Breaking the Cycle of Food Anxiety in Children

“Mommy, you packed me bad foods.”

“What?” I responded.

“You packed me pretzels and they are crunchy munchees and my teacher said those are bad for me to eat”

“That is not true, mommy packs you a lot of different foods that work together to make you strong and healthy”.

We were getting in the car on the way back from summer camp when my daughter told me of this alarming conversation. It was a place we trusted and the recoil in my gut was instantaneous. What I actually packed them for lunch is beside the point, but for the sake of clarity and reiterating the above, our philosophy is: we want to give you a variety of foods that work together to help them grow strong and healthy.

And I wish that was the last comment my girl heard this summer, but it wasn’t.

In 2017, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. The ramifications of some genetic components and collective environments through the years tipped me over a cliff that I never saw coming. The healing and cycle breaking from it has always been front of mind when it comes to the generations behind me and I don’t think I foresaw I would be here just a few short years later with my own daughter.

The precipice of this all:

Point #1: Demonizing food is never ok.

Point #2: Seeding stress and anxiety over body shape is never ok.

While my daughter’s story is her own I want to give the high level version of where we’ve been: food scarcity was her normal for the first 3 years of her life. The last 2+ years has been working to come to a healthy relationship with all foods!

This past Saturday I took to Instagram to post a story about our experiences this summer and reach out for opinions, advice, and the question: are family’s hearing this from their little girls/kids? The responses flooded in and I was floored. I won’t post any specific responses here but I wanted to boil it down into 3 different summary points:

1. This shockingly and disturbingly normal
2. People are outraged we are talking to our children like this
3. How we talk about food in our own home is that much more critical

The Mental Health America site states the average onset of eating disorders is 12-13, with the youngest being 5-6. The idea that a five year old could already be overcome with this state of mind was shocking to me, but I also wonder if the fascination and dare I say worship of organic foods, clean eating, and of course the dieting fads on every corner block aren’t causing some of this. Even if it isn’t a direct impact we can’t pretend that as adults we haven’t been affected by that noise constantly around us. How we offload that onto those around us we must be so cognizant of. Dieting culture isn’t only for adults, or the comments that high school (unfortunately) hear, when a healthy mom influencer is making stories about organic foods for a social media post and her kiddos are in the room – it’s doing something to their minds we can’t be blind to think it isn’t.

I did some research of potential correlations and didn’t find any, but I think the culture speaks for itself in some of that.

So what do we do? What can we do? What should do?

1. We come around food simplistically – we aren’t overhyping food, we aren’t acting like it doesn’t matter. It’s clear and to the point.
2. Pointing out body types is just never going to be ok – when we as adults are doing it to little kids, it’s a recipe for body shaming as they mature and develop as adolescents – and whether they have onset symptoms at 12 or that constant ‘force’ of rhetoric around food finally breaks someone at 25 we are creating an unhealthy culture for it all.
3. We have more treatment options, but the change starts at home – in hard conversations with those that are leading our kids day in and day out or how we become aware of how we talk about food. We can’t rely on a doctor to ‘fix’ or ‘help’ with the problem down the road – we have to be active participants right now.

You can’t be scared to have the hard conversations – with adults in the same way you need to be aware of the short and simple conversations with this upcoming generation. Both need to happen in order for progress to occur.

Have other thoughts? I’d love to hear them!