Recently, a parent reached out to me about their concern for their daughter’s increasing body weight, along with their fear of passing on to her the unhealthy messages about weight they learned from their own parents.
What can you do when you’re worried about your child’s weight? How does a parent avoid passing down intergenerational patterns of body shaming? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor responds to a parent who is struggling to support their child’s healthy body image.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Parents often wonder about the best way to work with their kids on weight, dieting, and body image. What can you do when you’re worried about your child’s weight? How does a parent avoid passing down intergenerational patterns of body shaming?
Welcome back to Project Parenthood! I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor—clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll help you repair and deepen your parent-child connection, increase self-compassion and cooperation from your kids, and cultivate joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
Recently, a parent reached out to me about their concern for their daughter’s increasing body weight, along with their fear of passing on to her the unhealthy messages about weight they learned from their own parents. Here’s this parent’s email (edited for clarity):
“Dear Dr. Coor,
I'm writing to you because I'm really concerned about my teenage daughter's weight. She's always been what people might call a ‘healthy’ or ‘sturdy’ kid, but lately, she's gained a significant amount of weight. I think she tries to eat well, but she’s got this huge appetite. And like most teenagers, she's pretty overscheduled and doesn't have much time, desire, or motivation for physical activity.
Let me say right off the bat that I know that I have my own body-image issues, and I'm worried that I'm projecting them onto my daughter. When I mentioned that she seemed to have gained weight, she denied it and I’ve noticed she’s now started wearing baggier clothes as if she wants to hide her body. She shuts down whenever I raise any issue about her weight or her body.
I feel like I'm completely failing her. I want to help her, but I don't know how. My therapist has been pointing out how my own body image and body-weight issues are triggering my fears about my daughter—and she's right. Even though I've been working on my issues for years, I still somehow haven't gotten to the place where I can help her.
I'm thinking that we need to enlist some professional help, but what kind of help does she need? I'm hoping that you can point me in the right direction. I want to find someone who can help her develop a healthy body image and learn how to make positive changes to her lifestyle.
I know that this is a sensitive issue, and I appreciate your willingness to address it on your podcast. I'm hoping that by sharing my story, I can help other parents who are struggling with the same issue.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Parent”
Well, first of all, Concerned Parent, you really illuminate how it is hard to see your child struggle with something that you don’t know how to help them with. I can hear how stressed and concerned you are about your daughter, and you know what? You're not alone—many parents struggle with this issue. You’re probably feeling sad and anxious because it’s hard to see your daughter gaining weight. You might be thinking that you're a bad parent for not doing enough to help her, and perhaps you feel guilty and self-critical because you’re projecting your own childhood traumas onto her.
I feel so appreciative that you’ve reached out to share this with me and with the Project Parenthood listeners. You’re clearly a very dedicated parent. Not only have you been working on your own “stuff” around the messages you internalized about body size growing up, but you also yearn so much for your child’s well-being that you’ve done a very vulnerable and courageous thing in contacting me to find help for her.
I have some wonderings about your conundrum. Like, does your daughter have a problem with her body size? Or does she just have a problem with you having a problem with her body size? Because if she's fine with how she looks, but is stressed about your negative judgments about her body, that's a whole separate issue.
I often work with parents who have worries about their child's weight, their child’s trouble in friendships, or even their child’s ways of being in the world that are simply difficult for the parents to witness or tolerate.
This isn’t what parents usually like to hear, but, unless it’s a matter of health or safety, it’s rarely successful to intervene in kids' problems in an effort to get them to change in some way. In your mind, perhaps your child’s weight gain falls under the umbrella of “health,” but unless a doctor has told you that her situation is life-threatening, perhaps there's no cause for alarm at this time.
If, upon self-reflection, you realize that this is more about your parental preference and desire for your child to be different, or behave or think differently, it may be more beneficial for you to do some work around your own issues with who and how your child authentically is. Especially since your daughter isn’t coming to you for help losing weight.
This is not to say that you should stand idly by while your child self-destructs, but that using your parental power to try to coerce your child to change—which is acting from a power-over stance vs. a power-with stance—will generally backfire. Humans (especially child and teen humans) will usually resist perceived control. Many times to their own detriment.
The greatest gift you can give to your child is unconditional acceptance. But that's hard to give to someone else if you're not also giving it to yourself. Also—your kids are influenced less by what you say and more by who you are. So perhaps, concentrating on your own body issues and learning to accept yourself unconditionally, and treating yourself well by giving your body nutritious food, exercise, and care is what your daughter actually needs most from you. It’s a much better use of your time and efforts to focus on things that are within your control. What your child does with or how she treats her body is not in your control.
The more you try to control her, the more damage it will do to your relationship with her. And if she’s truly struggling, she needs her relationship with you from which to draw strength. A trusting, connected, and unconditionally loving relationship with your child is your most powerful parenting tool. When your daughter feels genuinely connected to you, she’ll be much more open to allowing you, your values, your beliefs, and your modeled behaviors to influence her.
On the other hand, if she specifically asks you for help around this issue, I would start with a nutritionist and/or a therapist who specializes in eating disorders. And you can both learn more about the concept of "health at every size" at www.haescommunity.com. If she's not asking for help, I encourage you to radically accept her as she is, model healthy body image and healthy living, and trust that she's watching and taking note.
In the meantime—make zero comments on her appearance or anyone else’s, including your own. No positive comments, no negative ones. Just—none. When you make comments on someone's appearance, even a positive comment, it feels evaluative. The person may focus less on your compliment, and more on the fact that their appearance is being evaluated and judged. And in our society, everyone—especially girls and women—could do with a little less concentration on others' opinions of their appearance.
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Your child is a unique human being having her own experience in life—not an extension of you or your own past. But projecting your unhealed wounds onto your kids often happens outside of your awareness. So focus less on controlling situations in the present so that your child avoids the painful experiences you had—or worried about having—in childhood. Because when you get that urge, what you’re really trying to avoid are the uncomfortable feelings that are getting kicked up for you as you’re witnessing your child going through something. Rather than avoiding your uncomfortable feelings, hold those feelings with compassion and kindness, and focus more on finding closure and healing around your painful childhood experiences.
It sounds like you’re getting triggered by your child’s appearance, but for other parents, the trigger might be seeing your child in competitive situations, or when issues of compliance and obedience arise, or when belonging, fitting in and friendships are involved, or their performance in sports/academics is in question. The more fear you have tied up with these issues that are leftover from your childhood, the more you might try to control the situation when your child encounters them. In the moment, you might think you’re simply trying to protect your child from emotional pain, when it’s really about protecting you from the emotional pain you’re anticipating given your own childhood experience.
In the end, you just can't control your daughter's body weight or body image. What you can do is model a healthy body image for her, provide her with a supportive and loving environment and a parent who loves her fiercely no matter what she looks like.
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That’s all for today’s episode of Project Parenthood—thanks for listening, and I hope you found it helpful! Be sure to join me live on Instagram @bkparents on Monday, July 10 at 1 pm (that’s today!) for a Brooklyn Parent Therapy “Ask Me Anything!” I’m excited to answer your questions in real time!
If you have a question for me about parent-child relationships, respectful parenting tips and/or parental mental health like you’d like me to cover in a future episode, shoot me an email at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com, leave a message at 646-926-3243 or leave a message on Instagram @bkparents. And you can learn about my private practice working with parents living in New York State at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com. Happy summer - and catch you next week!