"Innocent" Parental Messages to Young Children May be Harmful
By Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP
Despite their best intentions, parents all too frequently promote or exacerbate their child's concerns about body image. Harmful messages often get transmitted from parents to children through what might be considered benign "throw away" comments.
- From his viewing chair, a father criticizes a television personality for how fat she looks in her evening gown.
- A brother speaks disparagingly about his girlfriend's hip size, claiming she needs a "license for the wide-load."
- The father of a 5 year old tells her jokingly that she will develop a "Buddha belly" if she puts butter on her bread.
- A child states that more important than getting A's in school is being accepted by the "popular group." Her parents make no comment.
- An aunt chuckles about how she wishes she could be anorexic, if only till she lost a few pounds.
Believing that outward appearance is a reflection of inner quality, children develop a sense of who they are (physically and emotionally) and how they should behave by internalizing (taking in and taking personally) such off-hand remarks from and about others. Children who lack self-esteem, who are particularly needy of acceptance and approval from others, are particularly sensitive to the perceptions of parents, family, peers and the media. A child who takes in and integrates disparaging or critical parental comments about the importance of physical appearance in determining a person's worth, likeability, or life quality is likely to develop body image disturbances of his own, as well as a lack of self-acceptance, food fears and eating obsessions.
- As early as the first grade, children are reporting concerns and preoccupation with weight and body shape and begin to restrict food. Camp counselors report 6 and 7 year olds studying nutritional labels on food items in their lunch sacks.
- A U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services task force reports that 80% of girls in grades 3 - 6 have bad feelings about their bodies, an issue diverting attention from schoolwork and friendships.
- Preteen boys as well, inspired by the world of sports and television, fret about the inadequacy of their builds, believing that the strength in their muscles or the girth in their chests is more important than intelligence, compassion or emotional well-being.
When parents harbor unresolved weight-related and body image issues of their own, these issues may be passed down to children as a legacy generation to generation. Concerns are passed through the parents' attitudes and behaviors, through what he or she says and does. Children learn best through example. By overhearing their parents complain about their own weight and need to diet, by watching them restrict food or exercise excessively, kids learn how they need to be. Children are quick to pick up on the signals of parents who skip meals, purchase and eat only lite or fat-free foods, or who do not consider it a priority to prepare and provide at least three meals a day and to sit down to eat them together with their family. Children report feeling guilty when they eat food items that their parents feel compelled to restrict. A recent study showed that children raised by anorexic mothers by age five, whined more, demonstrated problems with food and eating, and manifested signs of depression.
Poignant messages are communicated as well by what parents choose not to do and to say, by what they choose to ignore, or fail to see in their child. Parents perpetuate and reinforce the child's problems by not actively refuting poor values or misconceptions in their children. When they tacitly agree with or abide by a child's plan to lose weight by restricting food rather than by eating differently, when they are reluctant to intervene with their child in the face of dysfunctional eating behaviors, they reinforce the destructive pattern. When parents fail to actively negate the child's belief that popularity and peer acceptance are as important as learning and personal growth, the child's own worst fears and misconceptions are realized and validated.
If not part of the solution, parents are in danger of becoming part of the problem. Body image concerns may or may not become precursors to eating disorders. But even if they do not lead to clinical disease, your child's concerns deserve attention so that he or she can learn to enjoy a healthful relationship with food.
Psychotherapist Abigail H. Natenshon has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders with individuals, families, and groups for the past 31years. She is the author of When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder, A Step-by-Step Workbook For Parents And Other Caregivers, Jossey-Bass, 1999. Based on hundreds of successful outcomes, this book shepherds concerned parents step-by-step through the processes of eating disorder recognition, confronting the child, finding the most effective treatment for patient and family, and evaluating and insuring a timely recovery. A guide to eating disorder prevention, this book is useful to parents, health professionals and school personnel alike in countering the pervasive epidemic of unhealthy eating and body image concerns, and destructive media and peer influences. Her work can be reviewed further at www.empoweredparents.com and www.empoweredkidZ.com, www.treatingeatingdisorders.com.
