If you’re doing things differently from your parents, it’s my bet that you could still be doing the same thing as them. Even when, on the outside, it looks like a 180-degree turn. The core still turns around the same thing. I see this happen in feeding so often. And I know, because I did it too.
What trust feels like
When I became a mother, I joined what I called the ‘Radically Different than My Parents’ club, as I wrote in Different rules, same game? I was trained as a dietitian, and I had learned a lot about non-diet approaches to feeding. So instead of the diet talk of the eighties and nineties, I did non-diet talk. I told my kids to listen to their tummies. I followed the division of responsibility, the parent’s job and the child’s job, by the book. Mealtimes were never perfect, but I felt I was doing it so differently. I must have broken the cycle.
I hadn’t. The only thing I had changed was how I did things. The why underneath was exactly the same: I was still trying to get my kids to eat something, or not to eat something. My way of doing it was totally different from my parents’. My reason was a copy-paste. This is why breaking cycles is so hard. Very often, we don’t even know which cycle we need to break.
The work you already did matters
You might have already done a lot of work. So have I. And that work is needed. It helps you imagine that something else is possible, and it gives you a first feel for how that could look. We protect our kids from harmful diet talk. ‘Listen to your belly’ is much gentler than ‘your belly looks big’, for their body, their trust in it, and their ability to feel what’s going on inside.
But if mealtimes still feel like an unsolved puzzle or a fight, if there is still discomfort around food, something annoying at best, or frustration, extra mental load, even anxiety, then something is still itching. Whether it’s your toe or your soul, something isn’t right yet. We changed things on the outside, but not on the inside.
So, why are you doing what you’re doing? I mean the deep reasons, the core ones. Are they the same as your parents’? Are you still protecting your child from food? Are you still protecting them from being overweight, or underweight, or from anything that happened to you? Do you still not trust food? Or your child? Do you need reassurance from them that they’ve had enough, not once, but maybe five times?
If you ask ‘Are you sure you don’t want another bite?’ five times, that is not trust. It looks a bit like trust, but it isn’t. The same goes for planning snacks strategically, like I did. On the outside, it looks different. On the inside, it’s the same.
The cycle you need to break is (probably) invisible
I know this may be hard to hear. But if the cycle you’re breaking is visible, you’re probably not breaking it. The cycle you need to break is invisible.
That’s my raw, honest take. To be clear: I’m not a psychotherapist, and I’m not talking about that area. I’m talking about food. If the only thing that changes is your feeding behavior, what you do and how you show up at the table, then you’re probably not breaking a cycle. You’re installing the newest update of the same system.
I hate to say this, because I know how much work many of you have done. I know it’s not easy to let your child eat as many cookies as they like. Not because cookies are bad, but because someone told you they were. If you heard that message all your life, letting your child eat cookies freely from time to time can be truly groundbreaking work. I’m not taking anything away from that. I mean it with all my heart, because for me, it was already very hard.
But it’s like putting your feet in fresh water and thinking: this is refreshing, this is it. The current still pulls you in the same direction. The stream hasn’t changed. The why is still there.
So yes, it starts with what we can see. Then we go inwards, to how we feel. Why do I still feel uncomfortable, when on the outside I’m doing everything the non-diet accounts say I should? And then we go deeper and deeper, until we reach the core: the why. That’s where the cycle breaks.
It won’t always be visible on the outside. Many non-diet accounts truly invite you to break the cycle. But just as many use new packaging for the same old recipe. And the same old recipe is still: keep kids away from candy, cookies and chocolate, and steer them towards fruit, vegetables and a bit of protein, or a lot.
On the other side
Honestly, breaking this cycle is the most liberating thing I’ve ever done (and am still doing). But the cycle we’re breaking has been going on for ages. We keep recycling the same ideas into new products, new promises, new everything. The core stays the same. So being a cycle breaker can feel awkward, even lonely, especially when you really go deep.
If it does, know this: life can be pretty chill on the other side. Not because everyone around you is chill, but because you found your own chill. You protect your child’s chill as much as you can, or you find your way back to it together.
