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How To Parent A Child Who Has An Eating Disorder

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How To Parent A Child Who Has An Eating Disorder

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Our kids’ bodies are a major part of their life experience. We can’t not talk about them. . Ignoring or glossing over the way a child feels about their body is not the path to body acceptance and resilience against eating disorders. Instead, we need to learn to talk to them about their bodies from an inclusive and weight-neutral perspective. . This takes practice and can be hard, but it’s so great when we validate our child’s body exactly as it is while also validating the complex feelings they will have living in a body (of any size) in our fatphobic society.💕 . P.S. the same goes for taking to your child about your own body 🥰 . Want more info? Check out More-Love.org - we just published a list of great books to read to build your understanding of body acceptance, including the books by @virgietovar @bodyposipanda and @rebeccascritchfield ❤️ Parents can love their kids but still miss crucial opportunities to show their love, so here’s a quick list of things to say to your kids to show them that you love them. 💕 I hear you: take the time to really listen to your child and seek to understand their words and feelings. 💕 I believe you: sometimes we are eager to give advice, but all they want is to feel like an authority in their own lives. 💕 I’m here for you: a parent who is a true partner makes a child feel completely loved. 💕 I’ll sit with you: when a child has a task, like eating a meal, doing homework, studying, or practicing, a parent can show up and sit with them to show love and support. 💕 I’m sorry: say it often and with meaning. Never follow it with “but.” Show them you understand that you sometimes hurt them, and never be afraid to apologize. 💕 I’d like to help: we can’t always help. Sometimes we shouldn’t help. But it means a lot to know that a parent wants to help. 💕 Yes, you can: when we let our kids do things, we demonstrate to them that they are trustworthy and capable. 💕 You’re right: when we let our kids be right, we help them feel satisfaction and worthiness. Nobody wants to feel they are always wrong! 💕 When we give our kids more love, we improve their self-confidence, self-compassion, self-efficacy, and self-worth. These characteristics are protective when it comes to anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.💕 Our kids are facing incredible stress and pressure to perform. We are seeing increased rates of anxiety disorders, which are directly correlated to eating disorders. . A parent who has a child who has an eating disorder must learn to parent around food and body issues, and they must also learn to parent around stress and anxiety, which can trigger eating disorder urges and behaviors. . Every child is different, but an open, compassionate approach to anxiety is much more soothing than asking the child to rush through or ignore their anxiety. . This text exchange is an example in a parent who has learned how to help her child through anxiety. Her approach is encouraging and soothing, and it works because the conversation about anxiety is natural and ongoing in their relationship 💕 We are suffering because we believe that we can all achieve the “right” body, skin, hair, and face if we only follow the programs and use the products prescribed to us by corporations, media companies, celebrities and social media influencers. ✖️ The pressure to perform beauty and “heath” rituals according to these sources is tremendously stressful and increases risk of eating disorders, exercise disorders, body dysmorphia, and more. ✖️ The expectations placed on achieving “perfection” based on doing and buying the right things are impossible. ✖️ If you have a child, please be extra-aware of the dangers posed by our societal myths regarding conformity, “beauty” and “health.” Our kids are suffering and will continue to suffer unless we intervene and disrupt the cultural narrative in which they live.