Tips on teaching kids to have a non-disordered relationship with food

I was making waffles for my kids when sadness and frustration kicked in. I looked at the thick pool of butter melting into each square of my 6-year-old son’s waffle, extra pats given with love and determination to fill out his thin frame. My daughter, a little dumpling of a toddler, had a much lighter smear spread thinly across her waffle. This is how it starts. WhenIl ook back on my own years of obsessive dieting and binge eating, it’s always with a laugh and an eye roll: “Every teenage girl had an eating disorder then. It was a rite of passage.” I was never frighteningly skinny or forced into treatment. Itwass imply always there, quietly controlling my moods, my wardrobe, my metabolism and my sense of worth.

In adulthood, my relationship with my eating disorder has softened into more of an easygoing partnership than toxic abuse. But it often makes its presence known through internal dialogues and little games: daily weigh-ins that determine whether I’m wearing pants with buttons that day; parsing out cooki estwoatatime because odd numbers are uncomfortable.

Thegr avi ty o f m y re sponsibility as a parent is not lost on me: I’m partl yincharg eo f two little people’s nutrition, helping to establish habits that could shape their relationship with food. And I desperately want them both to remain free from my burdens.

M y fears a ren’ t en ti r e ly unfounded. Some research has pinpointed a genetic link to anorexia nervosa, suggesting the disease can be inherited. But more broadly, a

CONTRIBUTED BY JULIA KEIM. By putting so much emphasis on “good” and “bad” foods, we often skew kids’ perceptions of what it means to be “healthy” at an early age, says writer Sarika Chawla.