How do I change my kid's eating habits?

As there is so much focus upon children's growth, health and eating habits, parents are looking for answers. Thankfully, the message is spreading: 

We have to get the focus off their weight

We can't make weight loss the goal for our kids

The number on the scale does NOT determine your child's health or the success of your parenting

If you're scratching your head about any of the above, check these blogs to get to the heart of those: It's Time to Stop Focusing on Weight

Now, parents are saying, "OK, it's their eating habits! I want to change their disordered eating habits."

Let's do this:

SLOW down. We all have to slow down.

Focusing on changing habits is ripe for failure (especially if they are someone else's habits!) when we just zero-in on changing the behavior.

There is a reason WHY we do what we do in the first place. There is a reason why all habits exist, including eating habits: they work for us. They may also not be working for us as we might experience metabolic or growth concerns, feeling ill after eating or guilt or shame. And yet, the habit still works for us, which is why we return to it.

With any desire to create change, it is critical to understand where we are now. In Design Thinking, the first step is to empathize. Empathy opens the door to understanding where the end-user is now, what they feel, what they experience. Empathy is an active process. We have to slow down to practice it, and be in receiving mode. (We cannot just stand there saying, "This is me, empathizing, while I'm judging the snot out of what is happening, waiting to tell you what you need to do." Yes, I feel seen in that mini-meme I just created in my head.)

Empathy Requires Curiosity: What is being experienced?

In order to create change, we have to connect with the individual to understand exactly where they are now. Look at the habits (which I will just call eating habits for the focus of this article, but it applies to any behaviors/habits). Get clear which eating habits we are looking at. Remove any words like "disordered," "healthy" or "unhealthy" - this is just observation without judgment.

Now become a sleuth with your special spotting-scope: when eating happens (as it does), what's going on in the environment? People? Timing? What's available? What is the mood in the room? What emotions seem to be most prominent for the person eating? What is eating fixing in the moment?

What is eating fixing in the moment...

Eating fixes something. Our actions are there for a reason - they work. Habits, including ones we want to change, are there for a reason.

We have to understand more about how the status quo, eating habits as they are now, are somehow working for us.

I will always insist on turning this conversation to ourselves as parents, caregivers, the person who wants to see change first. WE cannot make others change without changing ourselves. First, it's about changing the way we approach change, like not just mandating change but understanding why it is there in the first place. And second, it's about creating change for ourselves and then modeling it for others.

Let's take an example:

Behavior: I yell at my kids to stop eating Doritos before dinner. (Have problems making that work too?)

The classic approach is to yell, argue, yell more about not complying and finding crumbs in the couch, locking up the Doritos and then banishing them from the house.

The Doritos aren't the problem - and neither are the kids.

Slow down and get curious: What's going on WHEN it's happening? I notice:

Everyone is hangry, especially me - it's been a long day and it's taking forever to get to dinner.

I'm dragging/tired, and so are the kids.

The kids are stressed with the amount of homework to do tonight.

I'm stressed about the lingering work that needs to be done after an already-long day at work for me.

My head is pounding.

The kids are surprisingly chatting with each other in the living room. Like, they aren't arguing while pounding the Doritos. Was that... laughter?

Curiosity is required for empathy. Consider the experience of the parent: what am I experiencing? What about the kids?

How is eating Doritos working in this situation? What could it be fixing?

What does my habit (yelling at them) do?

- it releases frustration and hangry energy, my pounding head increases and decreases a bit

- it disrupts the friendly chatter they had and now they are arguing too

What does their habit (eating Doritos before dinner) do?

- is it distraction from homework?

- is it a brief moment for teens to agree and be in the same space?

- is it tamping their hunger?

- is it satisfying a need for excitement in an otherwise whomp-whomp-drudgery kind of day?

So my behavior of yelling actually can be queried as well: How is yelling working in this situation? What could it be fixing? I see it as a kettle blowing its top. Yelling releases pressure momentarily, but it doesn't do a thing about building empathy or connection, it doesn't address the hunger/hangry, the fatigue or work stress. 

The momentary "fix" of pressure release doesn't actually help.

Even if we remove the yelling, consider this. Yes, we can swoop in and tell everyone to just change. It's the way we've been doing this for years. In fact, every year that you make a New Year's Resolution to change, there's a "3-2-1, Just Do It" moment. And then 4 or 6 weeks in, everything gets loosey-goosey and we go back to our old habits.

Because the old habits are working for us, in one way or another.

We need to SLOW DOWN, look at the existing habits to understand why they are there in the first place. We need to really get curious about them, putting judgment aside (all the labels about good/bad/healthy/unhealthy/disordered/addictive) to see why the current eating habits exist.

What you find may surprise you.

It's the first step in creating connection with what is right now (current habits, relationships) and to connect with yourself & others before creating change. When we connect with ourselves and others, we are strengthening relationships along the way. Those relationships are critical to support the bumps in the road of life and habit change.

What do you notice? Comment below. AND check out my blogs on Connection, Relationships and Experimenting with New Behaviors.