Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks
Speaker 1: Being Gone.
Speaker 2: He's welcome back. This is the Weekend Collective. I'm Tim Beverage.
Speaker 2: And by the way, if you've missed any of the
Speaker 2: previous hours you want to go check him out, go
Speaker 2: look for the week In Collective where podcasts I suggest iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: But this is the Parents Squad. We want your calls
Speaker 2: one ten eighty in text on nine two nine two.
Speaker 2: And my guest today is Google Sutherland, who sort of
Speaker 2: needs no introduction, but he is. How do we bill you?
Speaker 2: Was going to get this right? At Google? You're a
Speaker 2: psychologist with the umbrella.
Speaker 3: The umbrella group, Umbrella Wellbeing.
Speaker 2: That's the one umbrella wellbeing? And how are you keep on?
Speaker 3: I'm exhausted today. I've been manning the White Elephants Stall
Speaker 3: at the Saint Michael's Church here in Kelbourne, and I've
Speaker 3: been blogging off things that nobody really need, all for
Speaker 3: a good cause.
Speaker 2: Really, the White Elephants what do they call it, the
Speaker 2: White Elephant Stall.
Speaker 3: I don't know where that name comes from, but it's
Speaker 3: selling off all those things that you know, nobody else
Speaker 3: really wants, like you know, an electric knife, and a
Speaker 3: lower and you know, an old an old chilibin. But
Speaker 3: you know it's good fun.
Speaker 2: But all you sold them, so obviously it's not completely
Speaker 2: useless because people there's always a buyer, isn't there.
Speaker 3: Well, well, people don't know they need these things until
Speaker 3: they approach our stool, you see, and then that's when
Speaker 3: you see those things and you go, gosh, I'd really
Speaker 3: like not only one electric knife, but two electric knives
Speaker 3: would be the thing for me.
Speaker 2: Did you sell to electric knives today?
Speaker 3: I sold two electric knives draws at the same person,
Speaker 3: which was quite unusual.
Speaker 2: Actually, the electric knife that's very nineteen nineties, isn't it.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: I think we've got one in the drawer. So I
Speaker 3: think every New Zealand household has probably got one some
Speaker 3: hidden away in a drawer somewhere that they haven't usual when.
Speaker 2: They're working, they're quite good and ours, basically we just
Speaker 2: burnt it out and threw it away and just bought
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned knife.
Speaker 3: Away as fun. Isn't an electrical equipment like that? It's
Speaker 3: always good fun to use if you can get it going.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, if this wasn't the parents Squad, I'd be immediately
Speaker 2: transitioning to eight hundred and eighty ten eighty what is
Speaker 2: the most useless appliance you've ever bought or outdated? But
Speaker 2: we're not going to do that right now. You always
Speaker 2: text me if you want just for fun. Actually, what
Speaker 2: we want to talk about today is something that I'm
Speaker 2: looking It came out of just a conversation I've had
Speaker 2: with other parents, and my wife and I are anticipating
Speaker 2: this as well. Is because it's easy to look at
Speaker 2: arrenteing when your children are not near that age where
Speaker 2: it's really an issue, and you look at it, it's
Speaker 2: body image issues and pear pressure and issues that can
Speaker 2: lead to serious problems such as anorexia or beliema and
Speaker 2: things like that, and body issued. When you are a
Speaker 2: parent with where you're several years away from that becoming that,
Speaker 2: you always think, oh, we cross that, but you'll need
Speaker 2: to come to it. But we're getting to the age
Speaker 2: with twelve and thirteen year olds where I've had conversations
Speaker 2: with other parents quick where their child has raised a
Speaker 2: question about their own body image or they've simply made
Speaker 2: an observation like oh, you know, I'm my tummy's getting bigger,
Speaker 2: or I'm getting this, and I suddenly realized I had
Speaker 2: to chat with my wife about it. How are we
Speaker 2: going to handle these moments because you want to acknowledge
Speaker 2: reality that your kids get it growing up, that their
Speaker 2: you know, their body shapes will change. And yet I'm
Speaker 2: I must admit that now it's getting close to that
Speaker 2: time where I'm going to have to feel questions. I
Speaker 2: want to be prepared for it that I don't say
Speaker 2: the wrong thing. Well, of course, it's natural that you're
Speaker 2: going to get you know, say, for instance, somebody said
Speaker 2: my tummy's getting a bit bigger or something, and I go, well,
Speaker 2: that's natural, honey. I'm terrified that I've just said something
Speaker 2: I shouldn't say, And I'm just wondering, how do you
Speaker 2: navigate those things where, you know, in the world of
Speaker 2: Instagram and everyone's perfect in Facebook, I'm nervous about handling
Speaker 2: those questions where one of my daughters says that she's
Speaker 2: not happy with the way she is.
