Eating disorders affect more than a quarter of young women on college campuses in this country — but the ideas and behaviors that lead to them seem to start earlier with every generation.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), more than 40 percent of girls in the first through third grades want to be thinner.
Let’s look at that again, fellow mommy: forty percent. Of first, second, and third graders. Babies, who should be worried about spelling tests and who to play tag with at recess and how much money they’ll get from the tooth fairy when that incisor finally comes out, are preoccupying themselves with their weight.
In a nation with such a pervasive media culture and such a narrow societal definition of beauty, maybe those numbers shouldn’t be a surprise.
As a mom of two girls, I can tell you that it floors you when it comes into your own house, because it paid a visit to mine this winter.
My little girl thinks her thighs are fat.
She’s 8. She’s beautiful, athletic, and a perfectly healthy weight for her height.
I don’t often lay her clothing out for school these days, because she’s developing her own sense of fashion and she likes to choose her own outfits, but on this one particular day just after Christmas, I did.
She got dressed and came downstairs to finish getting ready for school (the little ones were both still sleeping, so it was a treat for me to have some alone time with her first thing in the morning), and plunked herself in the chair across from me with a little frown before she began brushing out long blond hair that many grown women I know spend small fortunes trying to emulate.
“Sweetie, is something bothering you?” I sipped my coffee.
“No, mommy.” Fidget, fidget.
“Sungglebug, don’t tell mommy stories.” I set the cup on the table and fixed her with a mommy-knows-better stare. “I know my little girl, and I know when something is bugging you. What’s up?”
Fidget.
“Well, I … I don’t want to wear these pants.”
Pants were pretty much not on the list of things whirling through my head that I might need to talk to her about. My eyes widened a little.
“Why not? Are they too short?"
She stood up. The gray lycra Gymboree slacks were a perfect length, and the pink contrast stitching matched nicely with her shirt. I furrowed my brow, unable to see what was bothering her about her wardrobe for the day.
“You’re going to have to help mommy out here, sweetpea. What’s the matter with them?”
“I …” Sigh. Fidget, fidget, fidget. “I don’t like the way my legs look right here.” She pointed to the top inside of her thigh.
If such a thing is physically possible, I wouldn’t be surprised if my eyebrows shot all the way to my hairline, fellow mommy.
“Why?” I stared at my beautiful daughter, dumbfounded.
I know I’ve mentioned before that I was always overweight as a child, and I guess I probably started wishing I was thinner long about the third or fourth grade. But I, you know, actually had a weight problem. Enough of one that I was teased mercilessly at school for it. It persisted (and got worse) until my late twenties, when I finally found something that worked for me and I lost a little over 100 pounds.
Part of the reason I did that was because my little girl was two, and I didn’t want her to grow up in a house where mommy was always complaining about being fat. Today, part of what I do for a living is teach other people how to make healthier choices, and I’m a firm believer in the fact that there are easy ways for parents to help their kids learn good habits.
Absolutely, childhood obesity is a problem in this country. This is the first generation of children that, if things continue the way they’re going, will not have a longer life expectancy than their parents. That’s a sobering thought, fellow mommy.
But in our efforts to get kids to be more active and maintain a healthy weight, we can’t push them to the other extreme.
“The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate associated with all causes of death for females 15-24 years old,” according to a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and quoted on ANAD’s website.
Twelve times. That’s a scary statistic if I’ve ever seen one.
And while the media is an easy scapegoat for frightened parents, it only deserves part of the blame. To understand how to prevent a psychological disorder, it helps to know what causes it in the first place.
“Eating disorders arise from a variety of physical, emotional, social, and familial issues, all of which need to be addressed for effective prevention,” Dr. Michael Levine and Margo Maine wrote in a 2003 paper on eating disorders.
So, fellow mommy: come in. Have a seat. Let me get you a cup of coffee or a glass of wine (is it 5:00 yet?) and let’s talk about how to keep our babies (boys and girls both) from falling victim to a potentially deadly relationship with food.
Talk the talk
I think we start by telling them, early and often, that they are beautiful.
I think that when the influence of our culture and media makes them question it, we reinforce it the best we can.
That morning this winter, I swished ideas around in my head for a good 30 seconds before I opened my mouth.
“Darling, you are beautiful. There is absolutely nothing the matter with your legs or any other part of you. You are healthy and strong. Where did you get the idea that your legs don’t look right?”
Shrug. Fidget fidget.
“I don’t know. I just … they don’t look … the girls you see in magazines and on TV have little legs.”
Her legs are not “not little” by any stretch of the imagination, but they are starting to become more shapely, which I noticed last summer since we pretty much live at the pool from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
“Ah. Well, sugarplum, I’m afraid if you don’t like the fact that you have a curve there, you have mommy to blame for that. You mostly seem to take after your daddy, but your legs are long and shapely like mine. Sorry, kiddo.”
“Can I make them look different if I stop eating candy?”
