themselves, of societal myths and pressures and of radical fear.  They have lost trust in themselves, having become doubtful about their own capacity to self-regulate, solve problems, and survive in the world.  

Parents need to become empowered

No one is more influential in determining the quality of their child’s relationship with food, eating and bodily self than parents. Even the most pernicious influence of peers and the media in a weight obsessed society is moderated or cancelled out in the face of positive parent- and family-based influences. What does it say about how we are raising our children that half of all first graders are on diets and that by the time girls get to the eight grade, 80 percent of them have attempted to lose weight by restricting food?  Unfortunately, parents, like their children, have lost track of what healthy eating is and what a healthy body is supposed to look like.  Parents need to fully comprehend these notions in order to teach them to their children; to live them so as to role model them; to talk them as well as walk them, to speak them as well as tweak them, so their kids can learn to do the same for themselves.  Parents who are not afraid to parent their child proactively have it in their power to virtually immunize their child against eating, attitudes and body image disturbances, even where there may be genetic susceptibilities.

Understanding healthy eating

Healthy eating is the ability to eat anything, at anytime...as long as it is with moderation. Healthy eating consists of three nutritionally dense meals a day, including foods that are varied and that represent all the food groups.  Healthy eating is pleasurable eating; it is eating without fear or a connection to one’s emotional well-being. Healthy eating is diversified, balanced eating, that takes the form of at least three meals a day, each containing all of the food groups. There are no bad foods; what is bad is extreme, and immoderate eating, and/or inflexible attitudes towards food and weight management. Food is not fattening, nor is it the “enemy.”

 Challenges for parents

• Many parents assume that fat-free eating is healthy eating, that skipping meals is a short-cut to becoming trim. These assumptions are incorrect.
• Parents need to feed their children.  They need to shop, cook, prepare and serve meals.
• Some parents do not realize that eating or exercise regimes that work well for parents, when taken out of the context of age and health requirements, do not necessarily apply to children; in fact they may be harmful. Children need fat in their diets to support a maturing neurological system throughout the childhood, adolescent, and young adult years. A fat free diet for a child can be damaging to his health.
• Parents often believe that by communicating honestly with their children about “uncomfortable” topics such as weight management, food, and eating, they could create more problems than they solve, or even risk losing their child’s love. As a result, they may be inclined to pretend not to notice when their child is struggling with food. A problem cannot be resolved unless and until it is identified and confronted.
• Parents who confuse authoritative parenting with authoritarian parenting need to reconsider their role and fulfill their responsibility to their child; children become emotionally resilient and secure through authoritative parenting, where parents assert appropriate external limits for the child until such time as the child is capable of assuming limit-setting and self-controls under his or her own volition.
• Likewise, the child who enjoys too few external controls may feel out of control, overwhelmed, and frightened by her own sense of indiscriminate power; she may ultimately turn to an eating disorder to provide a sense of containment and security.
• By imposing too many limits during the growing up years, authoritarian parents deprive children of the opportunity to learn to regulate themselves. The child who is confined by too many external limits grows up to feel untrustworthy and helpless and may ultimately turn to an eating disorder to establish a sense of power and identity.

Walking the walk

• Parents need to understand that the body is not an object whose size and shape can be fully controlled or predetermined by food consumption.
• Parents need to understand that the body is a wise and reliable machine; through efficient fueling and consistent care, the body can be counted upon to remain healthy and fit, to determine its own healthiest weight through its set point, and to function efficiently and effectively from the inside out. (As an example, a female’s body cannot be healthy unless it is menstruating.)
• Through listening, parents learn to “know” their child; through skillful listening, parents can also help the child come to know herself better.
• Parents must learn to assign significance to every comment a child makes. If the child makes negative comments about her shape or size, parents must not dismiss them, even if they seem irrational; rather, parents should use these comments to enhance their connection with the child. Remember that what a child actually communicates may not be indicative of what he or she intends to communicate. (The parent might consider asking the youngster what she assumes would make her look better, why, and how she envisions trying to accomplish her weight- or food- related goals.)
• Parents need to become acutely aware of their own body image concerns and attitudes that may inadvertently stimulate their child’s fears, distortions and misconceptions. Parents must be careful not to be overly self-critical, complaining about their own weight in front of their child.

Children need guidance. They need reality and truth, structure and limits…for out of these constructs come freedom. Children need exposure to rational decision-making, self-respect and good values. They need to be educated. Children need their parents. If what they need is not forthcoming from that source, they will seek what they require from other influences, such as peers or the media. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Abigail Natenshon, MA LCSW, GCFP is a psychotherapist who has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders with individuals and families for the past 36 years. The author of When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers, Ms. Natenshon is the founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois and a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner; she and uses this hands-on body-centered technique in conjunction with traditional psychotherapy to augment and promote body image awareness, acceptance and healing.

Abbie consults professionally and speaks nationally on the topics of eating disorders… their prevention and treatment, body image, and healthy eating and weight management.  An advocate for parents of afflicted children, she has published widely in books, magazines, journals and newspapers, and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, the John Walsh Show, and MSNBC News. The creator and host of www.empoweredparents.com, www.empoweredkidZ.com, and www.treatingeatingdisorders.com, she conducts a private practice in psychotherapy in Highland Park Illinois where she resides with her husband.