Speaker 3: And I think it's such a common thing that parents
Speaker 3: are rightly worried about. You know, We've got this whole
Speaker 3: thing at the moment around body image and what we
Speaker 3: look like and comparing ourselves to other people. In terms
Speaker 3: of how we look. I think my thoughts is that
Speaker 3: it's good to sort of dig into those questions. You know,
Speaker 3: if somebody says, my tummy's but burgle, this is a
Speaker 3: bit changed Steve. If you can spend some time and say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, what's how do you feel about that? They
Speaker 3: could be simply making an observation.
Speaker 2: Or are they looking for me to say no, it's not.
Speaker 2: See instantly, I'm like, as soon as you say, well,
Speaker 2: how do you feel about that, They're like, you mean
Speaker 2: you agree with me? So I'm petrified of the conversation
Speaker 2: full stop.
Speaker 3: I think I think parents are rightly worried about this area.
Speaker 3: I would say too that I think very it would
Speaker 3: be a very rare circumstance where appearance says one thing
Speaker 3: and it has a massive impact on their children's life
Speaker 3: for the rest of their life. Okay, So, and I
Speaker 3: think that's true across almost all areas of I can
Speaker 3: that I can think of. We will often say occasional
Speaker 3: throwaway comments or not a throwaway comments, occasional comments, and
Speaker 3: usually one comment is not going to have a huge effect.
Speaker 3: I think it's more the ongoing sort of culture or
Speaker 3: focus in the family and in the environment that a
Speaker 3: child lives and will have a much bigger, longer lasting effect.
Speaker 3: But I definitely think it's worth probing a little bit
Speaker 3: deeper when when those sorts of questions come up, because
Speaker 3: you know, as you as you mentioned before, it's it's
Speaker 3: it's a very well, it's entirely normal that people's bodies change,
Speaker 3: you know, young people's bodies changes they hit puberty. It's
Speaker 3: it's what we expect to happen. And I think don't
Speaker 3: be afraid of having the conversation. It might be an
Speaker 3: uncomfortable conversation, but don't be afraid of having it and
Speaker 3: trying to you know, really, what we're trying to do
Speaker 3: is introduce some normality to the conversation. Yes, change is normal,
Speaker 3: and and really trying to get across the idea that
Speaker 3: you know, it's okay whoever you are, really and it's
Speaker 3: okay whatever shape you are, and let's perhaps notocus hugely
Speaker 3: on that. But I also think that the conversations, the
Speaker 3: rest of the conversations that happen in the family for
Speaker 3: the rest of the time are also crucially important. Do
Speaker 3: your kids, not you personally, tim but you know, do
Speaker 3: kids overhear their parents talking about the parents' body image,
Speaker 3: or I'm looking a bit overweight or I'm feeling a
Speaker 3: bit weight, or are they being exposed to older siblings
Speaker 3: or parents who are constantly dieting, And that's possibly going
Speaker 3: to have much more of a lasting impact on a
Speaker 3: child's perception of themselves and their body than a single
Speaker 3: question or a single answer from a parent.
Speaker 2: You've just reminded me because last night one of my
Speaker 2: daughters is I give them a hug good night before
Speaker 2: I get a bit before they go to sleep, sort
Speaker 2: of thing. She said to me. She did, Dad, you're
Speaker 2: looking a lot slimmer right now. And because I was
Speaker 2: like oh, and I wasn't sure how overjoyed I should
Speaker 2: sound like, oh hooray, I sort of was like, oh
Speaker 2: do I, I said, I don't know why that would be.
