Food for thought on raising healthy kids

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

Parents need to change the narrative around weight, argues Cline. Her focus is on the feeding relationship, and creating attitudes and behaviour that supports a child’s ability to eat and grow according to his or her body. Rather than imparting the belief that “there is only one way to have a good body”, teach your children that “all bodies are good bodies”.

Cline acknowledges how hard it is to break our own conditioning around weight. Yet, it’s necessary to do so in order to raise well-adjusted children. If our child has enough emotional maturity, we can share our own challenges and work together to accept the truth – that there’s no one ideal body.

“Shut up, and look at the facts,” Cline urges parents. “If your child is a bigger kid and always has been, that’s how they’re made,” she says. “Trying to change that is the worst thing you can do for them. The more you embody the belief that all bodies are good bodies, the more they’ll emulate it – as in anything in parenting.”

When we over-identify with our own bodies, our kids learn to do the same. Cline emphasises the importance of watching what you say in front of your children. “The comments we make really land. Any messaging around bodies, be it good or bad, is damaging for your children,” she says. So, if you tell someone they look good because they lost weight, that plays on your child’s mind. “It teaches them that thin is better, that they’ll be loved and more accepted by their parents and the world if they’re thin.” Don’t talk about weight in front of your kids, she says.

“We can’t escape the world,” she says, “but you can do your best to make your dialogue and your message as good as it can be.” Ultimately, the most important message to give our kids is that they are more than their bodies. What you love about your children won’t be their size, it will be their sweet natures, their senses of humour, who they are. We don’t want to tie their self-worth to their size.

It’s really about being kind to our kids and to ourselves. “Sensitivity to bodies in general is a wonderful thing to teach your children,” says Cline. “By telling our children we don’t accept their bodies, we’re telling them that we don’t accept them. It’s all about the environment you create. Create a space of dialogue with no judgement but rather compassion, acceptance, and love. A child needs to know they’re loved and unconditionally accepted as they are.”

Diets are harmful, Cline says, and ultimately, 95% of them fail. They work in cycles, starting with the promise of helping us feel better and gaining praise. But ultimately, we obsess over food because we’re restricting what we eat. When they don’t work or we fall off the wagon after they’re over, we land up feeling ashamed and that something is wrong with us rather than with the diets themselves.

“Children and adults come in different shapes and sizes, and that’s normal. We start looking at food without appreciating that the most defining part of our weight is genes. Even if we all ate and moved the same amount, we wouldn’t look the same. Yet the world we live in doesn’t appreciate body diversity.”

We take the world’s singular image of what a healthy body looks like, and we apply it to ourselves and our kids. Yet, argues Cline, as long as our kids stay on the same growth curve, it’s a natural progression. “We can look at our children’s behaviour and want them to behave healthily around food,” she says, “but we can’t control their weight as much as we think we can without terrible effects.”

If there is a rapid change in weight, look at your child’s behaviour, as that is something that can be controlled. Rapid weight gain or loss is a symptom of a deeper problem or of a changing environment that needs to be managed.

We also need to teach our kids that their bodies will change, and that that’s normal. This is often something that parents encounter earlier than they expect, generally in prepubescent years. “Parents of kids of around eight, nine and 10 start seeing these changes, don’t understand them, and then freak out and unintentionally create issues,” says Cline. “Often girls and boys going through puberty get a bit chubby before they get longer, and then they fill out into whatever shape they’re meant to be.”

At this time, your children are also growing aware of their bodies and body differences, and they’re vulnerable. It’s important to cultivate a healthy dialogue, and create a safe space for your children around weight and body changes.

“They need your reassurance that it’s normal and that it’s good that their bodies are changing because they’re becoming women or men.” Also keep in mind that every kid will go through puberty in a completely different way because all bodies are different.

It’s better to focus on building resilience in our children, says Cline. “A resilient child is someone who can stand up in spite of their differences,” she says. Instilling boundaries regarding food is important but focus on cultivating a healthy lifestyle in the home regardless of everyone’s size. “It’s more sustainable to pursue health. Provide children with enough food groups and nutrients over time. In regard to food, show, don’t tell. Model good nutrition.”