Eating disorders start in early childhood. Parenting educator and addictions counsellor Flicky Gildenhuys explains how teaching your children healthy attitudes to food could save them a lifetime of struggle
A popular greeting card depicts a baby girl looking over her shoulder, with the words, ‘Does this nappy make me look fat?’ While it may be an illustration of society’s attitude towards thinness, it says nothing about the rise of eating disorders among adolescent and even younger children. According to a study in the US journal Obesity Research, a mother's view on the importance of family dinner time may influence her child’s weight. When researchers evaluated data on almost 3,800 girls and boys, ranging in age from birth to 14 they found that 43% of their mothers said that they did not feel family meal times were important. Correspondingly, their children were 30% more likely to be overweight by the age of 14.
Further studies revealed that up to 29% of boys and 41% of girls diet or exercise to lose weight. These children also view obese people negatively, express a fear of becoming obese, and don’t like to play with fat children. In the light of this seeming epidemic, mums and dads have an enormous role to play because research has shown that babies learn the values attached to eating directly from their parents.
While studies aren’t conclusive about why girls seem to be so much more vulnerable to developing an eating disorder, it seems clear that gender plays a large role in the formation of attitudes towards food and eating. Since your baby’s most important role model is usually the same sex parent, it’s not surprising that she may adopt her mother’s unresolved issues around food and body image.
The way you think and feel about food is communicated to your baby in conscious and unconscious ways. Babies internalise these messages about food and develop deeply entrenched patterns of thinking and behaviours around eating – which the media and social expectations further reinforce. Helen Kotras, a clinical psychologist and co-coordinator of the eating disorder programme run at Kenilworth Clinic in Cape Town, South Africa explains, “During the first few months of life, your baby perceives herself as an extension of you. If you have negative self-beliefs and talk negatively about your body, it can affect your baby, even in the pre-verbal stage. These messages, which may become more verbal, continue as your baby grows up, and confirm her internalised beliefs about food and her body.”
Eileen Fortune, the founder of the Gender Project based in Maine, USA states, “Childhood eating disorders are shaped by attitudes about gender.” The messages that children receive are not always balanced. She has found that parents respond to similar circumstances differently depending on the gender of the child. A boy who eats a lot is approved of, but a girl who eats a lot is seen as potentially becoming fat. Traditional values of a healthy baby being chubby have been replaced by expectations that a baby reflect a socially acceptable level of thinness. Kelly Muzzell, an Eating disorder counsellor, asked the members of her therapy group to share some of their early childhood memories.
Anne, a 28-year-old anorexic recalls,
“My parents treated myself and my twin brother differently. My mother was always on a diet; she ate special foods and served herself last. My father and brother were served first, got bigger portions and were offered seconds. I was as well, but I knew that I was supposed to say no. Also, I was always physically compared to one of my aunts – she was obese and one of my biggest fears was that I’d grow up to look like her.”
Helen comments that, “Girls are more susceptible to developing a distorted relationship with food and their own bodies, since babies generally spend more time with their mother. If the mother has negative beliefs about her body, it’s more likely she’ll have a negative effect on her same-sex children as they begin to identify with their own bodies.”
One of the most significant messages that you can communicate to your baby is that she is loved and can love herself. One of Anne’s earliest memories is the awareness that her mother was dissatisfied with her body. Now she finds that she talks in the same negative way about her own body. Kelly explains, “Anne’s sense of self is bound up in her negative feelings towards her body. She hates her body, so she hates herself. But she is now learning to view herself as worth more than just her body and to focus on her other attributes.” Justine, a 17-year-old anorexic says, “My mother always encourages my four-year old brother to take one more mouthful to grow big and strong, while my one-year-old baby sister is nicknamed ‘puppy’ because she eats a lot!”
Nicknames are often a painful reminder of one parent’s attitude towards eating and body image. Justine adds, “My nicknames were ‘Dunlop’, ‘Miss Piggy’ and ‘Vacuum Cleaner’.” Carey, a 26-year-old fashion photographer, painfully recalls her own nicknames, “Mine were ‘Hefalump’, ‘Thunder Thighs’ and ‘Galoomph’, and the song Fatty, fatty, boom, boom says it all. If I got up to have seconds my mother would bulge her cheeks and chomp. I got the message. My brother also got clear messages about food, but they were different. He was forced to do gymnastics and follow special muscle-building diets.” Carey now recognises that her dissatisfaction with her physical appearance has affected her self-esteem.