Speaker 2: I said, oh, well, I'm you know, I'm trying not
Speaker 2: to have so much chocolate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, isn't it. How quickly we sort of even
Speaker 3: implicitly kind of say, you know, link the fact that
Speaker 3: somebody's called a slim or we've lost weight to that
Speaker 3: being a good thing, or that we feel a bit
Speaker 3: fat to that being a bad thing. And wouldn't it
Speaker 3: be great if we could just sort of extract those
Speaker 3: two from each other, so you know your body shape
Speaker 3: and west doesn't have to reflect. It doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be a good thing or a bad thing. It's just
Speaker 3: a thing, really, and trying to take away the value
Speaker 3: judgments from that, I think is really really helpful, if
Speaker 3: that's possible.
Speaker 2: I try to reflect on when I was growing up.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I'm family and boys, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if we're worried about how we I'm sure we did
Speaker 2: in fact, but I don't. Obviously, my mum and my
Speaker 2: dad never seem to ever ever talk about you losing
Speaker 2: weight or anything. I think mum might have done weight
Speaker 2: watches at one stage. We never gave it a second thought,
Speaker 2: but we never ever heard them angsting if that's a
Speaker 2: word about and I think that's probably quite important, isn't it.
Speaker 2: If mum's constantly complaining about the way she looks and
Speaker 2: is constantly on this diet or that diet because she's
Speaker 2: not happy, then is that something that's going to rub
Speaker 2: off on kids in a way.
Speaker 3: I think that's going to be much more likely than
Speaker 3: an occasional answer to a question, yes, absolutely. Look, I
Speaker 3: think things have changed too since perhaps our time. I
Speaker 3: think when you know, when we're younger, were growing up
Speaker 3: in teens, especially for boys, there was much less emphasis
Speaker 3: on body image and looks for boys now and that
Speaker 3: has changed in the last ten or fifteen so years.
Speaker 3: There has been a much bigger increase around you know,
Speaker 3: body image or young men and for boys as well. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: it's always been there for women, and you know, society
Speaker 3: is always judge women by how they look. But you're right,
Speaker 3: it's those conversations if somebody in the family doesn't matter
Speaker 3: if it's male or female, but if somebody and the
Speaker 3: family is constantly dieting and focusing on weight and how
Speaker 3: they look, and oh gosh, it's a great thing. You know,
Speaker 3: I can celebrate now I've lost weight. That you think
Speaker 3: about the message that that is sending your kids, especially
Speaker 3: as they grow up and they hit puberty, when their
Speaker 3: bodies will definitely change and they will at times be
Speaker 3: uncomfortable with their bodies. You know that I think just
Speaker 3: normalizing it and that that change is fine, it's normal,
Speaker 3: and trying to take away this idea that actually being
Speaker 3: slim is really good. And I can hear the counterargument
Speaker 3: already people will be saying, yeah, but you know, we
Speaker 3: don't want them to being obese and overweight, and and
Speaker 3: of course we don't. But you know that we're not
Speaker 3: talking about going to that extreme either. We're just talking about, Hey,
Speaker 3: think about the culture and the way that you think
Speaker 3: about food and dieting in your family. Just generally, it's
Speaker 3: probably a good time to stop and think, as kids
Speaker 3: are coming into teenage years about how do we talk
Speaker 3: about weight image in our house.
