to ask people not to control their children

[FunnysInLaJardin]

I was very controlled as a child, loving background but food was tightly controlled.

As a result I have a binge eating disorder.

I see so much on here about parents wishing to control what food their child eats and what tech they have access to.

It all comes from a good place, but just be mindful that if you control your child's choices you may inadvertantly end up damaging them.

give your child a choice and enable them to make the right decisions, don't decide for them. Like my parents did

I think a lot of us weren't allowed unrestricted access to TV. What's wrong with that? I had to ask "can I watch x programme" and sometimes the answer was no. That's parenting.

As for food, I'm very fat, my sister isn't. My parents did their best. No parent is perfect but your post seems odd.

I was a child of the 70s and it was still pretty common not to have a TV.

Well I say common but what I mean is it wasn't massively unusual.

And with regards to 'making a case', most people back then didn't have the TV on all day anyway, and would only turn it on if they wanted to watch something in particular.

There were only 3 channels to watch anyway, and the radio was still very popular so far more likely to be on all day.

I haven't read the thread but want to add my thoughts after reading your post. Children should never be banned from 'unhealthy' food, including sweets, cake & chocolate. Birthday parties are awash with 'unhealthy' treats. It should be about allowing children to indulge occasionally while teaching & accepting everything in moderation.

What is so unbelievable about a child giving another child a bag of sweets at school?

I have noticed an increase of very young children refusing sweets because they are frightened of what their parents will say if they find out. That to me is quite sad.

I have also had a lot of women tell me of their desire to loose weight and what diet that there on while their young daughters were in earshot. Not great all round I would say.

I think with tech we have to accept that it will continue to play a bigger & bigger part in children's lives as the years go on. In twenty years time, the amount of time children spend on tech now will look miniscule. I never limited the amount of time ds could spend on his computer or console, but he had other interests, he spent hours playing with Lego, reading & watching television, he loved grown up programmes like Time Team & Air crash investigations from being small, we also did things together like playing Wii Sports. Most of the time, if he was on the computer, he was learning & investigating things he was interested in.

I am sorry to hear about your situation .

On the other side of this argument, my parents had no rules and let me eat what I wanted as a child and as a consequence I ended up with significant teeth issues well into adulthood. I was also severely underweight and still have issues regarding food.
So I will absolutely be setting rules and boundaries regarding food for my children, as a lack of this in my own childhood ended up being neglectful.

I think the best thing any parent can do around food/weight and even screen time, is to set a good example themselves.

Overweight parents and parents who are constantly on their phones, are always going to come across as 'Do as I say and not as I do' to their kids.

And most kids will see that for what it is eventually - hypocrisy.

give your child a choice and enable them to make the right decisions

How do you do that? You can do all the explaining and modelling of the right decisions, but what if they still make the 'wrong' decision?

It also depends on the child. Some are open to reason, others are stubborn and contrary.
Some things are non negotiable - wearing a seat belt, brushing teeth. I absolutely will control my child if I need to, but I consider it being a parent rather than something negative. Most children thrive on clear rules and boundaries and then feel secure to go out and make their own decisions as they get older. We learn from making mistakes, but a small child needs to have a solid base first.

It is a lot easier to blame your parents for your failings, than take personal responsibility

Don’t get it. I had to ask approval for whatever I wanted to watch on TV when I was a kid and we had very limited viewing hours. I wasn’t allowed to just watch what I wanted whenever I wanted. Lots of my friends had more relaxed rules than I did.

Frankly I don’t think I missed out on too much because I wasn’t allowed to watch The Dukes of Hazzard, Baywatch or Married with Childten even though my friends were. Or because I wasn’t allowed to spend my allowance on bags of sweets at the corner shop or that we only had dessert occasionally instead of whenever we asked.

TBH I don’t think it’s as simple as saying restrictive childhood experiences “cause” mental disorders. I’m sorry you have had a hard time with your disorder OP but unless you are talking about truly extreme circumstances (and your TV example is not what I’d call a truly extreme circumstance) then your plea to the forum is not going to apply to many people at all.

Within reason my autistic son is always loitering around the fridge wanting fruit. If I hide the fruit from him he'll go for a cucumber or carrot. Great he loves fruit but too much isn't good for him or his teeth. If left to eat whatever he wanted he would fill up on fruit then refuse his meals. He used to be underweight still would be if he could eat what he wanted when he wanted.

Hmm my 16 year old ate a pack off 4 kitkats a pack of 6 monster munch along with biscuits an sweets and anything else he could find mind he never touched a piece off fruit or veg!!! (I was working for 5 hours) Yes I will tell him/control him if you like that it's not acceptable and it's just greedy they where not all for him there are others in the house that also would like some snacks!!! Junk food has never been controlled in this house it's bought to be eaten but dont take the piss.

