38 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 We do defer to them a lot in terms of what they eat or when they’re eating. My daughter wanted canned cooked carrots for breakfast. It was like, well, okay, that’s not maybe socially typical, eating cooked carrots for breakfast. But if that’s what your body wants, go for it. . . . They asked her a question at school when she was graduating from preschool. What would you spend $1,000,000 on? A doughnut. So, it’s like, okay, we’re not going to demonize your doughnuts. You can have your doughnuts when you want your doughnuts. Here, Kimberly also captured body neutral parenting’s emphasis on avoiding “healthy” vs. “unhealthy” food and other dichotomous language, stemming from diet culture. Neutral beliefs and behaviors regarding food also manifest via portion sizes for children. Scarlett highlighted differences she noticed in how her family members wanted to portion food for her two sons: one in a larger body and one in a smaller body. She explained that her family members will “offer to my one son and not to the other” while also saying “Oh, do you need that?” to the son in a larger body. Thus, integrating body neutral parenting entails presenting food neutrally, rather than being driven by internalized societal messages about food and thin privilege (e.g., suggesting to a child in a larger body that they may not need the amount of food they are being served perhaps because of anti-fat bias). Body neutral parenting applies for children of all body types. Moreover, caregivers practicing body neutrality with their children talked about food in a way that emphasizes how it “fuels the body” rather than being about “reward or punishment.” Esmeralda explained: It’s like you have to basically find a whole new system of rewards. Sweet things are good motivators. They’re reward systems. And they’re also seen as the desirable food after you choke down the “healthy” food . . . these are the “good” foods you have to eat in order to get the “bad” foods that you get rewarded with after dinner. That just is such an insidious concept. Counter to food being a “reward” or “punishment,” children get to choose rather than falling into the power struggle with food. Cassie described taking the power out of the food situation. With little kids, everyone thinks like, “Oh, you have to control it and you have to make sure they get vegetables in and all that stuff.” Then it becomes about this power dynamic and just trying to take power out of it and then it is about letting them listen to their body and learn about their body. Avoiding using food as a reward or as a punishment was integral to the body neutral parenting approach. De-moralizing Bodies The second subcategory (n = 9) was De-moralizing Bodies, wherein there are not “good” bodies and “bad” bodies. Leilani described, “In relation to size, shape, behavior, disposition, bad habits . . . everybody’s different.” Body neutral parenting conceptualizes bodies in neutral ways, emphasizing what they help people do. As Cassie explained, “You need food to do the things you want to do, and so we take care of our bodies . . . not to look pretty, but to be able to do—focus more on the doing.” Similarly, Leilani shared,
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