Speaker 2: Actually, intuitively, it absolutely makes sense that this is a
Speaker 2: problem that's going to start affecting boys as well. Just
Speaker 2: all you needed. The reason I'm moral that sort of
Speaker 2: rings a bell with me is I was looking at
Speaker 2: some old retro ads as to what a well muscled
Speaker 2: man was in the seventies and eighties, and by today's standards,
Speaker 2: they were pretty dweeby, you know, Yeah, a hint of
Speaker 2: a six pack that was, you know, you were the
Speaker 2: new Peter Stuyvesant guy or whatever it was advertising cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I think that has been a huge change,
Speaker 3: and certainly rates of eating disorders amongst males have increased
Speaker 3: over the past ten to fifteen years. Remembering too, though,
Speaker 3: it is worth remembering that the eating disorders are still
Speaker 3: although they're very severe when you have them, they're still
Speaker 3: relatively rare. They're not there's not a huge proportion of
Speaker 3: the population has an eating disorder. Okay, but we don't
Speaker 3: want to push nor do you want to say things
Speaker 3: that are going to push kids towards that.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, look, we're going to take your calls on
Speaker 2: this too. How do you navigate those years when your
Speaker 2: kids are starting to be more conscious of their own
Speaker 2: body image and having conversations with them where well, at
Speaker 2: the very least you don't contribute to the problem, and
Speaker 2: maybe you help your kids navigate that stuff without them
Speaker 2: ending up with some sort of body what is it, dysmorphia,
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff and eating disorders. Let's take
Speaker 2: some calls on that because we're keen to know if
Speaker 2: you've actually managed to successfully navigate those waters as well. Jeff,
Speaker 2: get how on a second, let me just click that
Speaker 2: button again several weeks Jeff, Hello.
Speaker 4: Hello button. I raise two boys all on my own. Okay. Now,
Speaker 4: from the time they started growing up, I didn't give
Speaker 4: them a chance too much chance to get bored or
Speaker 4: sit down there and feel sorry for themselves or what
Speaker 4: I look like or what I don't look like. Now,
Speaker 4: when as the boys were getting a bit older, I
Speaker 4: turned around and I got them into organizations. Now, both
Speaker 4: my boys, I got them into soccer now, and it
Speaker 4: was they had soccer on a on a Saturday morning,
Speaker 4: and I was also coaching soccer in towern as well. Now,
Speaker 4: So they were up on the Saturday morning and away
Speaker 4: we went. And when they came home it was shower
Speaker 4: and get changed and all that. But they had a
Speaker 4: great day. They seemed to really enjoy it. So in
Speaker 4: the summertime, even after work, but they were looking at
Speaker 4: a bit down and out. I'd say to them, come on,
Speaker 4: let's go. We're down the beach. Let's go for.
Speaker 2: Uswim You just you just get them busy and active.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I just kept them busy and and I just
Speaker 4: found that this was working. They were good thinkers. I
Speaker 4: used to say them if they were rude to somebody,
Speaker 4: I'd say, hey, knock it off. You don't talk to
Speaker 4: people like that, okay, or you're not going to get
Speaker 4: anywhere in life. Now. As the boys got a little
Speaker 4: bit older and older, my older son joined cubs and
Speaker 4: my other other son was still played. My younger one
Speaker 4: still played soccer now. So when Adam got into the
Speaker 4: cubs and on all that sort of the keys Cubs
Speaker 4: and goodness knows what out and going out the next scene,
Speaker 4: I could see the differ someone how was great And
Speaker 4: so I've got I just kept the boys busy, you know,
Speaker 4: like if the lawns needed mind to cut down one
Speaker 4: of those guys.
Speaker 2: Money. So I mean, guess keeping your busy is not
Speaker 2: busy active in and you know makes sense, doesn't it? Injurity.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if Jeff's kids would have grown up
Speaker 2: with social media. I'm guessing possibly not. That might be
Speaker 2: the one complicating flying the ointment.
Speaker 3: There there is some wisdom I think of what Jeff
Speaker 3: was saying around, you know, especially at teens. I'm a
Speaker 3: really big fan of keeping teens, you know, getting them
Speaker 3: involved and active and activities and groups and organizations where
Speaker 3: that will take up their time and get them interested
Speaker 3: in things. I often think for teenagers, what is it,
Speaker 3: you know, idle hands of the devil's work for all
Speaker 3: sorts of all sorts of things, but you know, keeping
Speaker 3: them in bold to make.
Speaker 2: The devil's work. That's a biblical But I mean there
Speaker 2: is something to that with kids. I guess, well, I mean,
Speaker 2: my girls are very busy and we haven't had those
Speaker 2: conversations yet. I'm sort of getting ahead of the game.
Speaker 2: But I guess that's not necessarily the total antidote to it.
