Dr. Julie’s Meaningful Morsel … It’s Never Too Late to Change Unhealthy Behaviors
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The irony of my role as a psychologist, who works primarily with adults, is that I spend the majority of my days “re-parenting” clients, due to deficiencies created in childhood!
Nothing could be truer than with my beloved obese and eating disordered clients. Problematic eating practices are all-too-often inadvertently created in childhood — and culminate in a life-long battle with food, body and weight.
So, as I therapeutically encourage my ADULT clients to (painstakingly!) stop restricting their food intake so as to stop consequential restrict-binge-restrict-binge disordered eating cycles, I vehemently encourage PARENTS of children to do the same thing!
Parents, please … TRUST that your child has the ability to self-regulate (they do!). ALLOW them to develop self-regulation skills early in life by granting them free access to food and TEACHING them to eat for hunger and not for comfort. BELIEVE that their natural physical signals WILL kick in and will tell them to stop eating when they are comfortably full (as well as that they want that juicy apple as much as that bag of chips!).
For, as an eating disorder specialist, I can confidently state that a child whose food is overly regulated, will turn into an adult whose food is dysregulated — and who will battle obesity and/or disordered eating as a heartbreaking result.