This from a child who eats two small treats per day. If I hadn’t been so determined to remain calm, I might have burst into tears. As it was, I may not have done the best thing, but I did what felt like the best thing to me at the time: I was honest with her.
“No, baby girl, you can’t,” I said. “You know how mommy lost so much weight when you were a little little girl? I’ll tell you a secret (because children love secrets): I didn’t like my legs, and for the exact same reason. I kept trying to lose more, thinking if I just lost another 10 pounds, that would go away.
“You know what happened? I got in trouble at work for being too close to the bottom of my healthy weight range (true story — that, and my hubby started telling me to ‘eat a sandwich’ every time he hugged me, but I didn’t tell her that) and I finally figured out that that’s just the way my body is made. I want to be healthy, for you and your daddy and your brother and sister, and I won’t be healthy if I don’t weigh enough, any more than I was when I weighed too much. So I had to get to a place where I could just say ‘that’s the way God made me, and I’m happy being me.’ Your legs are strong and beautiful, and they’re exactly right for you because they’re the ones you were born with. There’s nothing about them you shouldn’t like.
“All of that said, if you’re really uncomfortable in that outfit, you may go get your long gray sweater and put it on — it goes with those pants, too.”
Of course, as soon as she got on the bus, I thought of 100 different, better things I could have said to her. I still wonder if I caved by letting her change her clothes.
Walk the walk
If you go around all day complaining or cracking jokes about your appearance, what does that teach your babies? If you’re not happy in your own skin, fellow mommy, let me put on my stern mommy friend hat and tell you that it’s put up or shut up time. Either make it so that you are happy, or get good at pretending, because it’s not good for your kids to hear you bashing yourself all the time.
Pay attention to what they’re watching
As much as I try to limit the things my kids are exposed to, you can’t control every second of every day. I, personally, have never seen my daughter looking at a fashion magazine. But obviously, she got ahold of one somewhere and looked long and closely enough to determine that there was a "flaw" in her adorable little eight-year-old self.
According to ANAD, she’s not alone. Sixty-nine percent of girls in fifth through twelfth grades report that magazine pictures influence their idea of a perfect body shape.
But here’s the thing we have to get across to our babies, fellow mommy: those people who are in the magazines are in there because they’re different than most people. The body type portrayed in advertising as the ideal is possessed naturally by only five percent of American women. Yet 47 percent of girls in fifth through twelfth grades said they felt fat because of those images.
“Healthy” is your new buzzword
“We talk to our daughter about the importance of being healthy: not thin, not fat, healthy,” Christine Kirk of Sterling said Saturday.
I’m right there with Christine on that one. But then, you and I have already had the “raising healthy kids” talk, fellow mommy.
Dana Andalis of Midlothian said she and her husband try to be good role models for their two children, and they talk to them about how everyone is special.
“Being a Mom of multi-cultural kids, teaching tolerence has, obviously, always been very important to me,” she said. “I've never wanted my kids to feel ‘different’ because of how they look. That has always translated into our message that people come in many different colors, shapes and sizes and that's what makes everyone unique. We also try to be good role models and stay active and healthy.”
Help them learn that it’s OK to fail
Perfectionism is a trait exhibited almost universally by victims of eating disorders, personality studies show. High expectations of self, competitiveness, and drive were also high-scoring factors. When a child is always good at everything and feels that they are expected to be perfect in every way, it puts them at higher risk for resorting to desperate measures to control their weight.
So let them know that it’s all right to fail at something. The best way to do that, in my experience (at least with little ones) is to let them know their heroes fail at things. Who do your babies want to be like when they grow up? I'll bet most of them want to be just like you, fellow mommy (this is why how you talk about yourself is so crucial. See “walk the walk,” above). So tell them a story about when you tried to learn to crochet and made a dozen triangular potholders because you kept dropping stitches, or brained your cousin with a croquet mallet and never played again. Not everyone is good at everything, and with the kind of pressure many of our kids put on themselves, they need to understand and embrace that.
Keep an eye on young athletes
Being active is healthy, and sports are a great way to get kids moving. But (why must there always be a “but?”) moms of children who excel in athletics should be extra vigilant. Elite female athletes were more than twice as likely to have an eating disorder than members of a control group in a 2004 study published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine. In addition, the study found that athletes in aesthetic sports like gymnastics, ballet, and figure skating were at the highest risk of all.
What else is there? Besides trying to foster a sense that beautiful people come in many shapes and sizes, and talking about health instead of weight at home, ANAD suggests that you watch for signs of depression. According to their statistics, almost half of the people diagnosed with eating disorders meet the criteria for depression.
So, fellow mommy, how do little old you and I win this parenting battle? Teach them healthy habits and self worth early on. Emphasize individuality. Praise their strengths. It takes effort, but the rewards are priceless.
My daughter did go ahead and change her sweater that day, and I’ve never been sure if I did the right thing by suggesting that. But my dream is for her to put on a similar outfit someday because she chose it and is happy in it. I’ve noticed some leggings and shorts coming out of the closet in recent weeks that make me think that notion might not be so far-fetched after all.
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