Long before JD Ouellette became well-versed in eating disorders, she encountered a seemingly harmless parenting issue: her high schooler started a diet. “When my 17-year-old daughter and her friends went on a ’healthy eating makeover,’ it never occurred to me this would be anything other than a rite of passage in womanhood,” says Ouellette, now Equip’s Director of Lived Experience. “What I learned the hard way—and it's a devastating way to learn—is that in a genetically vulnerable person, anorexia is triggered by burning more calories than you eat, and my daughter was one such person.”

Like many parents, Ouellette didn’t initially suspect any risk for disordered behavior when her daughter expressed interest in dieting. After all, our society associates many forms of food restriction with “healthy” discipline (a false notion continuously reinforced by diet culture). “A common trap I see parents get caught in is thinking that a focus on being ‘healthy’ or wellness is a good thing—or at least not harmful,” says Equip Vice President of Program Development, Jessie Menzel, PhD. “Often, health and wellness is just a cover up for weight loss and extreme dietary changes. Don’t make the mistake of letting a new interest in ‘healthy eating’ go undiscussed.”

While her daughter has recovered in the decade-plus since her anorexia diagnosis, Ouellette can’t help but reflect on their family’s good fortune. “She is very well today, and not every story turns out this way,” she says. Indeed, research has shown that dieting is associated with greater eating disorder risk and psychopathology, and so there’s reason to be concerned if your child has started changing their eating habits in order to lose weight. Luckily, there are ways to navigate the dieting conversation and protect your child from walking a dangerous path that could lead to a disorder. Here’s what every parent should know when it comes to dealing with kids and diets.

Kids, body image, and dieting

Although it’s a common belief that eating disorders and body image concerns only affect teenage girls and young adult women, anyone of any age can struggle with food, weight, or exercise issues—including young kids. “Unfortunately, I don’t think young children being concerned about their bodies is anything new,” Menzel says. “There has been research for decades that body image concerns can begin to develop as young as four or five years old, and that body dissatisfaction can be well established by eight years old. Messages about thinness, weight loss, and dieting have been pervasive in our culture for a long time.”

Ouellette believes that much of this messaging is rooted in the moralization and worship of certain body types. “Children have long known that ‘thin is good’ and ‘fat is bad,’” she says. “It's very telling to look at a selection of toddler/preschool/elementary school books on diversity and see the unwritten message: you can be any skin color, but your body must never be anything but thin.”

Eating and body concerns affect people of all genders as well. “Remember that body image and diet culture are not just concerns for young girls—they also impact boys,” Menzel says. “There has been a trend over the past few decades for boys and men to feel more pressure to conform to societal appearance ideals and to use extreme dieting behaviors to manage their appearance.”

Complicating matters is the fact that social media has completely transformed the cultural landscape in the past few decades, leaving many parents bewildered about the messages their kids are absorbing. “Today it’s not just books or TV—it is everything, everywhere sending the message that being thin and ‘fit’ is the only option for being a ‘good’ human being,” Ouellette says. “This message comes from the media, from doctors, from schools, from diet culture, and from wellness culture. It's inescapable; body size has become intertwined with morality.”

Menzel agrees, and notes that while body image concerns have long been prevalent in young children, online culture has certainly intensified the pressure to conform to a particular body type and weight loss-driven behavior. “I do think that the relatively recent increase of social media use among children and teens poses an insidious and unique new risk for the development of body image problems,” she says. “Social media gives kids unprecedented access to information on dieting, fuels social comparison—which is a major risk factor for body image dissatisfaction—and allows for the very public criticism of people’s appearances.”

What to do if your child wants to lose weight

Navigating conversations about dieting and weight loss as a parent can be incredibly tricky and even intimidating, given the possible slippery slope that could end in an eating disorder. But with the right strategies, you can encourage constructive conversation, model healthy behavior, and help guide your child toward a positive relationship with food and their body.

1. Stay firm in your stance but discuss the why

“Explain that growing up means your body is in a constant state of growth and change, which requires a lot of food, and be clear that bodies come in all shapes and sizes,” Ouellette says. “Explore the why of wanting to lose weight; validate that it can be hard to not fit an unrealistic ideal and you will support them to process and deal with that—and you have a responsibility to their physical and mental health to not let them do something damaging.”

