…asked my 4 year old daughter one day in the car. Initially, I wasn’t able to respond. How could I? My mind was filled with more than a few questions. Where is this coming from? When did she learn the word “healthy”? Who did she hear this from? I was certain that my reaction and/or answer could possibly alter her relationship with food. My husband, if he had been in my head, would have told me I was overreacting.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. She very well could have heard it in our house. NOPE. I’m not that kind of dietitian. I have sat in too many sessions, with too many people talking about how their parents/partner/friend told them they ate too much xxx, or shouldn’t eat xxx or never even had xxx in their house and now it’s all they want to eat. When my husband, in private, jokingly asks me what he should cut out of his diet to lose weight, I tell him, “Nothing. Everything is ok in moderation. No foods are off limits.”
“Uuuummmmm. Of course they are! Why do you ask?” My daughter then proceeds to educate me in her “I know everything” demeanor that she has recently developed. She tells me that some foods are healthy and they help us to grow strong and some foods are not healthy and we shouldn’t eat them. She ended her explanation with “I just wanted to know if I can keep eating cookies.”
I have thought about posting my thoughts, beliefs, experiences with food for a long time now. The more and more that I work with clients, whether they are in recovery from an eating disorder or not, I find a common theme in those who are successful- it comes down to changing their relationship with food. I know. That is a very vague, “easy for me to say” statement. I’m sure I can’t do it justice and expound on this topic in this post. But I want to start by saying that I never wanted my daughter to begin giving foods labels at such an early age. I’m realistic enough to know it is only wishful thinking that she would never have learned them in the first place, but that is the society we live in. What I hope to do for her, and maybe someone reading this, is to begin to challenge those labels before they are set like concrete and much harder to remove.