💕 . Check out the article “Celebrity Beauty is an Elaborate Fiction” from @outline . EDIT: On the first image, “Our society” should be in parenthesis and outside of the quotation, since that is an editorialization of the original quote. Have you ever made food “illegal?” I have! I restricted just about every major food category at some point in my 30-year eating disorder. It makes sense - after all, it simplifies restriction and gives a person who is struggling with food something to focus on when they are craving the food they have outlawed. . Restricting entire food groups is one of the easiest ways to pursue two goals: 1) control eating/food intake; 2) identify as “good” based on what is/isn’t eaten. . When seeking worthiness, many of us use food and weight as tools. We think that if we eat the right things and weigh the right weight then we will be worthy. Of course, that’s not how worthiness works. It’s an inside job. . If you have a child who puts food groups in prison, if you have a child who is using food or weight as a way to define who they are - and we have to look closely to see this - help them see that food and weight are not the path to worthiness. Help them build worthiness and identity in ways that have nothing to do with food or weight. . Legalize food!🍊🍳🍟🌮 Unfortunately, diet culture and “wellness” influencers tell us that if our child is above “average” on weight charts, is a “picky” eater, enjoys “junk” food and avoids “healthy” food that we’re doing something wrong. We aren’t! These are all perfectly normal conditions of childhood. Parents who try to impose rules and restrictions on kids’ food and weight - even when it’s done out of love - have kids who suffer over food and weight. None of this is your fault. You are not a bad parent.❤️ ✖️ Above “average:” we all understand that parents are not responsible for a child being above average on shoe size and height charts. You may be surprised to know that weight is similarly mostly driven by genes and environmental factors that are beyond a parent’s control. ✖️ “Picky” eating: it is perfectly normal and biologically adaptive for children to become less adventurous with food as they go through critical developmental stages. ✖️ “Junk” food: all foods can fit in a healthy diet. Kids who are offered a variety of foods will naturally balance their nutrient and caloric intake based on what their body needs. ✖️ “Healthy” food: see above. Most kids don’t like cooked vegetables, kale and other “healthy” foods. They can still be healthy without them! ✖️ Eating disorders: are complex and arise from a variety of factors. Parents don’t create eating disorders, but our behavior may make it easier for eating disorders to develop. Luckily, our behavior can also help our child recover from an eating disorder 💕 I’m on a mission to get parents on the non-diet bandwagon. . Before anyone tells me that of course “diets” don’t work, but kids are too fat because they eat too much and they just need to eat better and not be fat ... STOP. You’re wrong. “Diet” is a term that encompasses all forms of weight control and intentional weight loss. We are not all “supposed” to be thin, nor do kids need to be thin to be healthy. . So much of what parents think they know for sure about food, diet, and weight is just plain wrong. It's not our fault - it's just that journalists, healthcare providers, educators, bloggers, and influencers all promote weight control and intentional weight loss as if it is good, healthy, and necessary. . Despite all the noise about controlling and reducing weight and all the pressure on parents to take measures to get their kids to be "healthy" through intentional weight loss, there is actually no evidence that intentional weight loss is healthy and substantial evidence that intentional weight loss is unhealthy and leads to higher weights and increased rates of eating disorders. . Skeptical? Check out these articles for a scientific review of what you need to know about intentional weight loss, dieting, fat, "obesity" and weight epidemics that aren't actually epidemic at all. It takes a lot of guts to go against the current cultural norms, but rest assured that science firmly supports a non-diet, weight-neutral approach to health for every kid and every body. ❤️ Full article with links to these papers at More-Love.org Diet culture screws us in so many ways. This post has nothing to do with whether anyone “should” or “should not” eat breakfast. It’s about the fact that marketing is incredibly powerful, especially because we often don’t know that our thoughts and behaviors are being driven by marketing. . Cereal marketers need to sell cereal. They know that Americans are deeply seeped in diet culture. So they develop “studies” showing that breakfast eaters weigh less than non-breakfast eaters. It’s not true, but journalists, healthcare providers, educators, bloggers, and influencers all promote it like gospel because marketing is powerful and diet culture is a sticky beast. . This week a peer-reviewed article came out showing there is no difference in the metabolic rate of breakfast eaters compared to non-breakfast eaters. The “science” showing otherwise was all faulty because it was actually marketing (not science). . The purpose of this post is to remind all of us that what we think we know for sure about food, diet, and weight has often been