| Are You Eroding Your Child's Natural Eating Wisdom? |
|
|
| Cari Corbet-Owen | |||
| Wednesday, 15 November 2006 | |||
We don't interfere with the majority of our children's body cycles. Do we question or mess with their body when it comes to breathing, or their heart beating? No, we trust it without question, and so do our children. This allows the body to work away, quietly getting on with what it is naturally programmed to do. Yet many of us unwittingly mess with our children's natural eating patterns? Maybe you are 'encouraging' your own children to eat unnaturally without realizing it. Few children are born over-fat and any mother who has breast-fed her babies will tell you it is impossible to overfeed them. Infants will fall asleep or spit out the breast – they know when they have had enough. Once upon a time, we all knew when our biological needs were satisfied. The other ways that our natural wisdom about eating only enough for our body's needs became eroded was when we started getting mixed messages about the role of food. When we were very little, eating was primarily about fuel for our bodies. But when we fall and scrape a knee and get a cookie to dry out tears, it teaches us that food can comfort. When we go to the doctor or dentist and leave with a lolly for having been such a brave girl or boy, we have learnt that food (and not normally the kind that Moms and Dads want us to eat) is a good way to reward ourselves and make us feel better after an unpalatable experience. When our birthdays sport a special cake and groan under the weight of all the normally 'illegal' foods, we have learnt that cakes and pastries are a wonderful way to feel special, cared for and loved. When family celebrations like Christmas revolve around the food, we have learnt that food is a great way to feel connected to those we love. So all too soon we learn to comfort eat and to use food in a myriad of ways that have nothing to do with physical hunger. It's no wonder we reach adulthood and eat when we are feeling mad, bad, glad or sad and few of us still even know (in the Western world) what physical hunger even feels like.
Disclaimer: Harmonious Living is written for and read by a community of individuals with strong and independent opinions. While the publishers of Harmonious Living are dedicated to providing a forum in which views can be openly expressed, those views do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers.
| |||
| Related Articles | |||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|||
This is the powerful story of the author's struggle with Multiple Sclerosis and how a healer's unusual prescription of mindful altruism - to 'give away 29 gifts in 29 days' - ignited her energy, her happiness, and invited more abundance into her life.
