Above-Average Advice ❤️
The right advice can make food and body issues easier to handle
Hello! I hope you and your family are doing well!
When we’re struggling with our kids, especially with something as serious as food and body image issues, it’s natural to seek advice from other people. This is a normal, natural, and healthy thing to do. After all, we’re extremely social, and relying on others is in our DNA!
At the same time, food and body issues are unusually sticky and commonly misunderstood by our culture and society. This means that sometimes seeking advice from well-meaning, wonderful people in our lives can backfire.
It’s not because there’s anything wrong with asking for advice or because people aren’t giving us the best possible advice they can. Rather, it’s because the sort of advice we need does not follow conventional standards, and sometimes getting advice from loving but inexperienced people can lead us down frustratingly unhelpful paths.
Again, it’s nobody’s fault, but if you’ve been struggling to manage a food or body issue in your parenting and feel as if nothing is working, there’s a good chance that a solution is available, but it’s currently out of reach simply because it’s specialized rather than common knowledge.
While there is tons of popular knowledge that might help in standard parenting situations, parents who have extra-sticky, above-average parenting problems often end up feeling lost and led astray. And unfortunately this means lots of parents facing food and body issues end up feeling insecure, overwhelmed, and burned out. Oh no!
When you feel as if “nothing I do helps, and I might even be making things worse,” as a parent, it creates a level of helplessness that you simply don’t deserve.
I promise that this is not an issue of whether you are capable of helping your child thrive (you can!). It’s an issue of getting the right advice for your unique situation.
Popular advice is, by design, effective for the majority of people and situations. But if you’re parenting a child who is non-typical, they are by definition not the majority. For example, if your child has above-average trouble with eating and body image, then they likely have a highly sensitive nervous system.
I have yet to meet a person with above-average food and body issues who doesn’t also have above-average physical and emotional sensitivity. This means their five senses, as well as their perception of how other people are feeling (especially their parents!) are dialed up way beyond those of a more typical child. This is a genetic feature called “high sensitivity” and is present in about 20% of all animal populations, including humans.
High sensitivity is hard-wired and makes tricky situations with food and body image trickier. But it doesn’t have to be a recipe for disaster. In fact, when people who have highly sensitive nervous systems get the support they need to thrive, they are some of the most inspiring people you’ve ever met.
If you have a highly sensitive child, popular advice from loving, well-meaning friends and family members is unlikely to be effective. And unfortunately, well-intentioned advice from experienced teachers, coaches, doctors, and other professionals may backfire due to the simple fact that your child is not like the majority of children and food and body image issues are extremely tricky in our culture. An above-average problem needs above-average advice.
When you get advice that takes your child’s highly sensitive nature into account, things will start to get easier fast. The food and body issues that have felt intractable will loosen and you will finally feel more hopeful.
I see this often with my clients. They come to me feeling frustrated, maybe even demoralized. They have put their whole heart and soul into helping their child feel better, but it feels like nothing works. And yet when they get specialized advice that takes their child’s high sensitivity into account, their child starts to feel better.
Food and body image issues get easier to handle when highly sensitive kids feel understood and parents meet their above-average needs for safety and security.
So next time you feel like you’ve tried everything that’s been suggested, consider your sources. Of course everyone has the best intentions when they offer you advice, but if the best advice hasn’t helped you yet, please don’t think it’s hopeless—it’s not!
You are exactly the right parent for your child, and I know that things can get easier for everyone. If you’d like some help, let me know!
Ginny Jones Parent Coach / More-Love.org
Parent Guide: Highly Sensitive Child + Picky Eating, Disordered Eating and/or Eating Disorder
Learn more about how you can help your HSP child thrive. Remember: being highly sensitive is a gift, but it can become a challenge if we aren’t taught how to cope in adaptive ways. You’re the difference-maker in your child’s life!