Always in Love: Strategies for Addressing Your Child’s Weight Issues

Parents of overweight children don’t need to be warned about the dangers posed by their kids’ extra pounds.  Parents don’t need to hear about the increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, lower life expectancy, discrimination and prejudice, eating disorders, and the damage to self-esteem that so often await their heavy sons and daughters.  Parents already know all this. 

What parents need is support and encouragement, and tools to intervene in ways that are helpful rather than hurtful.  As parents and caregivers, we have a responsibility to love our children unconditionally, striving to mirror God’s love for us all.  With that purpose in mind, here are a few strategies that may be useful for parents who are searching for ways to address their children’s weight issues without doing emotional, physical, spiritual, or psychological harm.

It’s all about health.  Remember to always frame your discussions and efforts around health and not size.  The goal is for little Susie to be healthy, not for her to be 20 pounds lighter.  Just as God does not judge us by our weight, neither should we teach our children that their worth depends on maintaining a certain physique.  Too much emphasis on pounds or clothing sizes can lead to an unhealthy preoccupation with the numbers on the scale, which often develops into low self-esteem and eating disorders.

It’s all in the family.  Lifestyle changes such as eating more fresh fruits and vegetables and regular physical activity should be family commitments.  Most kids have a very strong sense of equality and fairness.  What kind of message does it send when Timmy is allowed to eat only certain foods in certain amounts, but Tommy can eat as many cookies and slices of pizza as he wants?  If the commitment to a healthier lifestyle is not a family commitment, then our overweight child receives the message that he or she is defective and must be fixed through deprivation and isolation.  We can cultivate mutually loving and respectful relationships when we commit together to caring for our bodies, rather than expecting one family member to resist constant temptation.

It’s all good.  All too often, overweight kids grow up to have a very distorted image of their own bodies.  It’s important for parents and caregivers to affirm all the wonderful things our bodies can do.  Our bodies are awesome and beautiful gifts from God.  They cannot be perfected through diet, exercise, or anything else, because they are already perfect creations of God.  This may be difficult for us to talk about in the context of a struggle with weight, but it is a central tenet of our faith.  All of us – black, white, male, female, thin and fat, are made in the image of God.

It’s all absorbed.  How many times have you been shocked when a child remembered an offhand comment or action of yours?  We can’t control all the messages that our kids receive, but we can go a long way towards affecting what they see and hear at home and at church.  We should be conscious of the way we talk about our own bodies, and our responses to the social messages about beauty and value that we see on TV and in movies.  We need to treat our own bodies with respect and admiration – if not for ourselves, then for our children, who take their cues from us and notice everything (even when we think they’re not looking).  If we talk about our own bodies with awe and appreciation rather than disgust and disdain, our kids just might follow our lead.

It’s all sacred.  Life for today’s families is so fast-paced that for many of us, the relaxing atmosphere of a meal around the table (without the TV on) is a thing of the past.  We can all benefit from bringing back the sacred aspects of eating.  Regular mealtime prayer allows us to invite God to our tables, putting dinnertime in a new light.  Take a look at Genesis 1.29-30.  God created food for us, and God continues to provide for us in love.  If we can live out our faith at the table, our children will begin to understand food as the gift of nourishment and sustenance, and not just something to fill our stomachs while we watch TV.

Let’s not fool ourselves – struggling with weight can be difficult and painful for grownups and even more so for kids, who journey toward adulthood amidst a culture that glorifies junk food and excess alongside extreme thinness.  As parents and caregivers, we must not allow ourselves to become disheartened at the challenges that face our overweight kids.  With God’s help, we can make a difference in our children’s lives, helping them to become happy, healthy, and comfortable in their bodies, secure in the knowledge that they are beautiful creations of God.  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to live?

Maggie Leidheiser-Stoddard (M.A., M.Div.) is the Director of Christian Education at Clemmons Moravian Church and a former fat kid.