Okay I watch this show and there is a girl in it who said her mom is a personal trainer and that her mom always told her what to eat and what not to eat, and made her feel bad about her size. So it got me to thinking if other women or men stressed diet and nutrition to there kids with good intentions but sometimes it makes girls develope eating disorders. I was just wondering how much people on this site who are trying to lose weight stress to there kids nutrition or what foods to eat and what not to eat . You know bad food vs good food and how certain foods will make you fat yada yada. sorry if Im not making sense but I was basically wondering if parents on here wonder what type of signals they are sending to there kids.

My answer to my own question is I have a 5.5 yr old girl and I always make sure not to mention weight or fat or anything around her. She eats really healthy for a young kid and I think its because I lead by example and I give her the option of what she wants to eat instead of telling her this food isnt healthy or this will make you fat. when we go to McDonalds my daughter will order a salad because she sees me ordering one and she thinks there so delicious. Plus she loves fruit and vegetables, she also loves junk food which we don't have around that often. I think the only thing that she sees me do is measure my food but as far as me getting on the scale every morning I make sure that she doesn't see that. So tell me what yall do

When I was growing up, my mom forbid any sort of sweets or junk in the house. There was ONLY what was called "health food" back then allowed in our house. She was seen as rather eccentric.....and today, would probably be classified as having orthorexia. Back then, she was referred to as a "health food nut".

So we kids would literally do anything to get our hands on white bread, sweets, etc.

Grown, we all eat pretty healthy....but all the sisters have had weight issues and also issues with sneaking sweets/junk, cravings, bingeing, etc. We definitely have some disordered eating issues, though nothing severe. Our brothers, not so much...but they're all over 6 ft. tall and fairly athletic.

As a result, though I always prepared and had healthy foods in the house, I never made sweets/junk off-limits to my sons. And it turned out that they ended up being able to take it or leave it when it came to these things....and basically eat pretty healthy and only indulge occasionally.

You see this with alcohol....when you compare the US with other countries where wine, etc. is allowed at meals....even a taste for the kids. When something is totally forbidden, there seems to develop a hidden allure to it.....and more people tend to sneak and indulge and develop problems.....feel compelled to want to have the forbidden item in a daring sort of way.

It's funny....I remember years ago, the cousin of this guy I was dating was significantly over-weight. She had a cute little daughter who was a toddler at the time....and she was almost militantly not allowing the daughter to have ANY sweets, etc....and literally having her eat ALL health-type foods. In fact, she seemed quite proud and bragged about this.

And I remember watching this, remembering my own childhood, and wondering if this child would grow into a teen and sneak out and buy tastycakes and fudgesicles like we did.....and grow up to have her own issues with food and weight due to this.

I also felt it was a bit disingenuous of this woman, who could clearly not manage her own weight issues....to force this extreme plan on her very young daughter....and felt it was likely to cause problems down the road for her. I'm not saying I was right....but it's just how I felt at the time.

deena

I have a daughter now, and I grew up with a mom who struggled with weight loss (and still does). My folks never restricted us, and back in the good ol' days when I was 135 and could eat 4000 calories a day and still need more, mom just provided the best she could, up to and including helping me choose protein/weight gain shakes and the like at the health food store, while she shopped for foods to help her with her loss.

Now, that my metabolism has gone down (I was hyperthyroid, and in my early twenties, I was "treated" for it, and it just all went downhill from there), I can look back to what she did, and try to eat better and make better choices. I'm glad she didn't force us to follow her, but only opened our eyes to the other options available for those who needed to watch their weight.

My daughter now is a skinny minnie, and if she takes after my younger self or husband, she'll be like that. For now, I just make sure she has as much good food available, don't limit fun food, and now, her favorite thing is to work out with me on the Wii (which involves her running around and jumping as only 2 y/o can). I hope to keep the same good attitude and choices that my mom gave us while I work on my weight.

