How Your Relationship to Food Impacts Your Child’s Eating Disorder Recovery

When I worked in a child and adolescent eating disorder hospital, I had the opportunity to be part of many patients’ treatment teams, alongside a doctor, therapist, psychiatrist, and parents. I witnessed parents’ pain, stress, and fear, as well as their unwavering love and hope for their child to be free from the prison that was their eating disorder. After working with countless families, I saw a trend—kids whose parents who had healthy relationships to food, body, and exercise often seemed to have the best chance at recovery. However, kids whose parents held unhealthy food beliefs and behaviors were also able to experience recovery success—if they became aware of and were willing to shift their attitudes.

“If you use the experience to ensure the whole family moves forward in a more holistically healthy way when it comes to food and movement, you will have gained something that will improve everyone’s life going forward,” says JD Ouellette, Director of Lived Experience at Equip.

Today, let’s look at how parents’ relationship to food impacts their child’s eating, as well as expert-backed ways to best align your food relationship with your child’s long-term recovery.

How parents’ eating habits impact their kids

Kids often observe their parents and how they interact with other people and the world around them, which includes their relationships to food. According to a 2021 research review of studies about parents and kids ages two to 13, there’s a strong association between parents’ food practices and how their kids eat.

“Children internalize not just what parents feed them, but how parents relate to food, bodies, and eating,” says eating disorder therapist Keira Oseroff Lambert, LCSW, CEDS. “Parents and caregivers are the relational anchors within the child’s eating environment.”

She says when parents demonstrate healthy food relationships and eating competence (a term and model created by dietitian Ellyn Satter), their kids are more likely to self-regulate and trust themselves and their bodies. Some traits of eating competence and “normal eating” include:

• Trust in the body and its cues
• Flexibility and variety with food
• Eating for fuel and pleasure
• Relative structure around meals and snacks
• Food takes up a relatively small amount of brain space

“When parents embody these capacities, they offer children a lived experience of eating that is grounded in trust, predictability, and flexibility,” Oseroff explains. However, when parents have disordered relationships to food, children will often internalize their feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. Some signs of unhealthy food relationships include:

• Restriction, rigidity, or dieting
• Anxiety or fear around food or bodies
• Moralizing language (“good” and “bad” foods)
• Believing you need to earn or burn food
• Being preoccupied with thoughts of food

According to a 2023 study of a diverse group of parents and teenagers, there’s a link between parents’ restrictive feeding practices and lower intuitive eating levels in their teens.

“If eating cake is bad when mom or dad does it, and the child enjoys cake, does it make them a bad person? Kids absolutely have these thoughts,” Ouellette says. "And if maintaining a strict diet or specific low weight takes center stage in life for parents, kids notice this as well.”

If you’re realizing your relationship with food might be negatively impacting your child, don’t blame yourself. Remember that diet culture infiltrates every area of our lives—it’s in our schools, workplaces, gyms, and healthcare spaces—and its conditioning runs deep. But it’s never too late to start building awareness of your own relationship to food and consider how it might impact your child.

Why your relationship with food matters during your child’s eating disorder recovery

When a child has an eating disorder, they’re relearning how to eat and how to relate to food and their bodies, so how parents relate to food is more important than ever.

“The eating environment either supports restoration of internal regulation or reinforces external control and rigidity,” Oseroff says.

In phase one of family-based treatment (FBT), parents’ roles include taking full control of eating—planning, preparing, and supervising. In my practice, we explain to families that when parents or loved ones are modeling healthy food behaviors at the table with the person who has an eating disorder, it’s an external, helpful, and opposing force to their eating disorder brain.

“When caregivers have eating attitudes and behaviors that align with treatment goals, like variety, balance, no forbidden foods, and eventually intuitive eating, it positively impacts their child’s recovery,” explains intuitive eating dietitian Meaghan Ormsby, MS, RDN.

However, when parents or loved ones are restricting or using other unhealthy food or exercise behaviors, it’s like their eating disorder has an ally at the table.

“When they’re eating high-fat and energy-dense foods, on exercise restriction or reduction, and gaining weight, it’s not helpful for them to get verbal or non-verbal messaging that high-calorie foods, taking a break from their fitness routine, or weight gain are too scary for their parents to engage in,” Ouellette explains.

According to a 2026 study of mostly female teens and young adults with eating disorders and their parents (mostly mothers), there’s a link between parents with orthorexic tendencies and increased eating disorder severity in the child. Another 2023 study of mostly female and white teens with eating disorders (mostly anorexia) showed that parental dieting behavior may impact teens’ responses to eating disorder treatment. Teens whose parents reported dieting had a slower weight gain and lower BMI at discharge when compared to participants whose parents weren’t dieting.

Here are some common, specific aspects of your relationship with food that can have a significant impact on your child’s recovery:

Your food language

Using language rooted in diet culture, such as terms like “healthy” foods and “junk” foods, and comments related to weight, calories, or compensation (through exercise or restriction at other meals) will be detrimental to your child’s recovery. “Having a neutral, balanced approach to all foods helps children feel safer eating ‘fun foods, while labeling cookies or candy as ‘bad’ reinforces the eating disorder’s black-and-white thinking,” says pediatric dietitian, Emily McNally RD, LD, who encourages parents to focus on how food and eating experiences provide nourishment, energy, and routine.

Your emotional tone around food

Even if you’re eating the same foods as your child and not using disordered language or behaviors around them, it’s possible they will pick up on underlying anxiety, tension, or distress about eating, according to McNally. On the other hand, a steady and matter-of-fact approach to meals and snacks is most helpful.