Speaker 2: But certainly kids feeling busy and just being active all
Speaker 2: the time is always going to be good for just
Speaker 2: their general sense of well being. Does that help stave
Speaker 2: off those sort of naval gazing moments of dissatisfaction?
Speaker 3: Well, there's less time to do it, perhaps, as Jeff
Speaker 3: was implying, but recognizing that adolescents of the time, when
Speaker 3: you do, you do naturally become much more focused on
Speaker 3: what your peers think and what others think. But being
Speaker 3: involved with other teens are who are doing pro social,
Speaker 3: positive things is a really good thing. Did you have.
Speaker 2: Any you look back when you were a teenager? Did
Speaker 2: you have any things that you would dissatisfy with yourself about?
Speaker 2: Because I can't remember now. I'm sure. I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are a few things, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can. I can remember spending long time looking
Speaker 3: in the mirror at my skin worrying about acne. Oh
Speaker 3: that's and I can remember that, and and that's not
Speaker 3: an unusual thing for an adolescents. A lot of that
Speaker 3: sort of time looking at yourself in the mirror, comparing yourself.
Speaker 3: You're trying to imagine what you should you really want
Speaker 3: to look like, And of course you forget that. You'll
Speaker 3: you get very very very very familiar with your face
Speaker 3: and hear and look, and much more familiar than anybody else.
Speaker 3: So you notice a tiny here out of place that
Speaker 3: nobody else really looks at. But that isn't. That isn't.
Speaker 3: That's a natural sort of thing in adolescence, and there
Speaker 3: is that focus on ourselves and comparing us to our
Speaker 3: peer group. So the more that we can do to
Speaker 3: reduce that, the better, I think.
Speaker 2: Gosh, actually, the peer group was probably the problem. When
Speaker 2: I was growing up, one boy had a bit of
Speaker 2: problem with acting on us back and people said that
Speaker 2: we used to get tea springing a back that looked
Speaker 2: like a pizza. I forgot. People are crawl.
Speaker 3: Twitch teenagers have some tear I can recalling people pizza face.
Speaker 2: It was just I mean, I'm made it laughing because
Speaker 2: here we are, as grown ups looking back on how
Speaker 2: terribly we behaved.
Speaker 3: No, it's slightly embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Isn't it anyway. We'll be back in just a moment, though.
Speaker 2: How do you navigate those moments where you where you
Speaker 2: are worried that your teenagers? I think the question is
Speaker 2: probably about losing perspective about natural changes in their bodies
Speaker 2: and all that sort of stuff. How do you navigate
Speaker 2: that so that they can just get through it in
Speaker 2: a way that we all got through it hopefully. O
Speaker 2: eight hundred eighty twenty five past five. We'll be back
Speaker 2: with Jane and Matthew in just a moment, and welcome back.
Speaker 2: This is the Parents Squad. I'm Tim Beverage. My guest
Speaker 2: is Google Sutherland. He is the CEO of Umbrella Well
Speaker 2: Being and he's also a psychologist. And we're talking about
Speaker 2: how do you navigate those difficult moments where your kids
Speaker 2: start to question the way they are built, made, the
Speaker 2: way they look, they wait, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: How do you have those conversations and make them feel
Speaker 2: okay about themselves? Are actually about making it worse? Because
Speaker 2: that's my fear when the time comes. Jane, Hello, oh hi.
Speaker 5: Thanks for taking my call. Look, I've been listening to
Speaker 5: your conversation and getting more and more uptight. I am
Speaker 5: a mother of a twenty two year old girl who
Speaker 5: has been suffering from anorexia since the age of fifteen,
Speaker 5: and I just feel like I want to tell those
Speaker 5: other parents out there who have children who do have
Speaker 5: eating disorders. It's not a simple thing of being able
Speaker 5: to stare them in the right direction through the tough
Speaker 5: times around food and around comments. A lot of it is,
Speaker 5: A lot of it is from other areas in their life.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: My daughter's experience was she was bullied terribly at the
Speaker 5: age of fifteen at school.
Speaker 6: No one listened to her.