Ugh, the question every parent must balance. It's a horrible task and it could go either way. Adults on here have said "My parents were too strict so I binged later in life" and others have said "I wish my parents had taught me about moderation when I was a kid." Which grown adult will your child grow up to be? It's really hard.

I have a little boy who is overweight and he's a pretty sedentary kid. His weight bothers him. At first I was trying to curb his habits on the sly. We set a rule that all of us had to eat at the table only. I started giving both kids snacks at regular intervals hoping to keep both of them out of the pantry and fridge when they shouldn't be. But once my son started coming to us upset because someone had made fun of him and once I realized he was wearing the same clothes all the time because it's what he thought he looked best in, I knew it was time to have the hard discussion with him and hope for the best.

We talk about calories. We sat down one day and made a list of all the food he'd eaten that day and boy was he honest. We added up the calories. He was shocked. I only had just that one discussion with him and haven't brought it up again since, but he checks the calories on the packages before eating it now.

He knows Mom and Dad are trying to lose weight and while we were keeping it secret from the kids, now we talk about it and celebrate our victories. Our son jumps on the scale weekly. We've told him his goal is to maintain while he grows, but he gets so excited if he loses a pound.

I'll admit I made a mistake with him last week. It's such a balancing act! He had lost seven pounds, but last week he reported an eight pound gain. I jumped right on it and chastised him for having eaten too much lately. I've been kicking myself ever since. I should have had a plan for how I would react if that happened. What I should have done was shrugged and explained that the scale was just a tool and what did he think he should do with the information it gave him? I still may bring it up and apologize for how I handled it.

My Mom was a Weight Watcher, so we alway had healthy balanced nutrition on hand. I do remember getting out into the world and subsisting on chips and totinos pizza rolls for a while - we didn't get those things very often at home! I learned to have a salad and a veggie with dinner, that corn and potatoes did NOT qualify as your daily intake of veggies and that fruits and yogurts were the best snacks!

On to my family - we have four children. I am a calorie counter, so I serve foods with measuring cups to encourage portion control, have everyone wait 20min before having seconds, and only allow evening snack to be ice cream a few times per week.

When we have chips, they are baked varieties and we have a "serving size". Ice cream is lowfat, we have soda on rare occasions and only diet.

My husband and I love to cook and eat. Our children love cooking shows and are very appreciative of new tastes and are willing to try any new food. We serve lots of veggies and have always told the kids that if they didn't eat what was served at dinner, they didn't eat. We don't serve organ meat, exotic dishes or anything too spicy - so there is no reason for them NOT try it.

We do talk about our weight loss progress. But we focus on health and being able to live a long time rather than looking good.

HTH

I have a daughter and I am very cautious about what she eats. I don't forbid sweets except at the daycare. They tend to have cookies or cake at the end of the day and I don't want her coming home spasing out. She gets over generated when she eats sugar. I keep animal crackers and the 100 calorie cookie snacks in the pantry so she isn't deprived. Every now and then we have ice cream. I don't eat a lot of sugar. I gained a large majority of my weight from chips and fast food. We even limit the amount of fast food we eat. When we eat out it's usually at Chick fil A and she gets chicken nuggets. She doesn't like fries or any type of potatoes. She loves pasta and when we have it my husband makes his own sauce so the salt and calories are under his control. I don't give her candy but once every blue moon. Oh I forgot to mention she is 20 months. As she ages I will have my weight under control and can teach her moderation when it comes to snack/junk food.

I don't have kids, but I was one of those kids. My mom had this mantra of "stand up straight and suck in your stomach". She and my aunts (her sisters) would always talk about weight and what they ate and when they worked out. I know I always felt guilty when eating anything that I enjoyed in front of them.

My cousin (aunt's daughter) told her mom when she had kids (she had two daughters) that she wasn't allowed to talk about any of that stuff in front of them. I'm still really impressed with her that she did that, knowing the effect that this kind of talk can have on growing girls. If it ever would come up, my cousin would speak out right away, politely but firmly, that she didn't want that kind of talk in front of her daughters.

