In an interview with the Suite101, Cari Corbet-Owen, clinical psychologist and author cum presenter of Mind over Fatter Workshops in Cape Town, South Africa, says that children has an innate wisdom on what and how much to eat.
Only a few adults today still stop to listen to the innate hunger and full signals that were theirs as children. She says that most adults with eating and weight problems need to relearn how to listen to their bodies.
The Four Types of Hunger
Corbet-Owen distinguishes between four types of hunger:
- Tummy hunger – the real physiological hunger response.
- Mouth hunger – eating while thirsty without real hunger.
- Heart hunger – an emotional need that must be met on an emotional level and not with food.
- Head hunger – eating because of a conditioned hunger response that coincides with traditional eating times (for example lunch at 12) whether there is real hunger or not.
In getting these hungers confused, adults gradually loose their ability to listen to their bodies and using food to satisfy all of these needs becomes a way of life.
In the process of weaning, children may also lose their ability to respond to their natural hunger and full cycles. Parents often use food as a language to communicate different things like:
- comfort (a biscuit after a fall),
- happiness (a reward for good behaviour),
- sadness (when a favourite pet dies) and even
- control (Mom decides how much and what her child eats).
Bad Food Attitudes Leads to Eating Disorders
Many of the parents of today were raised with a “war mentality” where children had to clean their plates because food was scarce. According to Corbet-Owen, continuing practices such as these may result in a child losing the ability to listen to her own hunger and full signals. These are the attitudes that lead to eating disorders.
Corbet-Owen believes that in addition to eating for the wrong reasons, food often becomes a power struggle in the home. Young children learn very quickly that food and eating is something that parents seem to be anxious about and use that fact to manipulate subtly.
The most important thing that parents can do is to respect their children’s innate wisdom about how much and what they want to eat provided that a variety of nutritious foods are on offer, says Corbet-Owen.
Ways to Encourage Healthy Food Attitudes
There are numerous ways in which parents can send a positive message about food and body image to their children:
- Try to figure out what message a child who won’t eat is trying to get across. Often the mere attention that she gets during the food fight is what the child is craving. Take the focus off the food, satisfy whatever other need the child has and she may be much more compliant to eat her food.
- Teach the child to respond to the different kinds of hunger with appropriate responses. Hugs and quality time for a heart hunger, food for a tummy hunger, drinks for thirst and distraction for head hunger.
- Involve children in food preparations from an early age. Give them simple tasks such as tearing lettuce or packing lunch boxes. Give them choices about food preparation, for example mash potatoes or baked potatoes. It gives them a sense of autonomy if they are able to choose how they want their food prepared.
- Put a “help yourself” snack drawer in place filled with a variety of healthy foods. This will prevent children from feeling deprived of food and give them a sense of control about what, when and how much they eat.
- Avoid trying to get them to eat with “deprivation statements” like “If you don’t eat this mommy will or daddy will”. It may impart the message that the child must eat over and above the current capacity because food will not be available later when she is really hungry.
- Use non-food treats as rewards. Get ways to tell children how special they are without food involved. Treat them with family fun times without food being at the centre.
- Be careful of subtle messages conveyed by fairy tales, books and toys. Some well known stories have the underlying assumption that prettier is better and to be different is to be inferior.
- Parents should watch the messages that they convey about their own and each other’s bodies. If the parents are constantly on a diet or continually putting their bodies down the child may soon start to think that food is something to feel guilty about and look at herself over-critically as well.
- If a child just says that she’s not hungry, tell her that it is quite fine, but that mom would love her presence at the table because the whole family enjoys talking to her. Set a place for her and offer her food without persisting that she eats anything. If she is really not hungry she won’t eat, but if she was just distracted, she’ll soon be eating with the rest.
With childhood obesity and childhood eating disorders on the rise, it may be wise to tread with wisdom as far as children and food are concerned. A few simple measures instituted at home may go a long way to prevent childhood eating disorders.
