Arm Your Kids with a Bullyproof Body Image

ADVERTISEMENT - ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

Arm Your Kids with a Bullyproof Body Image

Childhood Fears Take New Form

By Abigail H. Natenshon

Continued from page 1

In this article:

Predisposing Factors

Bombarded by conflicting media messages about how to stay fit and live long, parents have become increasingly food-phobic and, in many instances, as confused as their children.

Many parents have forgotten what healthy eating and living is -- and is not. They assume that fat-free eating is healthy eating and that skipping meals is a shortcut to being trim. They do not realize that an eating or exercise lifestyle that works well for a parent, when taken out of the context of age and health requirements, does not necessarily apply to children -- and in fact may harm them. As an example, children need fat in their diets to complete their neurological development throughout the childhood and adolescent years.

When parents fear that by communicating honestly with their children about uncomfortable subjects they could create more problems or lose their child's love, they may be inclined to pretend not to notice when their child is in trouble. A problem cannot be resolved unless and until it is identified and confronted.

Too many or too few parental limits imposed during the growing-up years deprive children of the opportunity to internalize appropriate controls through which they can ultimately regulate themselves. The overly controlled child who feels victimized and helpless, as well as the overly controlling child who feels overwhelmed and frightened by her own power, may experience an emerging internal image of herself as destructive and without limits. This child may eventually feel the need to turn to an eating disorder to compensate for her lack of external and internal controls ... nature abhors a vacuum.

A tantruming three-year-old who refuses to put on her snowsuit in a subfreezing Chicago winter won't allow her mother to belt her into her car seat and ultimately refuses to sleep in her own bed, wandering into her parents' room every night. With a legacy of adult obesity and addiction in her family's genetic pool, this child is a prime candidate to develop an eating disorder in the future.

What Parents Can Do:

Model a healthy relationship with food.

Educate children, teaching them to regard the body as a wise and predictable machine requiring fuel and maintenance, rather than as an object of beauty; food as a life-sustaining fuel, rather than as the enemy; healthy eating as a balanced and moderated lifestyle, rather than as an exercise in food restriction.

Listen to "know" their child and to help their child understand herself. When the child makes negative comments about her shape or size, do not dismiss them, even if they seem irrational; rather, a parent should initiate discussion about how the child thinks she could look better and why.

Help the child develop immunity to the steady stream of media messages that distort her perspective by teaching her to become a more critical consumer of the media and by canceling subscriptions to fashion magazines.

Become aware of their own body image concerns and attitudes that may stimulate their child's fears, distortions, and misconceptions. Parents must be careful not to complain about their own weight.