2. Get curious and ask questions

“By asking questions first, you can get to the root of your child’s worries, connect with them, and then start to help shift their way of thinking,” Menzel says. “This can offer an important opportunity to correct misinformation from peers or social media and foster more helpful beliefs about weight and eating.”

Ouellette also recommends looking into messages they may be getting from their school that could promote harmful thinking about food and bodies (for instance, that certain foods are “good” and others “bad”).

3. Demonstrate healthy body image

“Never forget to model comfort with your own body, even if you have to fake it until you make it. There's a powerful short video called ‘Poodle Science’ that can help with getting your message across,” Ouellette advises. The Health at Every Size-themed video explains the lack of diversity in current weight and health research and the importance of taking individuality into account when considering these issues.

“Check your own thoughts and actions,” Menzel adds. “Parents are not immune to diet culture and we reinforce it at home in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. Try to catch yourself before you comment on your own weight or eating habits, take note of how often you compliment others on their appearance. Are you, yourself on a diet and how do you talk about or show that at home? Changing your own self-talk is important role modeling for your child.”

4. Call out diet culture at home

“Educate your children about the harmful messages and images that they see and hear,” Menzel says. “Make sure that children and teens know about how easy it is to manipulate images and that what they see often isn’t real. Call out misinformation about food, weight, and wellness. Talk about how all food is good food and can nourish our bodies—not to mention that food also makes us feel good and fuels connection. Discuss how weight gain is normal and healthy for a developing child.”

5. Help them feel prepared to confront diet culture in their social world

“Research has shown that of all the sources of pressure to diet and lose weight, peers are often the most influential,” Menzel says. “Introduce them to body positive or anti-diet social media accounts. Help them figure how they will respond when their friends bring up dieting, disparage their own appearance, or comment on someone else’s. It can be hard to challenge this kind of conversation in the moment, and talking about it ahead of time can help your child feel confident navigating these conversations without sacrificing their friendships.”

When (and how) to seek help

Having frank and honest conversations with your child about the potential dangers of dieting is an important part of fending off disordered eating behaviors, but in some cases, professional guidance and support is crucial.

“If you are validating your child and helping them to understand bodies come in all shapes and sizes and they’re still struggling with body image or trying to lose weight, seek professional support,” Ouellette says. “Interview prospective therapists about their views on bodies and weight and the treatment model they use. Ask them for literature that informs their treatment approach and what materials they’ll share with your child. If available, a therapist aligned with Health at Every Size is a good place to start.”

Ouellette also adds that it can be helpful to get an eating disorder screening for your child if you observe eating disorder signs, like:

• Dramatic weight loss or gain in a short period of time
• Restriction of food
• Restrict/binge cycles
• Exercise they cannot take days off from
• Worsening body image issues
• Other mental health concerns, like anxiety, depression and self-harm

According to Menzel, parents also should be aware of the following signs that their child’s body image issues might be cause for more concern:

1. Their body image worries take up an increasing amount of time and resources (i.e. they’re spending more time in their room getting ready, consuming more content on social media, or spending more money on products—especially at the expense of other activities or interests).
2. Their body starts to become a reason for them not to do certain things (i.e. they give up a sport they love or they avoid pool parties with their friends or they no longer wear clothes they used to love).
3. They have significant mental health shifts like increasing anxiety, depression, or loneliness. “All of these changes are signs that your child’s body image concerns might be a symptom of a bigger problem,” Menzel says.

If you’ve noticed these red flags or other troubling symptoms, it’s important to seek help for your child right away. “I usually recommend that parents start by talking to their pediatrician—however, be mindful that the pediatrician’s office can often be a source of weight loss and diet messages,” Menzel says. “An evaluation with a mental health professional who specializes in eating disorders is the best way to go.”

Reflecting on her own experience, Ouellette now sees the immense influence parents can have on their children’s relationships to their bodies. “Diet and wellness culture are everywhere and it can be very hard to know what is true and what is designed to make you feel bad about your body and sell you things,” she says. “We are never going to be able to avoid diet culture completely, but we can work on our relationship with our own bodies in order to model the self-acceptance and self-care we want to impart to our children. We can ‘just say no’ to our own and our children's participation in a toxic system that deprives people of true mental and physical well-being.”

If you’re concerned about your child’s eating habits, don’t ignore it. Some good first steps are to take our free eating disorder assessment, talk with your doctor or a trusted mental health professional, or schedule a consultation with Equip.