It's always a delicate balancing act. I have three girls (7.5, 5 and 4) who are, respectively, athletic with some pudge, tall and skinny and a little block of muscle.

Since I'm a recovering anorexic, my weight sometimes becomes a bigger issue than it needs to be. Our family is no stranger to mental illness, though, so my husband has honestly explained the illness to our children (in a way they can understand).

I'll try not to ramble while I explain how we approach it in all other venues.

Main Point: Honesty, honesty, honesty.

1) We stress good foods for health and fitness. You don't eat well to stay pretty and thin, you eat well so you have energy to sled, hike, play with the dog, toss around a frisbee, swim and so forth.

2) We explain that some people gain weight and some people don't, just like some people have blonde hair and others have brown, or some are short and some are tall. It's extremely important to us that our children know it is possible to be slightly heavier while still eating good food, and, if that's the case, it's fate and they shouldn't worry about it.

3) My oldest inevitably brings up my weight loss efforts - and the low carbing. I've told her I'm trying to lose the weight I gained by eating bad foods. Since she's a pretty smart cookie, I've been successfully able to get her to understand (at a low level) the metabolic damage I've done to myself by overeating candies, pastries and other sweets. She understands that, because I overloaded my body with all this junk, my body reacts differently to a bowl of oatmeal than hers does. "I gained weight by eating foods that weren't good for my body, and those foods hurt my body. Now I have to fix it. Remember what Daddy said? If you eat good foods, it's not how much you weigh but how you feel. You only need to worry about how much you weigh when you're eating foods that aren't good for your body."

4) Out of all this, we reinforce the positive. Our kids know that they eat "good" foods the vast majority of the time to keep their bodies healthy and fit. They also understand that if they don't keep their bodies in tip-top shape, they won't be able to have the sweets or pastries as a treat.

How do we do this in the home? I mean, how do we actually accomplish it?

We don't keep sweets in the house. If I have chocolate, it's extra-dark chocolate. I admit to having a "stash" of milk chocolate in the back of the pantry, which is given out as a treat after I introduce a new (and usually) bizarre food. Maybe food-as-a-reward is a bad thing to do, but I figure my kids deserve something they know they'll like after I put a spicy lentil dish on their plate!

I don't buy cookies, cakes, ice creams or just about any other candy that can be overeaten. I tell them it's because I have a limited grocery budget and don't want to spend $5 on a package of Oreos. This is true, but I do skip the part about not wanting the junk in my house. If they want cookies, and have been good, I'll put in the effort to make a batch (with fresh-ground oatmeal flour rather than white flour, I should add ). Ice cream is a treat for a day out or an afternoon with grandma and grandpa, and cake is something you get on birthdays and holidays.

I don't buy prepackaged meals unless someone is sick. We ate a whole lot of frozen Bertoli meals after my son was born, but, for the most part, I cook everything from scratch or nearly scratch. My kids watch me cook and see what goes in from beginning to end. My oldest daughter has naturally taken a liking to reading the ingredients list. "What is dipho-hoda-watcha-max? Do we have any of that in the spice drawer?"

If my kids ask for a fruit or veggie at the grocery store, I always find room in my budget for it. Some weeks we go without bread (by "without" I mean store-bought, I bake bread as needed for lunches) or improvise the cut of meat I wanted just to make it possible. Unless the item is twice what I'm willing to pay, I put something back if my kids want it. This week is was Starfruit for my middle and pomegranates for my eldest. And, once again this week...we have no bread, lol.

My kids aren't allowed to gorge themselves on carbs. I don't force low-carb on them, but carbs do raise blood sugar and Type II diabetes has been popping up in my family. They get one serving of the carbs and have to fill up on meat or veggies if they're still hungry.

