Children don’t just look at their mother. They look at how you look at women About glances, jokes, diets, and tense sighs in front of the mirror.
I’m standing in the kitchen with a friend. She’s preparing dinner: chicken breast, wild rice, broccoli, almonds. Everything carefully measured. Her toddler daughter is standing right beside her. Curious. Attentive.
Later, I see her playing in her toy kitchen. Not a single dish gets served before it passes an imaginary scale. As someone with personal experience in eating disorders, I know, this is where it begins. Not with bulimia or anorexia nervosa, but with a mother who can’t fully embrace her body as it is. With well-meant control. With chasing ‘healthy’. With a body that never feels quite good enough.
I feel sadness. And, honestly, a strange kind of relief that I don’t have daughters.
Because I know all too well how deeply a negative body image can take root and how easily, how unconsciously, and even lovingly, we pass it on.
And it’s not just mothers. I remember a father at a parent night who casually said:
“Well, my daughter’s a real beauty. Thankfully she got her mom’s figure, not my bulky build.” I’ll never forget how his daughter quietly walked away. She was six.
What the science says about eating disorders in children
My time last year at the Be-Leef I Eating Disorder Center in Portugal only confirmed what research already shows:
- Children of parents with an eating disorder are 7 to 12 timesmore likely to develop one themselves.
- Kids of parents who are constantly dieting are 3 timesmore likely to engage in extreme weight control behaviors (GUTS study).
- Clinical studies show increased anxiety, depression, and body image issues in children of mothers with disordered eating.
- 72% of people with anorexiareport trauma or abuse in their past.
- Anorexia nervosais the deadliest psychiatric disorder. Only opioid overdoses have higher mortality.
- About 9% of people with bulimia nervosadie from the condition.
And systemically? These patterns are also passed down through silence. Through glances. Through jokes. Through food tension and through your mirror image.
So... are you never allowed to watch what you eat again?
Of course you are. Whether you eat mindfully, follow keto, try a protein diet, or just really love your measured almonds – the choice is yours.
But know this:
What you do is being watched. What you say is remembered. And who you are gets copied. Not just by your daughter. But by your son, too. He’s also forming an idea of food. Of bodies. Of what’s ‘good’. Of what’s ‘too much’. Of how women are ‘supposed’ to look.
Trust me, as the mother of two boys, I got a wake-up call myself.
Want to break these patterns in your family?
At Nurture Next, I support parents who are struggling with unconscious patterns around food, control, body image, and emotional regulation, before they ripple into the next generation.
Marina van Dansik – Parent Coach and Therapist in Haarlem
For conscious parents ready to lead with connection, trust, and resilience at home and within themselves.