carefully and strategically placed in our minds by very clever marketers. . If you have a child or work with children, please be careful about perpetuating diet culture by imposing false food rules on kids. . ✖️Sometimes we may need to help kids plan ahead if they don’t like breakfast but tend to get hungry if they don’t eat breakfast. . ✖️Sometimes we need to work harder to find foods they enjoy in the morning. . But if they really don’t like breakfast, don’t discount their appetite for the sake of the food industry’s fake food rules. . Help them listen closely to their bodies and work with them to eat when it feels good to them, not because someone said that eating at a certain time or eating a certain food is “healthier,” but because their body says it’s time to eat. . ✖️Avoid overriding natural appetite. Instead learn to listen to intuitive body feedback.💕 Parents can unintentionally hurt a child’s body image and relationship with food. They can accidentally interfere with a child’s health even as they are really trying to improve a child’s health. . ✖️Body Shaming is often done in the pursuit of helping a child, but it hurts. ✖️Food Policing is often done in the pursuit of helping a child, but it hurts. ✖️Dieting, and any form of food control or exercise programming designed to cause weight loss is often done in the pursuit of helping a child, but it hurts. . If you have a child or work with children, please examine your biases very carefully before making any body, food, or eating comments. This is just one way we can help prevent and reduce eating disorders 💕 Not only do we live in a culture that tells us we should be obsessed with our own weight and food, we also live in a culture in which people feel they must obsess over other people’s weight and food. It’s not helping anyone. ✖️Doctors, it’s not helping your patients. ✖️Teachers, it’s not helping your students. ✖️Coaches, it’s not helping your athletes. ✖️Parents, it’s not helping your kids. ✖️People who have entire Twitter and Instagram accounts that are dedicated to policing other people’s bodies, knock it off! There’s no value in that! You’re not helping any of us with your weight and food BS!💩 . Intentional weight control/loss is not healthy for any body. It leads to weight cycling, toxic stress, slower metabolism, and eating disorders. If you are policing anyone’s body or food, get educated ASAP about the futility of and terrible harm caused by intentional weight control/loss (AKA dieting). The book Health at Every Size is a great place to start. . “Keep your eyes off my scale and your imagination off my plate.” - @iamlshauntay 💕 Can we please stop prescribing eating disorder behaviors to children? To be clear, they include: ✖️trying to achieve a particular body weight/measurement ✖️monitoring/recording food intake ✖️eating less and moving more ✖️counting calories, fat, carbs, macros, etc. ✖️limiting food portion sizes ✖️exercising for weight loss ✖️avoiding ‘fattening‘ foods ✖️ignoring hunger cues ✖️following a meal plan regardless of food preferences, cravings, and hunger levels ✖️saying the body can’t be trusted ✖️regularly weighing/measuring the body . Those are just a few of the recommendations kids get from doctors, teachers, coaches, parents, parents’ friends, grandparents, well ... just about everybody. . Be a rebel. Teach your kid to never, ever diet! 🌈💕🤗 . P.S. sometimes we need to do some of these things (e.g. get weighed, have a food plan) during eating disorder recovery. This post is in relation to prescriptions made by anyone who is not an eating disorder specialist. The fear of fat is so intense and so overwhelming that we have preschoolers who are terrified of it. Our culture has gone so far down the path of fatphobia that we can’t even imagine it’s possible to see bodies without the lens of fat being a sign of character failure. . This is hurting us. It’s hurting our health and hurting our relationships and hurting our children. It’s driving healthcare providers, teachers, and parents to prescribe eating disorder behavior as if it’s OK. It is not OK.💔 As long as we think eating disorders are a personal problem, we will not make an impact on the societal forces that drive them. . Sure, an individual has a temperament that may make that person more likely to adopt a maladaptive coping mechanism like an eating disorder. But eating disorders are a societal problem driven by the fact that we live in a fatphobic society. Just like someone won’t develop alcoholism if they aren’t exposed to alcohol, very few people would develop eating disorders if we didn’t live in a fatphobic society. . If you have an eating disorder, don’t blame yourself. It makes perfect sense in our fatphobic society. Be gentle with yourself, and give yourself a lot of compassion for your journey. It’s not your fault. Yes, you can recover.