Dear Tatiana: My concern relates to my 13-year old daughter and the amount of food she consumes. It doesn’t have to do with her weight, although she is chubby, it has to do with the quantity of food, especially junk food and the sneaking of food. She is highly active and I am sure hungry often. But she sneaks candy into her room and hides the evidence and sneaks junk food while watching TV in the late evenings. I talk to her about volume and health and that I think she looks perfect but all humans have to monitor the types and amounts of food one eats. The temptation of the delicious, yet unhealthy, foods that we all struggle with and how to have portion control and making choices (I already had dessert after dinner so I can’t have a bowl of ice cream at 9 pm for example).
How do you reconcile the body shaming and the pressure that girls face while at the same time trying to get your daughter to eat healthier? I talk to her about it and she cries and I feel like I am setting her up for an eating disorder. My 15-year old son, who is thin, also will binge on chips and have empty bags in his room. I give him absolutely equal grief about junk food, and my daughter sees that the message is about health, not weight (I admonish them equally, but he doesn’t sneak or hide food, so I only discuss that with her). I stopped buying chips, but then I felt that wasn’t right because you need to learn control.
Signed -Concerned Parent
Dear Concerned Parent,
Discussions around food are a slippery slope and all parents should proceed with great caution. Being a positive roll model, limiting “junk food” in the home, offering healthy alternatives and being a family who cooks and sits together around the dinner table increases the likelihood your child will have a healthy relationship with food. There is a benefit to teaching children about nutrition, but when that conversation turns into a power struggle, there is a problem.
Children develop poor nutritional habits and disordered eating for a variety of reasons. For some children, there is a negative emotion they are unable to soothe in a healthy way. For others, it can be a lack of mindfulness.
When a child is lying about and hiding food, it is time to bring in the experts. I highly recommend that you identify a licensed professional mental health clinician who specializes in treating children with childhood feeding challenges with research-based interventions. It removes you from the power and control cycle and will offer you assistance in navigating a difficult situation skillfully, so that you are helpful and not harmful. If the issue is a minor one, treatment will be brief. If what you are seeing is the start of a full-blown “eating disorder,” you will be ahead of the game and the consequences with early intervention.
Best,
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Contact:
Tatiana Matthews, LPC
tatiana@theahaconnection.com
