Being a parent is a wild juxtaposition of amazing and impossible. As a new mom myself, I have a new level of compassion and empathy for the struggle that is trying to do the best thing for you littles when recommendations for "best practices" change seemingly every five minutes. My hope is for this post to serve as a quick reference guide for raising children with a healthy perspective on their bodies and what it means to be "healthy" in a culture that quite frankly over-values thinness.
When talking to children about their bodies, weight, and health, consider the following:
BMI is an inaccurate standard of measuring health across populations. The mathematician (not physician, mind you) who developed the BMI never intended for it to be used to measure health.
Weight and health are the result of over 100 different factors. This means that you and/or your kids could eat and exercise the same as anyone else, and never look the same.
Panicking over our children's weight, putting them on diets, and moralizing food as either “good or bad” is recipe for a lifelong, shame-based battle with food and weight (if not an eating disorder).
As difficult as it may be, ALL adolescents struggle with self-esteem and worth; teaching your child to change their outward appearance to feel better about themselves doesn't get to the root of the matter. If you are concerned about a recent change in your child’s weight, consider this may be a symptom, not the problem
The COVID global pandemic revealed an explosion in rates of eating disorders, and EDs have the second highest mortality rate of any mental health condition. Now more than ever, it’s important we take our relationships with food into consideration.
Though there is so much I appreciate about modern health, one area our medical system does us a disservice is by attributing our health concerns primarily to our weight. This is a gross overgeneralization- consider the idea that correlation does not equal causation.
95-97% of all diets fail in the long term (if not resulting in additional weight gain). There are other ways to address our health that don't place so much emphasis on weight loss.
Your kids are watching you- the way you talk about food, or speak about your own body and appearance. They are drawing from your information which will inform their own relationships with food and their bodies.
You may be asking, "If weight loss isn't the answer, what is?" There is no one answer to this question (if you find it, let me know and we can write a book about it and become billionaires!), but here are a few baseline tips that might help:
-Focus on health > size.
-Consider alternative ways of managing health, such as focusing on nutrition and intuitive eating, moving your bodies in a way that feels good, working with a doctor/dietitian (preferably one open to a non-weight centric approach) on addressing underlying issues or finding other ways to target specific health goals.
- Promote a sense of self-worth rooted in our identity (as unconditionally lovable and valuable) in Christ
-Take loosely (be critical, even) when your doctor prescribes weight loss- health can come in ANY size, and not developing an ED is 100% healthier than developing one.
-Use morally neutral language when describing food, and create an environment where all foods can fit. Some great info on this can be found at: https://kidseatincolor.com/
