Bayside Dietetics
By Sarah Smith of Bayside Dietetics
Follow Bayside Dietetics on Facebook
I can still see the love in the room when Sophie* sat down between her parents in my clinic. She was now twelve and having a significant struggle with food. Her parents were both devastated by the change in Sophie over time as she’d become more focusses on food and they both joined our first session. We started seeing each other regularly to help Sophie find a way to have peace with food again.
Sophie pinpointed that her relationship with food had started to deteriorate when she was ten, with a seemingly innocent comment, and in fact a comment that had intended to help her, with Sophie being told to have less sugar to avoid tooth decay. I can imagine it’s a common poster for dentists, with intentions purely to help people. Yet for Sophie, this triggered her to start questioning food. She began to worry that the food she was eating may not be okay for her. There was a spiral in her thoughts around food and over time this took so much from her including much of her energy and happiness. A burden that was never intended from the comments in the first place.
Not every child will respond to a comment around sugar in the same way and end up in a situation that requires them to see a Dietitian for months, however, these types of comments plant a seed that asks children to worry about what is in food. Many of the comments about sugar that are prominent in society today go beyond tooth decay and ask us to worry about the effect of sugar on our body size and shape.
Psychologists generally agree that we tend to cling to our worries more than positive comments, an evolutionary advantage for when we needed to constantly scan for danger. A simple comment on the sugar content of food, may make your child think “food is dangerous” and start to ruminate on this worry.
Most worries we try to help our children avoid, so why do we feel that this one we should be burdening them with?
The answer seems to come back to us trying to protect our children in some way. Perhaps we had dental caries ourselves and want to protect our children from that. Perhaps we are carrying forward a message around food that was given to us. Perhaps we are worried about our children’s bodies and are trying to do our best to care for them. This is not about trying to harm our children, but it is worth reflecting on the potential repercussions of our well-intended comments.
Children do not need to know about the macronutrients (carbohydrate, fat and protein) in food. They do not need to worry about how much sugar is on the label. They do not need to feel good or bad about what they have eaten. Their developing brains will not be able to make sense of that information in a healthy way.
Instead, these are worries that can trigger a difficult relationship with food and perhaps disordered thoughts and behaviours over time.
We can still support choices around food for our children that feel good to us as parents, while helping them maintain a healthy and positive relationship with food and their bodies. Supportive behaviours include the family stopping to connect in the evenings over a meal together. If eating meat or vegetables is important to you as a parent, you can role model that at the meal. Another supportive behaviour is reflecting on whether your food purchases reflect your values around food. For example, if you are worried about how often your child eats biscuits or lollies, reflect on how often you are purchasing these foods compared to how often you are buying foods that better match your values around food. Providing the food that you value in a joyous and predictable way, helps to guide children with how to eat without ever talking about the nutrition of the food itself.
We do not need to burden a young mind with analysing food. There’s enough for them to deal with. Let food be a joy.
Sarah
*This blog has used a fictional narrative and does not represent any individual. It seems too personal to do that.
