What Parents Can Do to Help Their Girls Love Their Bodies - Part Two

By Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW, GCFP

Though parents are not responsible for causing an eating disorder in their child, they are largely responsible for shaping a child's positive attitudes towards eating, nutrition, weight management, and the self. By so doing, enlightened parents become empowered parents, assured of raising a child with enough self-esteem and body acceptance to be virtually "eating disorder resistant."

In an effort to foster their child's self- and body-love, parents should:

1. Understand, trust, and teach the wisdom of the human body, which can be counted on to function as a "machine" that will run optimally with proper fueling.
• Girls need to understand that gaining weight in puberty is necessary in order for all of their organ systems to function well.
• It is normal for girls to gain 20% of their body weight in fat during puberty. They need a certain amount of fat to sustain estrogen, which makes conception and child-bearing a possibility in the future.
• Fat-dependent brain neuron maturation in youngsters continues into the teen years and even the 20's.
2. Ask their daughter to make a list of each of her positive attributes, exclusive of body and appearance.
• Observe the dynamics of this exercise for her and help her to glean some significant understanding about herself.
• Contribute your own thoughts and ideas to this list. Does she recognize that her intelligence, compassion, and character are what make a person beautiful from the inside out?
3. Proclaim the day that their daughter begins her menses to be a celebration of her womanhood, as a joyous proclamation that when she takes good care of her body, it will take good care of her.
• Greet the occasion with a sense of peace and pride, with a sense of joining and connection between mother and daughter, between childhood and adulthood, between girl and woman.
4. Engage together in activities that promote accurate, realistic and meaningful body awareness at more profound levels, teaching her to recognize the connection between body and mind.
• Such activities might include yoga, the Feldenkrais Method, Pilates, or the martial arts.
5. Encourage the child to become aware of her feelings, to own and express them in the interest of resolving problems rather than harboring them in her body.
• Offer her a vocabulary to describe her feelings.
• If your child is feeling anger towards you, become "all ears" in an effort to understand her more completely. This may take some degree of courage on your part.
• "Tell me about it……." is a good way to begin. "And what else?……" is a good way to continue engaging your child in the dialogue.
• Make certain that you and your partner model the expression of a full range of emotions in your household. Remember that laughter, too, can be good medicine.
• Help your daughter to understand that "emotional eating" is eating to fill an unconscious need, not to satiate hunger. Help her learn to make this connection herself, to bring her feelings to a conscious and working level, and to figure out how she might nurture herself in more constructive ways.
6. Discourage extreme or excessive behaviors of any sort, be they perfectionism, sleeping too much, sleeping too little, shopping too much, and studying too little.
• A healthy lifestyle is a moderate and balanced lifestyle, in every sphere
7. Keep in mind that there are no "bad" foods; what is bad is an extreme, immoderate, or imbalanced misuse of food.
• It is as unhealthy to forbid the child to eat "junk" foods as it is to encourage your child to eat them on a regular basis. Denying your child certain foods will stimulate her appetite for those foods. Your child's body deserves good nutrition, first and foremost, in the form of three nutritious meals per day, plus snacks; following that, she also needs to eat what she enjoys.
• Do you regularly stock your pantry with soda pop rather than water, fruit juices and milk? Are chips, cookies, and pastries as much a staple in your home as are vegetables, fruits, breads and grains, and various sources of protein?
• Discourage fat-free eating in the home. Your child needs the right amounts and right kinds of fat in her diet in order to develop normally and healthfully.
8. Take an assault prevention training class with your daughter. Your lives are both well worth the time and the effort.

It is important for parents to realize that in order for children to feel attractive and good about them selves, they need to learn to become effective problem solvers, good communicators, and compassionate people, as well as healthy eaters. As John Muir once said, "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

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.