It's funny how we all approach things in different ways. The only sodas my kids get are Italian sodas made with just seltzer water and *real* sugar sweetened syrups, or the sugar-sweetened pops from the Mexican grocery store down the road. We avoid anything with artificial sugars (they give me migraines so I'm convinced they're of the devil) and HFCS.

I'm not criticizing your choices. I just find it odd that we all have the same "sometimes" rules with different caveats.

I totally struggle with this!

I was raised by the food police-- my mom and dad praised me for eating 900 calories a day at age ten, and praised me again when at 5'8" and age 12 they watched me go on Weight Watchers and go down from 138 to 120. Surprise, surprise, as a teen athlete I could not sustain 120 (underweight BMI) Started binging and was set up for a lifetime of problems.

So. I did something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT with my kids. I feed them healthy food, don't restrict, DO discuss health and nutrition, discourage dieting behaviors when their friends started on the typical adolescent diet thing, and NEVER criticized their bodies.

Three of my kids are fine-- but one shows some signs of disordered eating-- she wants to eat a 100 per cent carb diet. She eats bags of candy and skips meals.... she was slim, because she played sports and was growing, but she stopped growing, and stopped playing the running sport. She's very muscular and has a big build, kind of like me, but now I can see that she's starting to be just a little bit overweight.

She's fifteen. I try talking to her about it, never mentioning weight-- only nutrition and health-- and she says DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT MY WEIGHT!!!

Oy vey!

I'm afraid that I modeled stress eating for a long time, and now I'm modeling dieting. UGH. In spite of my most passionate efforts I'm worried that I have screwed or will screw her up.

I am going to talk to a therapist about it. I really don't know the best way to handle it and I REFUSE to let he suffer the way I did.

I'm not too far off of where Altari is. I have one child that is short, skinny, and what there is of him is muscle. He eats more than everybody.

My other son (younger) has a different situation. I and my partner do most of our own cooking, and there are always fruits and vegetables in the house - even when I'm not looking to take off pounds. When my younger son goes to visit his father (my exhusband, who is 5'10" is 450 lbs or better nowadays - he was an easy 250 when he and I were together.) for the summers, he comes back -ALWAYS - 10-20 lbs heavier and one or two sizes bigger. That's a lot of weight for a little kid to gain in 2.5 months. So, when school starts, none of the clothes he has will fit and all the kids tease him about his weight. At 8 years old, he is weight conscious.

The challenge I face is to help him out without cementing that "I'm a fat kid" image in his head. So, we don't put him on a diet per se, but we do cook good stuff, discuss nutrition, make sure I watch how much he eats at dinner (no third helpings, kiddo, sorry!), watch sweets intake, etc. By spring he is back to a normal size, and then it is off to visit his dad again. Fortunately he loves all food (including fresh fruits and veggies) and is very active.

You know, writing this has been a bit cathartic. I worry a lot about my younger son having a good self-image, and I don't get to talk about this particular problem a lot.

calluna

I have a 5.5 year old boy who is underweight (I mean clinically - below 5%ile BMI) so I really struggle about his food- it's hard for me to not want him to eat, even if it's not healthy food. I do try to serve and model healthy food choices though, although he is very anti-veggie. Fortunately, he loves fruit, one of his favorite meals is strawberries and cottage cheese - and I don't even like or eat cottage cheese! lol! I generally make sure he eats a healthy, balanced meal, and as long as he's finished that, I'm fairly flexible with the treats. I don't keep chips and fried stuff around, but he does have ice cream sandwiches or something like that just about every day. And a fair amount of chocolate milk - I use Carnation Instant breakfast for the added nutrition/calories rather than chocolate syrup. He likes regular milk too, so I let him say if he wants plain or chocolate, and he picks plain about 2/3 of the time, so I don't worry too much about creating a bad habit or that he'll never drink plain milk. We share milk, so he has 1% for that, but for I do get full fat dairy cheeses for him when they are things I'm not going to eat.

