Janet is joined by Grace Batman, a therapist and nutritionist who focuses on eating disorders, the conditions that can create and aggravate them, and how eating — or not eating — can be a symptom of mental health issues. She writes: “My hope has always been to provide accepting spaces for all individuals and bodies to explore and honour their relationships with food, body, and self.” Janet and Grace discuss some of the early signs of eating disorders, and how our own relationship with food and body image throughout our lives can affect our children beginning in the early years.
Transcript of “Eating Disorders, Healthy Body Image: What Parents Need to Know (with Grace Batman, CN, LMHC)”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
I’ve been looking forward to this opportunity to hear from Grace Batman. She’s a therapist, an eating disorder clinician, and trauma specialist who’s with me today to talk about our kids’ healthy body image and the treatment and prevention of eating disorders. She mostly works with preteens, teens, and adults, so I’m hoping she’ll share how we can get on track early to be able to influence our children positively in regard to their relationships with food and feelings about their bodies from the time that they’re young. And maybe we can catch early signs of tendencies that our kids might have.
On Grace’s website, honornutritioncounselling.com, that’s honour, H-O-N-O-R, nutritioncounseling.com, she states that her team appreciates “the bravery and energy it takes our clients to reach out and invest in their own healing, as well as their children’s, and we are honoured to be trusted as a resource.”
Let’s get to it! Hi, Grace. Welcome.
Grace Batman: Thank you so much for having me.
Janet Lansbury: I would like to start right away with hearing about your work, the issues that families bring to you. What’s happening for you these days? What do you see families concerned with?
Grace Batman: My work primarily is with the prevention and then also the treatment of eating disorders. I work with kids as young as about 11, and I work with parents, obviously, because of that, and adults. So a lot of my work centres around an eating disorder that is already present in a family. But in addition to that, there’s a lot of prevention work, especially in my work with adults who already have an eating disorder and maybe a parent that is unpacking that while parenting, to try not to put that harm onto their kid.
Janet Lansbury: Does that happen, that if we have a disorder in regard to eating, that our child has one? How much of it do you think is genetic and how much is environmental, and what is our influence in terms of helping children to not struggle the way that we did?
Grace Batman: I feel like it’s absolutely genetics plus environment, as so many things are, so many pieces and so many experiences disorders are. But we do have influence. In working with parents—and in being a parent myself, since I became a parent, I feel this even more strongly now—how important it is to acknowledge the genetic aspect of that. We know from the research that this is a brain difference, it’s a difference in your brain. And so genetically, we know from twin studies that this is something that we totally pass down genetically. And there are a lot of things that we can come into parenting with and even pull back and redo and recreate in our families to sort of establish the family culture around this stuff that can be more preventative.
So I always tell parents, you don’t just cause an eating disorder, it’s not all your fault. We’re not here to blame parents for an eating disorder. And that’s a very, very important part because we’re all human trying to navigate through so much in these conversations around food and body with our kids.
Janet Lansbury: Exactly. There are certain genetic tendencies that we all have for different things, and there’s nothing helpful in getting down on ourselves either for these things.
Grace Batman: Totally. And I think with food, part of unpacking some of this stuff in our families and in ourselves to set our kids up well and treat an eating disorder if somebody gets into that position in a family, is really about reducing the shame around it and getting out of the blamey, black and white thinking and controlling. It’s like, yeah, this stuff happens and we can always redo how we’re doing it and have these more nuanced conversations in our families and just approach it from a more nuanced lens and compassionate lens.
Janet Lansbury: And are there certain dynamics that we could see in our children very early or certain aspects to their psychology or ways that we see them handling situations that might be a sign that something like this might be happening? And at that point, what would you do anyway? I would really love to hear what you talk about in terms of prevention. I think that’s really important.
Grace Batman: The prevention is, I’ll maybe name a couple of the big topics within the prevention. It’s normal puberty and growth in childhood and throughout childhood. Normal fat and weight gain as a part of that, because our culture tends to be very fear-based around growth because growth typically does, especially in childhood, mean weight gain. So part of what happens in those preteen and teen years is that a lot of fat deposits happen, a lot of fat growth and weight growth happens.
And it can be really, really scary for parents, especially when there’s so much fear around preventing diabetes or being in a bigger body and all this stuff. So it becomes really scary, and I just see a lot of parents feeling really afraid and then trying to control something that they don’t have as much control over in that way. That sort of thing that you talk about a lot on your podcast, which I love, which is about focusing on the relationship and what’s happening in our child and staying out of this fear-based, reactive place. And so we’re trying to slow people down, to both normal what’s happening and also focus on the relationship.