💕 . If you have a child or are in a position of influencing children, please learn about fatphobia, weight stigma, and Health at Every Size. Not only is your education on these topics critical to caring for the kids you know, it is also critical to moving forward as a society and preventing future eating disorders.💕 Fatphobia hurts all of us. The fear of getting fat is a national obsession that has given us worse health, higher weights, and more eating disorders. . Do you know any boys/men who diet, restrict, consume, and exercise in an attempt to control their bodies? Do you know any boys/men who obsess over the appearance of their bodies and fear certain foods? I know a lot of them. Like so many women, their lives are hijacked by food and body obsessions. . Eating disorders are a societal problem, not an individual problem. . If you have a son, please remember that eating disorders do not discriminate. They hurt people of all genders.💕 This is the true work of recovery. We feel bad about eating, feel bad about our bodies, and feel bad about a million failures to behave perfectly. . Our anxiety tells us that bad feelings mean that something is wrong. Many of us turn to restriction or consumption to cope. . To recover, we must learn to tolerate bad feelings without taking action - without restricting or consuming - and recognize that just because something feels bad does not mean that it is wrong. 💕 How did your parents navigate negative body talk? What worked? What didn’t work? . My guess is that they did their best, but still screwed it up. Even body positive warriors can panic when their kids make a negative body comment. All the knowledge in the world still doesn’t prepare you for a tween who calls herself fat (in a negative way). Parenting through negative body talk is really hard. If you have done it, please tell me how you have addressed your kid’s negative body talk. . There’s an article about this today on more-love.org (link in profile)❤️ . To be clear: this is not about people who identify as fat in a neutral or positive way. This post addresses the common phenomenon of people in all body sizes who complain about fat as if it’s a bad thing (it’s not). Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself when talking about diet culture and body respect with your child. They may act annoyed that you bring it up so often, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t listening! . Our words build the structure of how our kids feel about themselves and the world, and we can make a big difference in how they feel about their bodies and themselves by talking about diet culture and reminding our children that they are so much more than bodies. Our children deserve to live a life free from constant body checking, food obsessions, dieting, restricting, and eating disorders. . No matter how old they are, our kids deserve to know that they are worthy regardless of their body size, shape, color, and ability.💕 . Thanks @beauty_redefined for spreading the concept that the body is not an ornament, which I think about all the time! 🌈💕 The celery juice fad is driving me up the wall. It’s not just direct weight loss BS that abounds on Instagram - the platform is packed with false and misleading claims about food that lead us and our kids to mistrust our bodies. Instagram is wonderful, but it’s also teeming with Healthism BS. We can’t stop the false and misleading claims from taking up space in our kids’ lives, so we have to constantly talk to our kids about media literacy. We live in a dangerous time for their bodies. . MEDIA LITERACY 101: ✨Ask questions ✨Spot magical thinking ✨Look for point of view ✨Understand the goal ✨Be suspicious of testimonials ✨Be a rebel . Full article about celery juice and other IG fads and how to teach kids media literacy on More-Love.org💕 If your ‘evidence-based’ treatment isn’t Health at Every Size and Fat Positive, it’s not good enough. Treating people who have eating disorders through the lens of diet culture and fatphobia does not help us find full recovery. We truly recover body trust and Intuitive Eating when we overcome our fear of fat. 💕 94% of our wonderful girls feel shame about their bodies. Shame means that they feel there is something wrong with them. That they are wrong. . Where does the body end and the self begin? It’s almost impossible to separate them, especially in young brains. . So that means that 94% of our girls feel ashamed of themselves. Of who they are. . That’s no way to live life. . I felt constant shame. Did you? Do you want this for our girls? . I don’t. Let’s change it 💕

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