So it's a kind of weird situation - trying hard to lose weight myself but trying hard to get some weight on him!

As far as the scale, he does see me weigh myself and he usually weighs himself at the same time. We cheer each other's weight, regardless of what the scale says, we cheer. He has no idea I'm hoping my number goes down and his goes up, though. And even when I'm not happy with my number, I still make myself cheer and say yay. At some point, he'll understand it's not a good thing for someone to be heavy, but for now, I want to avoid any negative association in his mind with weight.

He's a super active kid (possibly ADHD, actually, I'll find out more soon) so I haven't had to worry about modelling activity, but now that I am more active, I do think it's good that he sees me doing a lot more. He loves to watch me use the Wii Fit, and I'm sure he'll also appreciate it as I can do more activities with him like running around at the playground with him, bike riding, etc.

I talk about always foods and sometimes foods but try not to make a weight connection, just a health connection. They ended up with the berenstain bears "Too much junk food" book after Xmas, which is ALL about being "chubby" and I need to make that book dissappear.

With my daughter I think it will be a challenge. My son just likes food and while he likes treats, he is pretty good at self regulating. My daughter has a bit more of a tendency to gorge on stuff she really likes (she will also go without eating anything if she decides she doesnt want to try what I make)

I did find it amusing --we were invited to a cookie party before Xmas and I made sure we ate dinner first but then I was going to let them have as many cookies as they wanted. I think dd hesitatingly ate 2 and then switched to cheese and crackers. ds ate 1 and then devoured the entire plate of grapes the host had set out.

And I am with whoever said if my kids ever get soda it will be the sugar sweetened variety (they've never had any). I am hoping my kids never go down the artificial sweetener path. That is the only food that I make off limits when they go on play dates.

To ubergirl:

My kids are grown and the good news is that they usually outgrow most of these strange behaviors. I remember years ago, my oldest son went off on this tangent where he believed washing your hair was bad for it and showed up that Thanksgiving with these dusty-looking dreads and wearing this macrame-type Rastafarian hat/beret. I went Oy Vey! But my aunts assured me this was just a phase and sure enough, several years later he got a good job and is now almost GQ about his appearance.

My sister has 3 daughters a bit younger than mine (college-age) and they had some strange eating behaviors when younger but now are very interested in cooking (thanks to the food channel) and also nutrition...and now eat a very healthy diet.

The bad news, however, is that each generation has its own issues that parents have difficulty relating to...so have difficulty trying to figure out how to deal with them.
Thanks to the internet, there has been a surge of these pro-Ana and pro-Mia sites that have become increasingly popular with adolescent and teen girls. And the problem here is that even though this may be a typical phase.....anorexia and bulimia are considered to be true addictions and in the obsessive-compulsive thinking category. And for this reason, while this behavior may have started as a typical phase, it can easily turn into a true addiction and even when they get older and realize how unhealthy it is, they have severe difficulty stopping these behaviors....often for life.

I had all sons but I honestly have to say that had I had any daughters, I'm not sure at all how I would have handled this or what I would have said and taught them in light of this. I NEVER even heard of anorexia and bulimia until I was an adult and cannot relate to what it would feel like to have this be a big issue as a teen.

deena

My girls hear nutrition discussed plenty--if for nothing else because I have a deep interest in the subject. I never, ever discuss my weight around them. My older one (age 8) is keenly aware of moderation and the importance of staying fit. My younger one saw a very large person on TV the other day and she blurted out, "he ate the wrong foods." So, I guess they are both somewhat aware of the subject. They also learn about it at school.

As their mom I will do everything I can to ensure they are fed properly. But, no matter what--I have made a commitment to myself that I will NOT ever, EVER discuss or critique their weights or their figures or anything else. Girls have enough to deal with. So much is expected of them and the world will judge harshly. I am their soft landing place and they will always have 100% acceptance and love in this house and from me.