Janet Lansbury: Yes, that fear-projection space that we can get into so easily without even knowing it. And we all do it to some extent. I don’t think there is anybody that looks at their child and watches the way they play or the way they behave and doesn’t have some little fear or red flags that come up around certain things and based on our own experience.
But how do you calm parents down about it? I want to steal some of your ideas so that I can help parents! When you work with these issues and they’re 11-year-olds and you’re obviously working with the parents as well. Are you talking to the children separately and the parents separately, are you talking to them all together, or both?
Grace Batman: It’s so much both. Maybe we could use as a little bit of an example a paediatrician appointment. Typically, we go to the paediatrician and they take our weight, they take our growth, they look at our growth charts and see about our kids’ trends. And as an example, if the doctors are saying, “Hey, how are you doing with your fruits and your veggies?” And the caregiver makes that sort of, “Well, not very good,” and there might be a moment of the weight’s looking a little too big. These are moments where we might be unpacking some of that in my work with kids and families. Just stepping out a little bit to unlearn some of the things. There are times in the medical field where there are approaches to weight and food that are based in aspects of science and bodies that are important, but we have to look at them really critically and how that looks to be a kid in this world growing up in a body with social media, etc.
So if we’re unpacking these moments and some of the things that might have contributed to a kid getting to their preteen and teen years or that moment of, My body’s starting to grow and I have more fat on my stomach than I’ve ever had before, then it’s a moment where we’re going, Hey, nobody really told you about this, but it’s really normal to gain a lot of weight during this period, even before puberty starts. There’s a lot of reasons why we don’t get enough vegetables in sometimes, so many different pieces. You’re not doing a bad job or we’re not looking down on you for that. So we’re just reducing shame and blame.
Janet Lansbury: And giving more of an objective perspective from your clinical point of view and your experience.
Grace Batman: That’s right.
But I think a lot of it is about puberty and growth and is also about celebrating body diversity. The kids pick up on that, you feel it. So I’ve heard a lot of teens say things in private to me like, “I never worried about my body until it was starting to be commented on.” Even larger kids have said to me, “I keep hearing my parents say something like, I just don’t want you to struggle in the way that I struggle. I don’t want you to be made fun of.” And they say, “I didn’t feel bad until it started to be discussed in our family.”
Janet Lansbury: Yes, that’s a problem.
Grace Batman: Totally. But those are the really honest and lovely moments. And as you know, so many parents want to do so well. So it’s just that shift of giving that information, having that. And what I really want your listeners to know is just that they can back up, they can redo, they can have these conversations, and they can develop that continued listening. Really unpacking what is mine and what is my child’s and what is me looking out for their health and what is me sort of projecting this fear onto them?
Janet Lansbury: But as you said, the intention is so loving and positive and we do want to spare our kids from our own struggles, of course. So how do we put that in perspective and understand that the way it works isn’t that direct? It isn’t like, If I tell my child this, they won’t do it. It can be the opposite, that our anxiety is contagious. And when there’s anxiety around eating, we know that creates issues, whether it’s they’re not eating enough, they’re eating too much. Anxiety actually affects the appetite, it affects us physically.
Grace Batman: It never hurts. So if you feel a little nervous or you want to get on top of it, I feel like if you’re wondering, it doesn’t hurt to reach out and just sort of check in. Some very clear signs are on growth charts. Not BMI, I don’t recommend BMI as an indicator. But if a child is really dropping off a growth chart and line, the percentage that they’ve typically been following, that can be a moment to just check in. Alongside seeing that your child’s eating has really shifted and their mood and experience around eating and going out to dinner or trips. Usually there’s just a lot of distress that starts happening. Those are sort of the big pieces within it.
And during the pandemic, when all the waitlists were full, I created some online on-demand courses. One of them is supporting families who think their kid might have an eating disorder and the other one is for just feeding preteens and teens. It just sort of expands on some of the conversations we were having today about the mindset around it. Those are definitely places people can go. And I also am pretty active on social media these days; I have an Instagram, which is honour_nutrition_counselling. People can totally reach out if they want resources as well.
Janet Lansbury: Wonderful. So those courses are available on your website also?
Grace Batman: They are through my website.
Janet Lansbury: Excellent. Thank you so much, Grace. This was wonderful.You know a lot, I could chat with you a long time. And we feel, I think, very aligned in our thought, but I know nothing about half of this that you are saying, so I love hearing your take.
Grace Batman: Thank you and thank you to you to be on. This is actually an honour to me so thanks.
Grace Batman: Thank you and thank you to you to be on. This is actually an honour to me so thanks.
Grace Batman: Sounds good, Janet. Thanks again.
Janet Lansbury: Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.
Grace Batman: Bye.