Your experience is the same as my own, OP.
To an extent, YANBU.

YANU.

It's such a fine line. My issue is (and probably always will be) with food wastage. You had to eat everything on your plate (and they were oversized portions as it was) or you would be smacked. No snacks, just what was on your plate at mealtime. If anyone left anything, it would be eaten by someone else, especially if it was meat. The second I moved out, I started to binge. Thankfully it never developed into a habit. Even now I can't bring myself to throw away large amounts of food, and tend to pick at what's left. I'm getting better about leaving the kids' left overs for another meal, rather than eating it, but it's been a slow process.

The only positive about all the control over food was that your food was your food. If you were allocated a treat, even if you didn't eat it straight away it would still be there for you later. Probably because the punishment for stealing food was never worth it. That will help me if/when the kids ever say they want to save their left overs for themselves.

I'm trying to model healthy eating and attitudes to food as the kids are still young, but it's so hard when you don't have them yourself. As my husband also hasn't got the best habits himself. I fear we're fighting a losing battle.

Sounds like you're absolving yourself of responsibility for your lifestyle.

Looks funny in the light

There's growing concern in the scientific community that some shit (i.e. UPF) food is actually BAD for you, not neutral/OK in moderation. And eating it as children is setting a child up for a lifetime of weight and health issues.

I don't think there's anything wrong with parents wanting to delay and reduce consumption of junk food as much as they possibly can.

So they can stay up up to all hours talking on a device, not go to school, shower, brush teeth, eat decent meals so they dont end up resenting us?

I do not think so in this day and age.
All over us will be somehow affected by childhood doesnt make for being a victim of it for the rest of our lives.

OP I'm also wondering if you have siblings and do they binge eat too?

I have 2 (adult) kids close in age who have very different relationships with food. I wonder if they both give me the blame/credit.

I suspect this is actually about degrees. Not about there being control, all children have and need limits to keep them safe. You feel that your parents were too strict with these things. And it may be they were unusually so.

We can all only be brought up by our own parents. All families have different things and do things differently.

Some families have a religion - is it 'controlling' to bring a child up in your own religion? Some families are vegetarian - is it 'controlling' to feed a child a vegetarian diet? Some families don't have TV. One of DD's friends doesn't. Some families are Jehovah's Witnesses and don't do a whole host of things that most kids do. Some families as PP mentioned don't have enough money and struggle with many things.

And generally with these things as kids get older there becomes a point where the child can decide to diverge from the parents' way of life. Which did actually happen for you with your parents allowing TV even though they didn't want one. Even if not as quickly as you might have liked. Agreeing what programmes could be watched was entirely normal for the era. (And this era. Too much dodgy stuff kids can access if you give them free reign.) But again, maybe there are degrees and you feel that the degree of restrictions applied were inappropriate.

There's also sometimes a degree of grass is greener. You see the things other kids can do and you can't but you don't notice what you have and they don't. DS was convinced all his friends were allowed much more screen time, but quiz the parents and you find out that's not actually the case and some get much less.

It’s an add on because one of the ways I was controlled was that we didn’t have a tv until I was 10. This was in the 70s. I had to beg for a tv and even then what I watched was strictly controlled. Couldn’t just put the tv on and watch, had to make a case for it

We didn't have a tv until I was 14 (1975) as we couldn't afford one. When we did get one there were only 3 channels to choose from anyway and we were only allowed to watch for an hour after school and TOTPs once a week. Begging for a tv wouldn't have got me anything other than a smack for asking and another for crying about it.

I don't agree with forcing children to do things but it's totally acceptable to be the authoritarian as a parent. My own children didn't have many rules at all but the ones we had they were expected to adhere to.

What tech did you have access to in the 70s? Many things invented in the 70s weren't available commercially to households until much later. The biggest tech I had was an etch a sketch!

How do you know they have a ‘mental illness’?

Because @MrsDS BED is a mental illness. If op has a diagnosis that is.

Gosh that's harsh!
OP is saying that her parents were excessively rigid about food. I don't think she means you shouldn't encourage healthy choices, more that if your child has no choices at all, and there are many forbidden fruit, as it were, they will struggle to make sensible decisions as adults.

I think that was normal in the 70s. And 80s. My parents were overly strict in that regard too, but children have never had a free for all on any screen. We never had a tv for years and had black and white when many people had colour. Some people even had two TVs! Parents get to set the boundaries on that sort of thing.