Q: My son is almost bar mitzvah, and he is very overweight. Our family doctor recommended that he diet for health reasons, and I think that it will positively affect his social status, as well. The trouble is that he refuses to cooperate and stop noshing. Even when we eliminate nosh, he eats huge quantities of food. What can I do to convince him to want to lose weight?
--A Concerned Father
Hagaon Harav Dovid Levy shlit”a replies:
Dear Concerned Father,
Your letter expresses your deep frustration with your son, who should be suffering most from his excess weight, but still refuses to help himself.
This doesn’t make sense. Why would someone deliberately harm themselves or their bodies? Take a good look around the world, and you’ll find many similar situations playing themselves out in myriad realms. Take the avreich who knows how dangerous it is to smoke and the damage that it wreaks on the body and still refuses to quit. This is one of many, many examples.
The reason this happens is twofold: The first part is force of habit (including addiction and the resulting emotional baggage), and the second aspect is repeated failure.
When we want a person to make a significant change in his life, the underlying message we’re broadcasting to him is that he is bad, guilty, weak and unable to control himself. This message is wholly destructive, and usually results in the opposite effect of what we’re trying to gain. When someone is made to feel like a failure, he feels worse than before, which sets him up for repeated failures. This is why, in your case, instead of motivating your son to cut down on food, you might actually see that he’s gaining weight with a feeling of ‘Why should I bother trying, if I’m anyway doomed to failure?’
A kid who isn’t doing something intrinsically wrong, but still refuses to absorb a lesson that he needs to learn, it’s a sign of despair. When parents take away a child’s tzelem Elokim and send him a message of ‘you’re bad,’ ‘you’re not doing what you should’ and other similar superlatives, he loses faith in himself, stops feeling happiness and satisfaction in life, and loses his will to improve and become better.
A child looks around at his world, and all he wants is to feel valued, supported and accepted—for the person he is, not the person we want him to be. Only when he feels valued and accepted as he is can he garner any satisfaction from the exercise/diet that you want him to do. Otherwise, he’ll drag his feet to exercise class, struggle to keep up with the group, and probably fail or else refuse to do the exercises at all. He’ll look at himself in the mirror and see only Fat. And then, all efforts will be in vain.
In contrast, if he goes to his exercise class with positive feelings, with the support and empathy of those around him and the knowledge that they believe in him and in his ability to succeed, then he’ll start working out with a positive attitude and succeed. It’ll be tough; he’ll sweat, but he’ll feel good with each pound he loses.
If you want your son to cut down on unnecessary eating, if you want him to accept the guidelines and limitations imposed on him by the dietician, then you must first identify with him. Empathize with his hardships and challenges, know that it’s not easy for him, and broadcast to him calm, sympathy and compassion.
In general, it would behoove many parents to understand that the foundation of success with a ‘problematic child’—and this includes a problem of any kind—is to prove to the child that he is not the problem. He might have a problem, but he is not the problem. As soon as the child feels validated, important, equal, beloved, and integral to the family as everyone else, he’ll gain the motive to try to improve.
We’re not asking parents to be angels! Parents also have struggles, and they are condoned in using phrases like ‘it’s hard for him,’ ‘it’s hard for us with him now,’ ‘he has a problem.’ All these are legitimate. But whatever you do, please don’t attach a stigma to your child! Don’t condemn him, and don’t shame him, because it could lead to permanent, irreversible damage.
Hatzlachah rabba and lots of nachas!
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