Your food variety

“If a parent encourages their child to eat a wide variety of foods but avoids those same foods themselves, the child notices. This can create confusion or mistrust,” McNally explains. Being flexible and including all types of foods without showing signs of guilt is most supportive of your child’s recovery.

“Parents can model eating a home-baked cookie the neighbor brought over even though they may not be hungry, missing a run in favor of watching a movie because it’s raining, and accepting gaining a few pounds by simply buying some new clothes,” Ouellette says. “If you don’t walk the walk, it makes it much harder for your child to recover fully from their eating disorder.”

How to align your food relationship with your child’s recovery

As a parent supporting a child through eating disorder treatment, your food behaviors and beliefs directly impact your child’s relationship to food and their recovery.

“When food and weight gain are life-saving measures, it’s vital that parents shift their attitudes and behaviors as well,” Ouellete explains. “Eating disorders have high mortality rates and low recovery rates, so kids need every support and chance to recover.”

Now, you might be wondering how to make changes to better align your food relationship with your child’s healing. It can feel overwhelming to address your own issues and blind spots when dealing with their illness, so let’s explore manageable, expert-backed ways to feel more confident in helping your child heal.

Take stock of your food beliefs and behaviors

Take some time to be curious and compassionate with yourself about your relationship to food, as well as body and exercise.

“Parents are often navigating a delicate balance between supporting recovery and managing their own beliefs, histories, and anxieties around food,” Oseroff says.

This might include beliefs around thin bodies being “better” than non-thin bodies, certain foods being “bad” or “good,” or needing to “earn” food through exercise, among many others. I recommend getting curious about the origin of such beliefs. You can try asking yourself questions like:

• When did this belief first take hold? How old was I?
• Who or what helped instill this belief in me?
• Does this belief help me align with my core life values?
• Does this belief help my child’s eating disorder recovery?

“If you find you cannot prioritize supporting your child’s recovery over your dieting and exercise, that realization should lead to figuring out why that is,” Ouellette adds.

Use neutral language about food and body

“Speaking about food, eating, or their (or others’) bodies with a judgmental tone reinforces negative feelings and promotes black-and-white thinking,” says Oseroff.

If you notice that the ways you talk about food and body are rooted in diet culture, start shifting towards nonjudgemental language.

“Replace ‘That’s unhealthy’ with ‘That’s one of many foods we eat,’ and avoid commentary that implies guilt or virtue tied to eating,” McNally suggests. “Shift the focus away from appearance and toward non-body-related values.”

For example, instead of commenting on your friend’s weight loss or gain, describe something funny they said. McNally also recommends focusing on consistency, not perfection, and encourages parents to repair with their child openly when they make a mistake with their language.

Normalize all foods

Despite what diet culture says, all foods (even desserts and fried foods) are allowed into an adequate and relatively balanced diet and adopting such an attitude will help your child heal.

“Remember that all foods fit and have purpose, even if that purpose is pleasure,” Oseroff encourages. “Enjoying food with others is a biopsychosocial drive—since the beginning of time, food has been part of community and celebration.”

Eat the same foods as your kid

It's not helpful to avoid foods you’re making your child eat, and it helps reduce fear and isolation when everyone at the table is eating the same foods.

“This doesn’t mean you have to eat every bite of food they do, though some parents choose to do this,” Ouellete explains. Modeling an all-foods-fit mentality at the table and allowing yourself to enjoy your meal and listen to your body is a powerful way to support your child’s recovery.

Be predictable with meals and snacks

“Grazing throughout the day and skipping meals is unpredictable and chaotic,” Oseroff cautions.

However, providing a solid meal and snack time structure will help nourish your child physically, mentally, and emotionally by decreasing uncertainty and increasing trust within yourself and with your child, according to Oseroff. A common daily food structure is three meals and two to three snacks in between (depending on what your dietitian recommends).

“The child is not only learning (or relearning) how to eat, but what it feels like to be fed and provided for,” she says. “Eating disorder recovery is not only about restoring weight or intake, but about rebuilding a relationship with food grounded in trust and safety.”

Get help when you need it

Whether it’s in a support group or with your child’s treatment team (when your child is not present), take time to unpack your own food, exercise, and body concerns that may be impairing your child’s recovery.

“Get some updated information to help you fully understand what’s real and what is frankly diet or wellness-industry propaganda,” Ouellete advises. “For lasting eating disorder recovery, these changes need to be things you believe in, not a temporary measure until you can return to diet culture beliefs and actions.”

Ormsby recommends parents learn about intuitive eating (I recommend this workbook), which is usually the end goal in eating disorder recovery. “Parents can be working toward intuitive eating themselves while their child is following a structured plan—and that modeling is incredibly valuable,” she says.

Additionally, if you have disordered food behaviors and beliefs that are deeply entrenched and keeping you from supporting your child’s recovery (either disordered eating or an eating disorder), it’s best to work with your own therapist and dietitian to heal. Research shows that parents who go through eating disorder treatment have a positive impact on their kids’ food behaviors. In fact, one 2025 study of mostly white parents with binge eating disorder showed that their positive behavior changes by the end of treatment were associated with fewer disordered eating behaviors in their school-aged children.

The bottom line

Remember, what your child needs most is a dependable and judgement-free eating environment, not a parent trying to be perfect.

“Parents do not need to have a perfect relationship with food to support their child’s recovery. Consistency, neutrality, flexibility, and emotional steadiness matter most,” McNally says.

Many parents and families feel freer and happier by the end of treatment, according to Ouellete, because they’re eating foods they enjoy, moving their bodies to feel good, and no longer seeing food, body size, and movement as moral issues. It’s possible to help your child be free from the grips of an eating disorder—I’ve seen countless families reach the other side—and often, everyone ends up in a healthier place than before it all began.