Question
I’ve got an 11-year-old daughter who struggles with overeating. I have no idea what to say to her to help her, as my mother and grandmother criticized me when I was about her age for eating too much food and gaining weight.
My daughter is gaining lots of weight and I’m worried about her health, her self-image, and how all of this will affect her in the future. She hides her eating and makes self-critical comments.
I feel like I have so many issues around food and my own weight that I can hardly bring up my concerns to her, fearing that I will damage her the way I feel I was damaged. I feel trapped and have no idea how to help her with all of this.
Answer
I’m thrilled you want to break the intergenerational pattern of shaming children around food and weight. Unfortunately, it’s likely that your own shame and anxiety around food and bodies is being transmitted loud and clear to your daughter. I don’t believe you’re doing this on purpose, as you were sent some pretty damaging messages when you were younger.
The good news is that you can help both of you challenge the fraudulent messages around weight and self-worth. While taking care of the body is good practice for everyone, allowing yourself or your daughter to believe a certain weight or size means something about your value as a human being is something worth challenging.
First, I recommend you open up to your daughter about the impact these messages have had on you and on her. Don’t let her believe for one minute that she’s the only one feeling insecure with food and her body. Be real with your own struggles, but don’t overwhelm her and turn her into your emotional support and confidant. Approach her with the love and protectiveness of a parent who can relate to what it’s like to feel the pressure of your own and other’s expectations for how you should look.
Let her know that your job as her mom is to help her take care of her body so she can be as healthy as possible. In the same way you taught her how to clean her body, dress herself, and feed herself, you’re going to continue to help her care for herself in the best possible way.
Don’t avoid the obvious issue of her hiding food and having anxiety around her eating and weight. It will be uncomfortable for you to address this with her, but you will be doing it in a way that will support her instead of criticize her. While your mother and grandmother certainly recognized a challenge you were having, they didn’t know how to help you past that point. You can support your daughter in a way you were never supported.
Help her identify when she’s eating to fill her stomach and when she’s eating to fill her heart. In other words, ask her if she can tell the difference between eating because of the body’s natural desire to satisfy physical hunger and when she wants to cope with difficult emotions. You can help her identify those emotions, such as boredom, anxiety, fear, shame, et cetera. Validate the struggle she’s having and work together with her in a way that lets her know she can count on you to help her heal.
This isn’t about her losing weight and being a certain size. This is about her escaping the mood altering powerlessness of an addiction to food. Regardless of her size, she will regain her sense of confidence and strength as she understands how to take care of her emotions in a healthy way. Your connection to her will be the key ingredient.
Stay connected!
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Geoff Steurer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in St. George, Utah. He specializes in working with couples in all stages of their relationships. The opinions stated in this article are solely his and not those of St. George News.
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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2014, all rights reserved.
How does your daughter address your obsession with looks and image? Ever consider how unnatural your appearance is with your breast augmentation, your bleached teeth, your botox lips, your hair extensions and dyed blonde hair and your excessive eye liner and your cosmetics and bling? Maybe she sees that as unnatural and her overeating is a message that she doesn’t want to obsess about looks and image like you.
Quit over feeding her…its your job to manage your child’s diet.
The only way is too start keeping more healthy food around.
Stop buying chips and candy and fruit snacks. Start buying real food. Apples, carrots, broccoli, etc. Let her eat all she want of that. Maybe she’s eating because she’s bored. Unplug the t.v., turn off the cell phones and ipads, get her a hobby. Get outside. get moving. Be a good mother. Lose the extra weight you’re carrying around too. Be a good example of health. get active and healthy together.
Put on your tightest workout clothes and parade around her friends and show them how sexy you look with your spandex leggings creeping up your rear. Then go shopping like that.