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“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This mantra was the retort of choice for thousands of apparently resilient premillennial children. But you and I, and just about everyone else, know that words can be very hurtful. A recent article in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders entitled, “ ‘Don’t eat so much’: How parent comments relate to female weight satisfaction” (Eat Weight Disord. 2016 Jun 6. [Epub ahead of print]) reminds us that the pain can last forever.
In a retrospective study of 501 young women aged 20-35 years, the investigators asked whether the women could recall their parents making any comments about their weight when they were young children. What the authors discovered was that even among young women who were of normal weight, those who could recall their parents making a comment about their weight were more dissatisfied with their body weight than the young women who could not recall such a comment. However, if the comment had been about eating habits and not weight, then there was no significant association with weight dissatisfaction.
Before we rush out to send all of the parents of weight-dissatisfied young women on a guilt trip, let’s remember that this was a retrospective study. Let’s consider the not unlikely explanation that there may be something built into the psyche of weight-dissatisfied young women that sharpens their memory for negative comments from friends and family.
Regardless of how we interpret the findings from this study, it is probably safe to say that telling a young girl that she is overweight doesn’t help and should be avoided. This is just another example of how poorly chosen words can be hurtful. But it is also an example of how words alone are seldom shapers of positive behaviors. You can’t talk a picky eater into eating spinach anymore than you can talk the child in the middle of a tantrum into settling down. Good manners are best learned by modeling the behavior of respected adults and not by being subjected to a series of parental lectures. Telling a child she is overweight won’t solve the problem.
So what is the parent of an obese child to do? Unfortunately, many parents of obese children don’t perceive their child as being significantly overweight. But let’s assume we have cleared that hurdle of denial. If telling the child she is overweight is the wrong thing to do, then her parents are forced into using strategies that are subliminal, applied slowly and patiently – silently.
These strategies could include gradually decreasing the child’s screen time, hoping that it will be replaced by calorie-burning activities; changing the food available for all the inhabitants of the home to increase the likelihood that healthier choices will dominate; and decreasing serving sizes. It is critical that these changes are done so slowly that they go unnoticed by the child. If the child questions the changes, then the response should be that they are being done to help the entire family to be healthier, and that they are not being targeted at any one individual. Of course, the big problem is getting the rest of the family to buy into the changes so that the overweight child doesn’t become a scapegoat.
Shielding the overweight child from the blame game is much easier if the parents have been careful to avoid labeling from the moment they realized or accepted that the child had a weight problem. Here is where we pediatricians can play a critical role in our choice of words, and the setting in which we discuss the child’s weight with the parents. We must point out to the parents that their words can create a hurt that may not ever go away.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This mantra was the retort of choice for thousands of apparently resilient premillennial children. But you and I, and just about everyone else, know that words can be very hurtful. A recent article in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders entitled, “ ‘Don’t eat so much’: How parent comments relate to female weight satisfaction” (Eat Weight Disord. 2016 Jun 6. [Epub ahead of print]) reminds us that the pain can last forever.
In a retrospective study of 501 young women aged 20-35 years, the investigators asked whether the women could recall their parents making any comments about their weight when they were young children. What the authors discovered was that even among young women who were of normal weight, those who could recall their parents making a comment about their weight were more dissatisfied with their body weight than the young women who could not recall such a comment. However, if the comment had been about eating habits and not weight, then there was no significant association with weight dissatisfaction.
Before we rush out to send all of the parents of weight-dissatisfied young women on a guilt trip, let’s remember that this was a retrospective study. Let’s consider the not unlikely explanation that there may be something built into the psyche of weight-dissatisfied young women that sharpens their memory for negative comments from friends and family.
Regardless of how we interpret the findings from this study, it is probably safe to say that telling a young girl that she is overweight doesn’t help and should be avoided. This is just another example of how poorly chosen words can be hurtful. But it is also an example of how words alone are seldom shapers of positive behaviors. You can’t talk a picky eater into eating spinach anymore than you can talk the child in the middle of a tantrum into settling down. Good manners are best learned by modeling the behavior of respected adults and not by being subjected to a series of parental lectures. Telling a child she is overweight won’t solve the problem.
