that is not a good idea. Throughout this book, you will be reminded to choose one or two areas to work on rather than trying to do everything. Decide what you consider to be your child’s most troublesome area and work on that. If you attempt to change everything all at once, you will create resentment in your child and perhaps even in yourself. This will not only be counterproductive, it will make your efforts seem haphazard and thus ineffective. The size of the effort is not nearly as important as the consistency behind it. One small and consistent change will mean more than ten sporadic ones. Keep in mind that big journeys begin with small steps.
As you continue to read, you will learn more about how to deal with the “saying-no-to-food” guilt. For right now, think about many of the ways that food is used as something other than a means of nourishing human bodies. It would be very helpful for you to make a list of those ways that may be present in your child’s life that food is used for a purpose other than nutrition. Here are some ideas to get you started. (Remember, the items listed here are not the only ways food is used to deal with emotions.)
• A baby cries and a parent automatically reaches for a bottle.
• A child goes to the doctor for a shot and is presented with a lollipop afterward.
• A preschooler learns to bake cookies as a classroom activity.
• A child is threatened with “no dessert” if the entire plate of food is not eaten.
• A kindergartener is bribed with an ice cream cone for good behavior during a haircut.
• A filled cookie jar sits on the kitchen counter in one family’s home to serve as a reward for good behavior to the children who live there.
• An elementary school child’s parents are asked to provide cupcakes to celebrate their child’s birthday in class.
• A yearly family activity involves making cookies for Grandma’s birthday.
• Following a day of outdoor activities, school children are presented with ice cream.
• Middle school students taking part in a musical play convene after the performance to eat cake and cookies at the wrap party.
• A child invites others over to a pizza birthday celebration.
• A high school student puts money in a vending machine to buy two candy bars for a quick lunch so she has more time to talk to the boy she likes.
• Stressed-out over constant bickering, a parent relents, giving a teenager $20 to have dinner out with friends.
• After a relationship breakup, a high school student eats a half-gallon of ice cream.
• Watching television cooking shows is a regular part of one family’s routine.
Does any one of these sound familiar? If not, were you able to come up with your own list? Whatever you found, take a moment to look it over. Are you surprised? How many of the items on your list did you do as a child? What about your parents? Do you know if they, too, did those things as children?
Don’t worry if you weren’t able to make a long list or couldn’t answer all of the previous questions. Later in the book, you will be asked to write more about this. Right now, the important thing is for you to begin thinking about the role food plays in your child’s life.
While you are contemplating all of this, think, too, about the fact that as a society, we give lip service to the idea that fruits and vegetables are important for our health, whereas our actions indicate that we value the flavor of fatty, high-calorie foods more because of their taste. “Remember, actions speak louder than words.”
While many parents would assert that they value fruits and vegetables, think for a minute exactly how that value is demonstrated. In many families, a great deal of energy is expended urging children to eat healthy foods, including fruits and vegetables. Sometimes even threats or bribes are used to accomplish this. Yet, how frequently do parents in these families actually model the behavior—eating fruits and vegetables—themselves? Or, if a parent tells a child to eat all of his or her vegetables so that he or she can have dessert, then the subtle message being sent is that dessert is more desirable than the actual meal. Dessert becomes a reward to be eaten only after a chore (eating vegetables) is accomplished.
Similarly, when a child is rewarded with special foods after accomplishing a difficult task or attending to an unpleasant event, the unconscious message is that the “reward foods”—usually high-calorie dessert items—are a means of soothing unpleasant feelings. Or, if a child’s school uses dessert items to celebrate birthdays and holidays, the lesson being imparted is that these items are more desirable than the everyday foods he or she regularly eats. This creates a food hierarchy wherein certain items are more important than others. Let’s consider what can happen when children are given these messages.
A child who receives the message that high-calorie dessert items are a form of comfort during difficult times will continue to turn to these when life becomes unpleasant. In the same way, a child taught to use these items to celebrate special events will become dependent on certain foods to have fun or receive satisfaction from life. Taken to the extreme, this behavior could lead to obesity, even death.
Though many of these social practices were established years before the current rise in obesity, the difference now is due to the extent and the combinations involved. Unlike in years past, today’s children are faced with a greater number of fears and challenges than ever before: rapid technological progress, the threat of war, unemployment, inflation, rising health care costs, extremely high beauty standards, child molestation, a rise in the number and degree of violent crimes, rising divorce rates, etc. The list could go on forever but the point is that children today are faced with numerous challenges. How many of us worried about even half of the things on this list when we were growing up? Quite the contrary to our experiences, children and young adults today regularly worry about most of the things mentioned.
For instance, graduating from high school no longer guarantees that teens will get good jobs or be successful. In fact, great pressure is put on today’s students to begin preparing for college admission in elementary school, with the result that a grade of B can be a cause for tears if the child in the next seat gets an A. Most children are subjected to the pressures of standardized tests well before entering their junior year in high school, while some begin as early as middle school to plan their college majors.
Those who dream of getting married can no longer look forward to a “happily EVER after.” Quite the opposite, as more than half of those marrying will end up in divorce courts within a few years. Children and adolescents are well aware of this.
Now, think for a second about children’s schedules today (and it’s only recently that such words as “children” and “schedule” would have been written in the same sentence). In the past, childhood was a time of freedom and of “making one’s own fun.” By contrast, today’s children are shuffled from activity to activity (music lessons, scout meetings, team sports, religious education, private instruction in a variety of subjects, etc.) in an effort to make them well-rounded adults and give them an edge in applying to college. Little, if any, time is left over for children to simply entertain themselves. The leisure time left gets eaten up by television and computers, neither of which involve the kind of meaningful physical activity that contributes to a fit frame, while at the same time standards for physical beauty have never been higher, for both boys and girls.
Interestingly enough, the recent rise in—and fear of—obesity among children has promoted a “look good on the outside” mindset. Today,
