‘My nine-year-old is starting to be self conscious about her body, which worries me’

Our nine-year-old is a kind, thoughtful girl who we love dearly. However, I am worried that she is addicted to sugar. She will steal the other kids’ sweets, sneak biscuits or treats, and even eat sugar from the bowl.
She is gaining weight quickly and, although we never speak negatively about our own bodies or other people’s, she has had comments at school and is starting to be self conscious about her body, which worries me. We are an active family, we all eat healthy family meals and her older sister is a healthy weight.
Also, my nine-year-old can sometimes makes negative comments about herself in general, thinking that no one likes her.
What can we do to help her?
As a parent you can easily worry when your child is developing unhealthy eating habits and putting on weight. You are right to think carefully about how to respond. Commenting on a child’s body shape or criticising them for their eating habits can easily be experienced as shaming and damage their self-esteem.
In addition, such an approach can be counterproductive in trying to help children develop healthy eating habits. In studies, a focus on dieting or weight loss leads to a child feeling shamed and more likely to revert to unhealthy comfort eating as a way of coping.
Below are some ideas as to how you approach things more positively.
First of all, it is worth reflecting about whether your daughter’s weight gain is a problem at all. At the start of puberty, lots of girls put on weight as their body changes and develops. Further, there is a natural variance in body shapes and sizes and your daughter could be very much in the normal range though on a different trajectory to her sister who might have a different body shape. The best way to check is measure your daughter’s height and weight so you can assess her BMI (there are lots of calculators on reputable health sites online).
You can do this as a positive ‘home health check’ whereby you are seeing how ‘well she has grown’ in the last year. Keeping track of her height with pencil marks on a door can be a fun way to do this. However, if you feel she might perceive this negatively, you could do it as part of a health check up with your family GP if you feel they will do this sensitively.
Help your daughter develop a positive body image even if she becomes overweight. Model body positively: talk of how bodies come in different shapes and sizes and the importance of loving and accepting yourself. If she expresses self-consciousness or that she is dissatisfied with a part of her body, listen carefully to what she says and then make sure to then offer her a positive message about loving her body.
If she reports that some children have made comments, explore this and help her challenge their negative message. ‘It is really mean for that girl to say that . . . no one should make comments like that . . . that is a sign of her problem and not yours’. You could consider mentioning it to the schoolteacher if it is a repeated occurrence.
Sweets and sugar by definition are addictive. Food companies know this and that is why they hide sugar in many foods to get children to eat them. Children live in a world where they are surrounded by sweet treats and unhealthy foods everywhere they go, so it is not surprising many develop unhealthy habits and find it hard to manage their intake of sugar. As a parent it is important to know that it is largely an environmental problem rather just individual choice so you can be empathetic to your daughters struggles.
When raising the issue of stealing and sneaking food it is important to do it a non-critical non-blaming way. For example, if you catch her eating sugar from the bowl, you might use a light ‘jokey’ tone and say ‘hey we don’t eat sugar like that’. Or you might use a matter of fact tone such as ‘I found sweet wrappers in your room . . . where did you get them from?’ so you can begin to open a conversation about what is going on.
You might want to acknowledge the challenges of limiting sweets ‘sugary sweets can be so addictive’ and discuss your family rules about this ‘that is we limit them to family treat nights – what do you think?’ The goal is to support your daughter to think through these issues for herself
Aside from a craving for sugar, take time to consider whether there is anything else underpinning your daughter stealing and sneaking sweets. Is it a comfort eating to manage distress? Or is she simply bored when she wants sugar to lift her mood?
If she is open to talking, you can discuss different ways to manage. For example you can explore other ways she can entertain herself if bored and as well as other ways she can manage upset feelings such as telling you about them or distracting herself by going for walk etc.