So what is the parent of an obese child to do? Unfortunately, many parents of obese children don’t perceive their child as being significantly overweight. But let’s assume we have cleared that hurdle of denial. If telling the child she is overweight is the wrong thing to do, then her parents are forced into using strategies that are subliminal, applied slowly and patiently – silently.
These strategies could include gradually decreasing the child’s screen time, hoping that it will be replaced by calorie-burning activities; changing the food available for all the inhabitants of the home to increase the likelihood that healthier choices will dominate; and decreasing serving sizes. It is critical that these changes are done so slowly that they go unnoticed by the child. If the child questions the changes, then the response should be that they are being done to help the entire family to be healthier, and that they are not being targeted at any one individual. Of course, the big problem is getting the rest of the family to buy into the changes so that the overweight child doesn’t become a scapegoat.
Shielding the overweight child from the blame game is much easier if the parents have been careful to avoid labeling from the moment they realized or accepted that the child had a weight problem. Here is where we pediatricians can play a critical role in our choice of words, and the setting in which we discuss the child’s weight with the parents. We must point out to the parents that their words can create a hurt that may not ever go away.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This mantra was the retort of choice for thousands of apparently resilient premillennial children. But you and I, and just about everyone else, know that words can be very hurtful. A recent article in the journal Eating and Weight Disorders entitled, “ ‘Don’t eat so much’: How parent comments relate to female weight satisfaction” (Eat Weight Disord. 2016 Jun 6. [Epub ahead of print]) reminds us that the pain can last forever.
In a retrospective study of 501 young women aged 20-35 years, the investigators asked whether the women could recall their parents making any comments about their weight when they were young children. What the authors discovered was that even among young women who were of normal weight, those who could recall their parents making a comment about their weight were more dissatisfied with their body weight than the young women who could not recall such a comment. However, if the comment had been about eating habits and not weight, then there was no significant association with weight dissatisfaction.
Before we rush out to send all of the parents of weight-dissatisfied young women on a guilt trip, let’s remember that this was a retrospective study. Let’s consider the not unlikely explanation that there may be something built into the psyche of weight-dissatisfied young women that sharpens their memory for negative comments from friends and family.
Regardless of how we interpret the findings from this study, it is probably safe to say that telling a young girl that she is overweight doesn’t help and should be avoided. This is just another example of how poorly chosen words can be hurtful. But it is also an example of how words alone are seldom shapers of positive behaviors. You can’t talk a picky eater into eating spinach anymore than you can talk the child in the middle of a tantrum into settling down. Good manners are best learned by modeling the behavior of respected adults and not by being subjected to a series of parental lectures. Telling a child she is overweight won’t solve the problem.
So what is the parent of an obese child to do? Unfortunately, many parents of obese children don’t perceive their child as being significantly overweight. But let’s assume we have cleared that hurdle of denial. If telling the child she is overweight is the wrong thing to do, then her parents are forced into using strategies that are subliminal, applied slowly and patiently – silently.
These strategies could include gradually decreasing the child’s screen time, hoping that it will be replaced by calorie-burning activities; changing the food available for all the inhabitants of the home to increase the likelihood that healthier choices will dominate; and decreasing serving sizes. It is critical that these changes are done so slowly that they go unnoticed by the child. If the child questions the changes, then the response should be that they are being done to help the entire family to be healthier, and that they are not being targeted at any one individual. Of course, the big problem is getting the rest of the family to buy into the changes so that the overweight child doesn’t become a scapegoat.
Shielding the overweight child from the blame game is much easier if the parents have been careful to avoid labeling from the moment they realized or accepted that the child had a weight problem. Here is where we pediatricians can play a critical role in our choice of words, and the setting in which we discuss the child’s weight with the parents. We must point out to the parents that their words can create a hurt that may not ever go away.
Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including “How to Say No to Your Toddler.”
