Your Child Won’t Starve if You Stop Forcing Them
By: Nihan Kucukural
Tags: Blw, Food, Parenting, Baby, Love

Your Child Won’t Starve if You Stop Forcing Them

Photo by life is fantastic on Unsplash

My mother’s love language was food. She was obsessed with making me eat.

My doctor had told her that I was a fit, healthy child. But the other people around her, especially my grandmother, would always point out how little I ate, how my face was “as small as a spoon” or my neck was “as thin as a cherry stalk”.

She tried everything to make me eat more. I was stubborn. When I was two, she would stuff kofta and yoghurt into my mouth at night. I would swallow the yoghurt but keep the kofta in my mouth until the morning. Yuck!

When I was bigger, she would punish me. She would say “No food for you today!” And then she would leave biscuits around the house hoping that I would pick them up if I get hungry. It wouldn’t work.

When I was five, my twin brothers were born. My dad was mostly away. People said I wasn’t eating because I ‘wanted attention’. And she gave me lots of negative attention as needed.

My most memorable punishment

Every dinner was a battle of wills. One night, when I was six, there was a stuffed eggplant covered in yoghurt on my plate.

I sat by that plate, shedding tears for an hour after everyone had finished their food and gone. My mother’s angry patience finally ran out. “Okay, leave it,” she said, “But no food tomorrow. No breakfast, no lunch, no dinner, nothing. Are you sure?” Yes, I was definitely sure. I was so relieved!

But this time, my punishment came with a twist. It actually had three components: 1) No going out 2) No food 3) No attention.

The third component wasn’t mentioned in the deal, but it was huge. As a six-year-old, I didn’t know silent treatment was a thing. It felt awful.

I didn’t feel hungry. At all. I would look at my mother longingly as she walked past me all tense and bitter, avoiding eye contact. For the whole day, she acted like I was invisible. I still didn’t feel hungry. I felt guilty for not feeling hungry and making my mother so angry.

My torture ended with a glorious climax scene by the sunset!

My mom’s victory

In the evening, my one-year-old brothers were sitting in their prams, side by side on the balcony. My mother was feeding them purslane with yoghurt. One spoon to him, one spoon to the other.

I hated purslane.

The kids were eating happily, with no resistance. My mother was completely relaxed, loving and sweet at that point, laughing and playing with sunshine in her hair. And my brothers were giggling and cooing as they gulped their food down.

And there I was, watching them with from the inside, with this dark, heavy feeling in my heart and a lump in my throat. I was two meters away from them but in a different universe. There was a thick, invisible, unpenetrable wall between us.

Warm tears began rolling as I watched them. Then something cracked open inside me. Hunger came, like a rising sun. I felt it loud and clear for the first time.

I took a step towards my mom in tears. She finally looked at me and asked, “are you hungry?” I could hardly talk from sobbing “Yes, I am, very, very, very hungry.” “Okay sweetheart, come here”. She hugged me with so much love as I cried and cried. Then I sat down at the balcony table and ate my purslane with yoghurt and bread. It tasted great.

This was the origin story of my life long weight problem. And a success story for my mother’s motherhood. A happy ending. For me, it was an unhappy beginning.

I never resisted food again.

My mom’s obsession was not over. She still came to school at the second break and quickly fed me bread, hard-boiled egg and feta cheese, worried I would starve if she didn’t. Swallowing the egg was so hard. I felt like choking, but I didn’t resist. I ate it. I learned loving it. I still love the choking feeling when I eat boiled eggs.

One year later, I was sitting on the beach wearing a bikini when my father noticed the fat folds on my belly. I was the chubby girl now!

After that point, they began telling me “not to eat bread”. I was on a diet at 8.

I have been fighting my weight since then. I had wonderful victories too. As an adult, I became a regular client of dietitians for several years. This helped me keep my weight under control for those years, but as soon as I stopped visiting dietitians, the weight came back every time. It was like paying tribute to the mafia to stay thin. At some point, I had to let it go.

Mom still thinks she did the right thing!

In her mind, punishing me for eating was an act of tough love. Anyway, it’s been forty years, so it doesn’t even make sense to blame her at this point. I need to learn from this, find a solution, then move on.

I always thought that the punishment worked because of the hunger I felt. I realized only recently that it wasn’t actually the hunger that caused me to switch to overeating, but it was feeling rejected and unloved. When I finally ate, I was accepted. No wonder after that day food meant to love and warm fuzzies.