I was raised by a thin mother and a somewhat plump grandmother who nagged me constantly to lose weight. I grew up hearing, "Bread is fattening, potatoes are fattening, bananas are fattening, eat lots of fruits and vegetables." I wasn't even all that fat -- at 5'9" I wore a 1970s size 14 (probably the equivalent of a 10 today) when I graduated from high school -- but they focused on my weight all the time. Nothing else mattered to them. What it taught me was to sneak around, not trust my body, eat in response to external cues (what they allowed me) rather than in response to my internal hunger. I didn't have a really serious weight problem then, but I sure grew up to have one. Parents trying to "control" their kids' eating can really backfire.

When I had children, I vowed that I would never try to control their eating the way my mother and grandmother tried to control mine. I tried to let them eat in response to their own internal hunger cues, not in response to my feelings of when and how much it was appropriate for them to eat. I talked to my kids about what they needed to eat to be healthy, but not about what they needed to eat to be thin. We always had cookies and other treats in the house and they always had access to them, although they knew they had to be eaten as part of a balanced diet.

The first time my mother mentioned weight to one of them, I told her that if she ever, ever, ever said anything to either of them about their weight again, she would never see them again. Both my kids had body builds similar to mine when I was a pre-adolescent -- somewhat plump, but certainly not obese. As teens, both of them slimmed down and they are now quite thin (my daughter is 5'6" and 125 pounds and my son is about 6'2" and 160 pounds). Would they have been thin if I nagged them about their weight? Who knows? I do know that they would not trust me the way they do now or confided in me the way they do now and I am thankful that they trust me in a way that I will never trust my mother.

All this is by way of saying that it is not so simple to just blame parents for their kids' weight. Parents, with the best of intentions, may do things that cause their kids to develop eating disorders (mine did and while I fault their methods, I don't fault their intentions). Not every child who is raised in a house with healthy food ends up thin -- I did not. Let's not assume that we have all the answers for this family that we know nothing about.