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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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Loving family members can be the worst when it comes to bad body image and food policing. Teaching our kids to respond to body-based comments politely can empower them and help them assert their right to live in their body exactly as it is. This is a revolutionary step in our society, and is so necessary to reduce eating disorders. 💕 . How do you assert yourself around body shamers and food policers? Comment below 👇🏼👇🏼 "Are you sure you should eat that? It's got a ton of calories!" . "Thanks, Aunt Sharon, but my body and I agree that this pie is actually an excellent idea." . I think it's important to teach our children the most polite responses possible when they encounter rude comments about their food choices or bodies. Sure, I'd love to intervene on every kids' behalf, but that's not always possible, and learning polite but firm ways to stand up to grown up bullies is so important in this diet-obsessed culture that tells our kids terrible things in a daily basis. . Sound too snarky to you? Well, what about Sharon? She was very rude and hurtful, and no child has to suck it up and accept that. This is firm, but it's still light, bright, and polite. If we don't start to speak up about food shaming, nothing will change. . What rude comments have you heard adults say to children about food and bodies? Comment below💕👇🏼👇🏼💕 . Read more about how to make Thanksgiving eating disorder friendly on our site - link in profile 🌈 Thanksgiving can be a really tough time for those of us in recovery. Most of our connecting conversations seem to circle around body and food topics. Here are some new scripts for an eating disorder friendly Thanksgiving. . Do you have any comments you want to rewrite the script for? Add them in the comments, 👇🏼 and I'll add them to the article on this topic >> link in profile 💕 Ohhhhh yes! Form most of us, the normal response to restricting food is to binge eat. Not because we are weak or lack willpower, but because we have strong, powerful bodies that demand to be fed. When we stop the restriction we stop the binge eating. Thank you for this quote, @body_peace_liberation 💕 Losing weight will not make us happier. It will make us hungry, tired, unable to think straight, and very, very stressed. About 95% of us will regain the weight, ~60% of us will gain even more, and ~25% of us will develop an eating disorder. . The pursuit of weight loss is a classic example of chasing happiness by working on our outside, when happiness actually arises naturally when we find peace within ourselves. 💕 I wish every child learned this script as a response to any person who talks about their body negatively. This includes parents, teachers, doctors, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and everyone else who thinks it's appropriate to discuss a child's weight without HAES training. Stop. Just don't.💕 Recovery is a practice, not an event. Some of us 'fully recover,' but many of us just keep practicing. And you know what? I think that's OK. Don't get me wrong - of course 'full recovery' is great, but I think it's counterproductive to apply our Perfectionism, which served our eating disorder in the first place, and apply it to recovery. That's just a set up. It's OK if recovery looks like practice, not perfect. We practice, we learn, and we grow💕 These sayings all tell us that feeling feelings is bad and wrong, but nothing could be further from the truth. We must feel our feelings so that they can pass through us without causing damage. I will never forget the day I felt feelings for the first time after ending my eating disorder behaviors. The feelings literally knocked me down. It was intense and terrifying to allow the feeling s to happen without trying to stop them with my ED behaviors. It was also stunningly beautiful and I knew it was a sign that recovery was going to be possible for me 🌈💕 The evidence has been 'mounting' for decades. In fact, it's conclusive: intentional weight loss doesn't last and is dangerous to our health. It also leads to eating disorders 25% of the time. I would be more direct about the futility, dangers and harms of intentional weight loss, but I'm still glad to see this info finally making it into mainstream media 💕 The intense fatphobia in our culture means that many parents are accidentally damaging their children by criticizing their bodies. It simply doesn't work to say 'I love you, but you need to lose some weight.' A child cannot separate their body from their self. Leave children's bodies alone. Don't fiddle with them. Don't stress about it. Let them exist in the world as they are 💕 Fat is not a feeling. No matter the quantity and distribution of our fat cells, we are not actually 'fat' any more than we are fingernails (which we also have). Dig deeper and find the source of 'feeling fat,' which is just a stand-in for something else. Our children can feel our disapproval, and when parents disapprove of a child's body, children internalize the idea that they are wrong, bad, and inappropriate. Even if parents don't say anything out loud about a child's weight, if they feel that their child's body is a problem, the child knows. Weight stigma is pervasive and constantly reinforced in our society. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Yes, it's uncomfortable, and yes, we still need to talk about it. Parents, please learn about weight stigma and internalize Health at Every Size principles to avoid unconsciously passing along feelings of inadequacy to children 💕 Self-worth is an inside job, but it turns out that parents are critical in helping us discover it. In small ways and big ways, we need to hear that we are lovable and worthy EXACTLY AS WE ARE RIGHT NOW. This small effort of telling people we love them authentically, actively and regularly, can soothe a lifetime of shame and hurt and help us reduce our need for maladaptive coping mechanisms like eating disorders 💕 This is how we create more love 💕 If we only treat the surface level of eating disorders, we miss the drivers. As a result, someone may recover from an eating disorder only to develop another disorder like substance abuse, compulsive spending, gambling, sex addiction, self-harm, etc. We have to take the time to get to the bottom of our thought patterns and find out what we are trying to accomplish with our maladaptive coping mechanisms. Only then are we free to engage with the world free of our disorders 🌈 An eating disorder alters the way we show up in the world. It changes what we are able to show, give, and receive from the world. Recovery of any degree helps us reveal more of our whole selves, and that is such a beautiful thing 🌈💕 Eating disorders are not attention-seeking, they are attachment-seeking. When parents think it's somehow wrong for a child to seek attention and attachment, they are missing the point of parenting. Always give more attention and attachment without fear and without holding back, and our children will thrive 💕 image quote from @dr.vanessalapointe 💕 Once free of the eating disorder, we can see that our selves are so much more than our bodies. We can believe that we are worthy just for existing. We can see that we are interesting in ways far beyond how we eat, what we eat, and the shape of our bodies. It takes time, but this is the gift of recovering from an eating disorder 💕 The diet industry revenues are still growing but the number of people dieting is down. Could this mean we're making progress with the anti-diet movement? There will probably always be people who diet, but I would love to see those revenue numbers drop! 💰💰💰 . The diet industry takes advantage of the fatphobic culture in which we live. Diets cause harm and 95% of the time result in regain plus more. Diets put us on an endless cycle of weight loss and gain that is BAD FOR OUR HEALTH. They also put us on the path for eating disorders. 1 in 4 dieters will develop an eating disorder. Our kids are going to feel pain, and they may develop an eating disorder or other maladaptive coping mechanism to handle their pain. We can't save our kids from this pain. We can't fix our kids as if they are a broken cup. But we can most certainly practice our parenting, learn new skills, and show up for our kids when they need us. We can help. 💕 When our kids face an eating disorder, we must always focus on our relationship with them. We must hold them closer and show up even when (especially when) it's hard. We are the keepers and guardians of the parent-child relationship. 💕

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