Feelings about food are further entrenched in your baby’s mind as they start linking food with their emotions. In the first few months of life your baby learns that swallowing the ‘goo’ at the end of the spoon is rewarded by smiles and approval. This continues until they become a toddler and discover that food is a battlefield upon which they can express their newfound sense of self. Here at last, they find an arena where their parents can’t win. No matter how much they are cajoled or bribed there’s no way they’ll eat their spinach!
In later years they may revert to regulating their food intake as a coping mechanism to reduce anxiety in circumstances over which they feel they have little control. Helen Kotras explains, “Restricting food may assist children in feeling in control in an environment in which they feel emotionally ‘out of control’, but cannot express it. Alternatively, a child may overeat in an attempt to numb their overwhelming emotions. The bulimic purging of food represents the getting rid of these accumulated, suppressed emotions.” As a parent you may rely on a whole arsenal of techniques to convince your baby that eating their food in the required quantities and varieties will guarantee a realm of impressive results.
David, a 25-year-old bulimic recalls, “One of my earliest memories is of being convinced by my mother that if I ate all my food I’d grow up to be big and strong like my Dad. Well, I’ve never lived up to that expectation.” David has a strong love-hate relationship with food. “Whenever I ate everything on my plate, I was chastised for eating too much! All the food I liked was disapproved of. If I ate them, I felt I was bad too. I was a chubby baby, a chubby child, and a short, chubby teenager.”
If a child’s body image doesn’t match up to parental expectations the child is left with unresolved anxiety. Obviously, not all eating disorders are directly caused by the parents, but it certainly pays to bestow healthy attitudes to food onto your children.
“I still associate food with shame and anger,” says Carey. I knew that I’d be teased for helping myself to seconds. That used to make me feel so angry that I’d always have more food – just to show them I didn’t care what they thought. But I did care. And I’d always end up feeling so shameful and guilty afterwards. When I look at my mum now, I can see that she still has huge issues around food, but I spent my childhood thinking I was the problem.”
Your baby’s innate need for nurture and acceptance can sometimes only be met in the kitchen. Meal times may be the only time that the family gathers together, and food may be the only medium through which your baby receives attention. Anne recalls, “I knew exactly how to get my mother’s affirmation. Whenever I restricted my food, or went on a diet, my mother gave me her tacit approval by allowing it.”
When strong emotions are connected to eating in early childhood, food may be associated with intense feelings for the rest of one’s life. Jane, a 41-year-old over-eater says, “There was always drama at Sunday lunch in my family. My mum would cook a huge meal, someone would start fighting and she’d burst into tears and fling herself on her bed. Then Dad would buy us chocolates, my mum would cheer up and the world would feel a bit better. To this day I eat chocolate whenever I’m upset.”
Food is commonly used as a coping mechanism. Everyone can relate to the comfort a piece of chocolate cake may bring. But if healthier coping mechanisms aren’t developed, feelings are effectively ‘swallowed’ and stored inside. As a parent, all that’s required is awareness that your own thoughts and behaviour can have an enormous effect on your baby. You can make a significant difference to your child’s life by developing an awareness of how you communicate unhelpful messages about food and eating, including any specifically gendered messages.
Examine what messages you’re giving your children if they:
- Talk negatively about their bodies
- Restrict certain food types
- Prefer to eat than play
- Equate thinness with success and popularity
- Need you to prompt them to eat
- Don’t express emotions verbally
- Speak in a positive way about your own body
- Teach your child about hunger signals, by saying, ‘What is your tummy telling you?’
- Stop feeding your children when they indicate that they are full
- Model healthy and balanced eating habits
- Ensure the dinner table is a stress-free zone
- Eat together at the table
- Practice moderation and allow all food types
- Allow for choice and variety
- Encourage your children to regulate their own food intake
- Communicate the same messages to boys and girls
- Use cues or prompts to encourage eating
- Use food as a reward or punishment
- Use nicknames – especially eating or body image-related ones
- Describe people with regard to their thinness or fatnes
- Associate food with comfort
- Restrict access to specific food types
- Have different rules for boys and girls
This information has been reproduced with kind permission of Zahra Publishing, publishers of Easy Health. www.easyhealth.ie