"The baseline fear is that if we give our children what they want, they will always want more. However, this theory is rarely tested because we seldom keep giving until they are satisfied. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy because they don’t get enough opportunities to learn what “enough” feels like." Scott Noelle - http://www.scottnoelle.com/parenting/spoiled.htm
Breastfeeding and solid food
Each time you feed your baby, he or she will stop feeding of his or her own accord, when he or she is full. Even if they are feeding on demand, and don't follow any time restrictions, many mothers intervene and pull their baby off the breast because they feel that the baby will never stop feeding unless told when to stop. Of course this is absurd. The baby knows what is enough, and will stop eventually. Equally, mothers decide when to wean their babies off breastmilk. Because we lead such 'busy' lives, eventually, the baby will have to fall in with our needs. More often than not, the adults decide for the baby when enough is enough.
Do mothers who stop their babies feeding according to their own limits create children with eating disorders?
Abundance vs Scarcity
Many adults and older children no longer seem to know when they have had enough food; they need constant filling. Hence the successful development of the fast food industry. With modern fast-food, you can carry on eating forever and never get 'full'. One day I watched on TV Gillian McKeith (You Are What You Eat) telling a fat and unhealthy woman that, though obese, she was still eating because she was starving. She was starving because she wasn't getting the nutrition she needed from her fast-food diet. (Fast-food = "Refined foods ... stripped of their original, natural nutrient content and fiber.") With this, McKeith surprised me, and the woman herself started crying.
By all accounts, we have a problem with food in this country. People stuff their faces or starve themselves and vomit up what they do eat saying "look at me. No one loves me. No one stops me from destroying myself". Food problems are a life-long plea for help. Jean Liedloff, in The Continuum Concept, doesn't talk about eating disorders (I don't think), but her description of "the slob" is relevant.
"He smacks his lips to make himself feel that anyone who is near him is glad to know he is enjoying his food; he imposes his physical presence whereever he can, leaving ash or stains or litter to bear witness to his existence, challenging all present to reject him and his right to be loved. As he find he is rejected, he then reinforces his sad statement to the mother cosmos: 'You see? No one loves me because you don't bother to wipe my chin!' ... His hope is that the mother cosmos will, as a mother absolutely must (his continuum says so) take pity on him for all he has suffered and welcome him at last to her unconditional love. He will never close the door on her return by doing his grooming himself; it would constitute an admission of hopelessness." (p122, 1989)
McKeith is trying to help people accept this hopelessness and move on. Here is her strategy. Firstly, she describes the junk foods we eat for comfort: "These foods really should be called 'non-foods'. They cause havoc with the health of the body as the body is not designed to deal with these nutrient-depleted, industrial, false foods". Next, she recommends "a new lifestyle with an abundance of healthy foods", a Diet of Abundance. http://www.enotalone.com/article/5055.html.
We have created this fast-food industry out of our need for food specifically that would not nourish us: a need for something to put in our mouths and bellies to comfort us. The source of this need has to be related to behavioural patterns learned in childhood. Children are routinely given sweets, biscuits, crisps etc to shut them up and keep them happy. Breastfeeding in abundance and until the child wants to give up is, at the very least, a good way of avoiding comforting your child with junk food. The child doesn't learn to survive independently of their mother (self prescribing food as a comforter when necessary, blind to the nutritional content of junk foods that are alien to our stomachs). When independent enough to shop breastfeeding, the child will be ready to face the world from strong and stable foundations; he or she will have learnt how to tell when they have had enough. Enough nutrition, enough love. They will also be experts in how to fill their needs. Breastfeeding is a perfect way of giving freely. It includes warmth, softness, a show of love and being welcomed, physical contact with another human being, total protection, and is a survival food full of perfect ingredients for a human child. It is unreservably good for the child or baby. The milk is sweet, but still nutritious, not 'naughty-but-nice' at all. The breastfeeding child knows s/he can have everything s/he wants, and can be happy. And, for the child, all this is there for the taking.
We are not doomed to unhappiness because we live in capitalist society. This is just an excuse for not whole-heartedly doing the best for your child, and a way of accepting the way we were brought up ourselves, the failure of our own mothers to support our early needs. We will go to any lengths to maintain these excuses as the truth, believing things couldn't or can't be done differently. Why? Why not go to any lengths to face reality? Conditions for happiness can continue thoughout childhood and into maturity. It is often said that children are happy, and that we lose our happiness the more knowledge (and sometimes, riches) we accumulate. We lose our innocence. Why should this be true? But even so, are children really so much happier than adults? Isn't this also a lie? Don't most children desperately want to be grown up (only to find over the years that growing up wasn't the answer to their problems).
Our problem with food is an underlying problem of not liking ourselves and not trusting our bodies - the message we got from our mothers, keen to get us off the breast as soon as possible. If so, will the food problem really go away with healthy eating? McKeith's method resonated with me because she doesn't just offer healthy eating. She offers an unconditional trust in our bodies. She tells her clients on TV that their bodies are doing the right thing, under difficult circumstances. McKeith's solution to the problem of eating disorders is that of a loving mother: allowing us to eat healthy food in abundance because our bodies know when they have had enough nutrition. It's the best we can do, because most of us will have been forced off the breast prematurely, and are trying to mother ourselves by our use of food. This is our only chance of shaking off our poorly-mothered pasts: forget how badly you were mothered, close the door on your mother's return. Start again and address your actual needs now. Sunflower seeds are a poor substitute for mother's milk, but are a better approximation than junk food because they can do no harm. Love never leads to spoiling.
On TV, McKeith gets the emotional response she deserves when she reaches out to the human being in need and tells them she loves them as they are. I hope it goes far towards filling the needs of the people she works with. We have a collective responsibility, mostly unexercised. And in the mean time, we tend to help ourselves as best we can: eating disorders follow because we never learnt as children what it felt like to have had enough. Don't make your children repeat these behaviour patterns. Break the cycle...
"...if you ever feel like your child wants to be “spoiled,” I recommend you do a little experiment. Consciously drop all ideas of scarcity and spoilability, and fulfill the request joyfully with 100% willingness and no arbitrary limitations. Indulge in the pleasure of giving until your child feels satisfied and stops of his own accord." http://www.scottnoelle.com/parenting/spoiled.htm
*"Street Kids' Disease" was diagnosed by the presenter of a TV documentary about a girl who had been living rough, but had been recently taken off the streets. The presenter was explaining why the girl was fat, and, by implication, why she didn't look all skinny like a steet kid ought to. When confronted by food in abundance, we were told, she ate with abandon. I had never heard the term before, and haven't heard of it since. Documentaries of this investigatory kind are notorious for not finding the thing they were looking for ("there is no yabba here"). I felt the makers must have been disappointed to find a steet kid at last, and for her to be a fat slob (ie, just like a normal person), not a skinny wretch clearly proving her credentials for being filmed.
Sew your own sling: http://mtmt.essortment.com/babyslingcarri_reqz.htm
See also: http://www.tccmaven.com/resources/sling.html and http://www.continuum-concept.org/reading/carriersReview.html
The Continuum Website is excellent: http://www.continuum-concept.org/, in particular see the articles. Read it for a happy life for you and your child xxxx