Food should symbolize the many things every child needs and should be surrounded by: love, safety, security, and reliability. However, when children grow up with families that fail to fulfill those needs consistently, they often develop food trauma, which describes disordered eating habits and maladaptive perceptions of food stemming from adverse experiences.
Utilize this blog as a resource for better understanding food-related adverse childhood experiences—what they can look like, how to identify the signs, and most importantly, how to help children approach and heal from food trauma.
How Adverse Childhood Experiences Lead to Food Trauma
Sometimes, children develop food trauma because of their caregivers being unable to afford food, withholding food as punishment, neglecting to provide food, or even body shaming them.
However, a child’s food trauma doesn’t have to be directly caused by a situation involving food.
Childhood food trauma results from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which refers to any type of traumatic event that occurs during a child’s developmental years. More often than not, traumatized children try to maintain a sense of control and certainty; even though they can’t stop their household from being dysfunctional, their eating is under their control.
The Signs of Food Trauma
It is crucial to be able to identify the signs of food trauma to provide the proper support, comfort, and therapy to help the child heal.
We’ve had many of our young residents arrive at our home with unresolved food trauma and know the signs firsthand—here are some of the more common ones we typically watch out for:
Changes in Behavior
- Food hoarding
- Overeating or undereating
- Eating too fast
- Lack of appetite
- Sneaking food
- Food avoidance
Changes in Emotion
Behavior shifts can be the more obvious, visible signs of food trauma, but there’s also plenty of emotions involved that aren’t always apparent. These emotional shifts typically involve anxiety or distress about food (e.g., relating to type, amount, preparation, texture, temperature, meal times, mealtime environment, etc.).
Physical Signs
Changes in feelings and behaviors related to eating often result in physical symptoms, such as substantial fluctuations in weight, gastrointestinal problems, and signs of malnutrition, such as thinning hair or nails, vitamin deficiencies, fatigue, and poor thermoregulation (i.e., being so cold that they’re wearing a sweater when it’s hot out and no one else is cold).
If these signs persist, they could be pointing to one of several eating disorders:
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (AFRID)
- Binge eating disorder (BED)
- Bulimia
- Food maintenance syndrome
How to Help a Child with Disordered Eating
Keep Healthy Snacks Constantly Available
Kids with food trauma often feel nervous about expressing when they’re hungry; asking their parents or guardians for a snack can be daunting.
At the Children’s Home, we leave out a snack bowl with fruit and healthy snacks that our kids can have anytime without asking. We find that always keeping snack options available builds trust with our kids, reminding them that with us, they’ll never have to go hungry or hoard food to prevent that from happening.
Always having snacks available also encourages our children to feel more comfortable telling us what foods feel safe and which ones trigger their food trauma; they grow to trust that we’d rather try our best to provide food that accommodates them than force them to choose between starving and eating something that makes them miserable.
Make Mealtime Fun
Children with food trauma deal with an unnatural amount of distress and anxiety, especially for their age. These children sometimes must be taught to relax and redirect their focus to fun, lighthearted activities.
If mealtimes are particularly stressful for your child, incorporate entertainment or play time. For example, you can suggest they bring their favorite toy to the table, have a “picnic” anywhere in the house to let them eat with their preferred scenery, or let them lead the dinner conversation.
Suppose you do not like your family watching TV at the dinner table, but it helps your child relax and eat when they usually can’t. In that case, consider allowing it anyway, because sometimes making sacrifices to get a child with food trauma to eat is necessary. Helping them get better is worth it.
Create a Routine
It’s important to model healthy eating behaviors, which is best during mealtime. Eating around the same times of the day daily provides stability and consistency, giving them the control they need.
Building a food routine creates healthy expectations for a child who has had to wonder at times if they would receive breakfast, lunch, or dinner. By creating stability with food in this way, you take all the guesswork out of it, so the child in your care never has to wonder again.
Develop Positive Associations with Food
Developing positive associations with food will help slowly heal food trauma over time. Giving children an active role in meal planning or letting them join in on grocery shopping will allow them to feel encouraged by the foods they eat. It could empower them to try new things and build trust with their careers.
Seek Out Professional Help
Ultimately, an informed expert in eating disorders will offer the most intensive clinical treatment to help children with food trauma get better. Our on-campus counselor would be glad to help find a clinician like this for your child; just call and request to speak with her at (205)-924-9751.
Outside of intensive treatment, our on-campus counselor has much experience with helping children work through and heal from the emotional impact of food trauma and the inciting circumstances. To schedule counseling services or ask for advice for a child in your life with food trauma, contact us anytime.
From Our Home to Yours: You Are Not Alone
Whether you are someone impacted by food trauma, you know someone who has, or you are taking care of a child affected by it, we are here for you.
Please reach out to us today. With love and compassion—and without judgment—our staff at the Alabama Free Will Baptist Children’s Home will gladly offer their support according to your family’s needs.