Put all of these stressors together—high academic expectations, overbooked schedules, more rigorous beauty standards, rising divorce rates, and increased crime against children—and you have some idea of the issues facing today’s children. In general, the emotional state of the country, and specifically of children, is chaotic and filled with fear. Now, more than ever, nurturing is needed to deal with the issues mentioned above. Unfortunately, many of today’s children are learning to nurture themselves by overeating.
Think for a moment about the many ways in which children are taught to use food to make themselves feel better. How many times has your child been offered a lollipop, cookie, or ice cream after a doctor’s visit, or a special comfort food like mashed potatoes or mac’n’cheese when he or she is sick?
Modern, Western parents no longer fear starvation, for themselves or their children. But it wasn’t so long ago that food was scarce. It was not uncommon for people to suffer from and even die of malnutrition. Eating was therefore seen as a means of promoting health, and a fat child was seen as a healthy child. While our societal circumstances have changed, our attitudes have not. Food is still used to nurture children during difficult or stressful times. The biggest difference now, however, is that the abundance of foods high in fat and calories allows children to eat a greater variety and a more dangerous quantity of food to nurture themselves.
In addition to using food to soothe our children, we also use it to reward good behavior. The practice of using lollipops after a trip to the doctor or dentist, though fortunately being phased out in most modern medical and dental practices, continues in others. Even though this may seem innocuous enough, let’s consider for a second the unconscious message being sent to children. When food is used as a reward, children are given the idea that eating is associated with the good feelings of being rewarded. By making food a reward, we teach children to place too great a value on eating. Rather than sending the message that eating is a biological act needed to nurture our bodies, children are regularly taught that food is a reward for good behavior, thus setting up a form of competition between those foods considered desirable and those that are healthy, or, even more dangerous—the expectation that all good behavior will be rewarded with treats.
Consider for a moment that a child with this expectation misbehaves in the grocery store. In the past, he or she has been bribed to discontinue such behavior with a sweet treat. If given a cookie or candy, this child has learned that food is provided for a desired behavior—he or she has also learned how to manipulate others in order to receive high-calorie foods, thus setting up a dangerous cycle as the child grows. Imagine this child as a teenager who has just completed a difficult homework assignment or gotten a good grade on a test. What do you think he or she will desire as a reward? Even more alarming, how many times in his or her life do you think food will be used in this manner?
Taking this a step further, one of the most dangerous ways that food is used is as a means of showing love. While this concept is related to the previous discussion of using food to nurture, there is an important distinction here. Using food to show love means that children come to associate, perhaps even confuse, parental or familial love with food. Therefore, when a child feels unloved, he or she may seek out food. Taken to an extreme, this may result in morbid obesity at a very young age.
Rather than learning to deal with feelings of rejection or lack of affection in healthy ways, when food is used as love, children become conditioned to reach for food. As time goes on, children will grow into adults unable to distinguish between eating for biological reasons and eating for emotional solace. It’s important to read the previous sentence once again. The danger of using food to satisfy emotions lies in the fact that children (and later adults) become unable to recognize genuine feelings of hunger. Without knowing what physical hunger feels like, children are unable to use food in the manner for which it was intended—to nourish their bodies.
In addition to all of the feelings children often associate with food and eating in their families, there are many unhealthy messages presented through the media. On any given Saturday morning, children’s cartoons are filled with commercials for fast and junk foods targeted to convince young minds into believing that fun can be had by consuming these products. One of the biggest examples of this is the creation of cultural icons designed to appeal to children. The biggest of the fast-food giants have their happy-go-lucky clown and their rambunctious king, and candymakers have even animated the candy-coated chocolate figures that “melt in your mouth, not in your hands,” sending them to parties, and even having them go trick-or-treating in commercials. Many candy commercials depict ordinary children at play.
Though these kinds of advertisements have been around for years and have come to be accepted as part of society, most people have never thought about the messages being sent to children. When a group of children or young adults appears in commercials, eating chips or candy while laughing and having fun, viewers are given the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—message that eating these high-calorie items will add fun and excitement to their lives. Yet the reality is actually quite different. Eating these items will cause children to gain weight, thus making them unable to participate in the portrayed activities.
Taking all of this information and putting it together, it is easy to see how children have come to associate food and eating with many emotions and actions. Using food to nurture children, as a reward, to show love, and to help them experience fun and freedom, puts greater importance on food than necessary. And when food is used to deal with or express feelings, children do not learn healthy coping skills. Rather, a child who knows only food as a means of coping with stress, expressing emotions, or nurturing is more likely to turn to eating to deal with life’s problems.
Now, add to this the fact that inactivity, likely due to television and Internet use, is increasing and physical education classes are being cut or downsized and the problem becomes even more serious. According to the most recent study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, available at the organization’s website (http://aspe.hhs.gov), “Schools are decreasing the amount of free play or physical activity that children receive during school hours. Only about one-third of elementary children have daily physical education, and less than one-fifth have extracurricular physical activity programs at their schools. Daily enrollment in physical education classes among high school students decreased from 42 percent in 1991 to 25 percent in 1995, subsequently increasing slightly to 28 percent in 2003. Outside of school hours, only 39 percent of children ages 9–13 participate in an organized physical activity, although 77 percent engage in free-time physical activity.”
Furthermore, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, approximately 215,000 people younger than twenty years of age have diabetes. Among those twenty years or older, 1.9 million people were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010. Approximately 20,000 youths each year are diagnosed with diabetes. This number is expected to increase.
While many point to genetics as the reason for the problems discussed in this chapter, two researchers disagree and point out that society and the cultural environment contribute greatly. The associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School points out that genetics in humans have only experienced small changes. As previously noted, 20 to 40 percent of overweight cases are attributable to genetics, and 60 to 80 percent to lifestyle. If we accept this as true, and I do, the rate of childhood obesity can greatly be reduced by making lifestyle changes.
Though the last sentence is the key to successfully helping your child to stop emotionally overeating, please remember that you don’t have to make these lifestyle changes all at once. If you’ve read all of the information in this chapter, you’ve already “digested” a great deal. You may be feeling overwhelmed, or even worse, ineffective as a parent. Realize that