healing or reeling from feeding your kids with ED in the kitchen?
After a recent post titled: "Just don't bring it into the house": Stupid things experts say #5, the comments were amazing, and reminded me that the choices we make feeding our children have repercussions beyond today's food battles.Many of my clients and blog readers have major struggles with food, or are in recovery or recovered from an eating disorder. For many, feeding their own children is a mixed bag. Pretty much every one of these moms has talked about her almost paralyzing fear of "passing on food issues" to her children. This fear, and inability to trust their instincts seem to make feeding and trusting the process more difficult.Moms have shared how the inevitable comments about a baby's weight are triggering, sending their own eating into a spiral, and also effecting how she feeds.The harmless pet names strangers use?"Peanut?" Moms hear, "You're a bad mom, why aren't you feeding him properly, are you already messing up his eating" (These moms tell me they then feel pressured to get the child to eat more, and we know that pressure with feeding backfires..)Or, "Butterball," said lovingly, to a mom with a troubled relationship to her own body and food. Mom hears, "You are a bad mom, can't you control your child's weight? He's going to be obese, like you!" How does this mom react? Perhaps by restricting the baby, distracting him so he eats less. This too, often backfires.And yet, on the flip-side, when feeding is going well, moms tell me they have "A-ha" moments. Watching their little one leave a half-eaten ice-cream, or seeing their baby delight in a new food is the motivation they need to take a leap of faith to address their own eating.The relationship we have with food is so central to who we are. The feeding relationship we have with our children serves not only to shape their experiences with food, but also our own.What else (OK diapers early on) other than feeding do you do with your kids 3-6 times a day, every day?here are a few recent comments..."(I remember her daughter sweetly looking up at someone offering her a cupcake and saying, “No thank you, my mommmy says I’m not allowed to have that crap”). I will never forget the time her daughter was at our house and while all the other kids were in the backyard running & playing, I found this little girl in a corner of the living room with the entire plate of chocolate chip cookies wolfing them down. She was five. That is EXACTLY how I learned to binge on junk.""We always had lots of junk, in the house, but it was “bad”, “you can’t/shouldn’t have that” food. Naturally, this made it far more appealing. I mean it tasted good, and I knew that, but tell me I can’t or shouldn’t have it? Oh, I’m gonna have it. Wolfing down cookies? Check. Licked-clean frosting container found hidden under the bed? Check. Riding home from school with horded change in pocket with sole purpose to buy what I wasn’t supposed to have? Check. Eating what I wasn’t supposed to have behind the dumpster behind the store? Check. Constantly wearing hoodie sweatshirts with the front pockets, because it was easier to hide gooey sticky “junk” at someone’s house so I could take it into the bathroom and eat it in peace while sitting on the closed toilet lid? Check check check."And some words of hope:
"We follow you (and Ellyn’s) advice when feeding our family and it has also made a tremendous difference in my life. I was treated for an ED in my early twenties but didn’t have children then. The service you and Ellyn provide is invaluable to parents like me who struggle, in some ways, on a daily basis to remain balanced with food and eating (although it’s much easier than it used to be)! I don’t worry as much about passing on my “issues” to my kiddos b/c I have a blueprint for how to feed them!"How has feeding your children inspired or mired you with your eating and body-image issues?