Speaker 5: And she got in a really bad state. Her control
Speaker 5: was being able to put her way of getting through
Speaker 5: this was being able to control what she ate or
Speaker 5: in her case, didn't eat, and it became it was
Speaker 5: a big She's still she's twenty two, and she's still
Speaker 5: really very much in the realms of anorexia. I have
Speaker 5: given up work and I'm supporting her, but I think
Speaker 5: what I want to say one comment you made was
Speaker 5: that it's not just one comment that someone can say
Speaker 5: that can change their way. Actually it is. And my
Speaker 5: daughter can tell you the one thing that actually the
Speaker 5: one thing that someone said about what she was eating
Speaker 5: that brought anorexia on and of course she had lots
Speaker 5: of other things going on her life, as have all
Speaker 5: the young children these days. And the whole eating disorder
Speaker 5: side of things is huge, and you comment that it's
Speaker 5: not big. It is massive, but people don't acknowledge it.
Speaker 5: In New Zealand it has got one of the highest
Speaker 5: rates of anorexia and children as young as six semen eight.
Speaker 3: Okay, doggle Yeah, and look, Jane, it's it's really you know,
Speaker 3: my heart goes out to your supporting somebody. You know
Speaker 3: your daughter was an eating disorder. It must have been
Speaker 3: incredibly and it must sounds like it's still incredibly incredibly hard.
Speaker 3: And as I think, as you rightly point out, there's
Speaker 3: lots of factors that contribute to somebody developing and eating disorder,
Speaker 3: and obviously your daughter it was you know, there was
Speaker 3: perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back was was
Speaker 3: was a comment that somebody made to and that's and
Speaker 3: that's devastating. But I guess my point was that for parents,
Speaker 3: perhaps the answering a question isn't isn't in and of
Speaker 3: itself without those other background factors, is not necessarily going
Speaker 3: to lead to that, but you know, and not wanting
Speaker 3: at all to underplay how serious eating disorders are. They're
Speaker 3: an incredibly serious and and really debilitating and it sometimes
Speaker 3: sometimes even deadly disorder, and would never want to minimize that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think what I took from were
Speaker 2: listening to Google is that if you are a loving parent,
Speaker 2: you're not going to with one comment destroy your child,
Speaker 2: whereas there will obviously times when there may be one comment,
Speaker 2: as Google said that there's a straw that breaks the
Speaker 2: camel's back. Is that a better way of putting it?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 5: I think so, and I think it's it's not necessarily.
Speaker 5: I know your way of approaching this tonight is about
Speaker 5: the family, and that's really important, but I think perhaps
Speaker 5: something that needs to be exaggerated more is the amount
Speaker 5: of stress our kids are under these days. And you
Speaker 5: may be doing everything right, but there may be something
Speaker 5: else out there and they need that control, and you know,
Speaker 5: statistics show it. You know that the eating disorders are there. Now,
Speaker 5: I also know that it's genetic. It's been proven that
Speaker 5: it's genetic, and so you know, there is an element
Speaker 5: of guilt in myself not that I have an eating disorder.
Speaker 5: But then after listening to your court or your conversation,
Speaker 5: I thought I have to ring up because other parents
Speaker 5: might be listening and feeling the same kinds built and
Speaker 5: I don't think it needs to all be on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the other thing is probably in terms of
Speaker 2: the way we're trying to present this. I think when
Speaker 2: you're saying, when we're addressing the ways to handle these
Speaker 2: conversations for parents, it's certainly not meant to imply that
Speaker 2: if your child does end up having a problem, then
Speaker 2: it's the parent's fault. That's certainly not what correct. What
Speaker 2: we're about, what we're simply doing is how do we
Speaker 2: as parents navigate the conversation as best we can, even
Speaker 2: though there may be other factors like peer pressure and
Speaker 2: all sorts of other things that create a problem. So
Speaker 2: I think it's worth me trying to just hopefully that
Speaker 2: makes sense to you that it's not really about saying
Speaker 2: you must do this otherwise you're the cause of the problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, totally, totally I do get that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you. No, I think that's good. Great
Speaker 2: that you've called Jane, so we can sort of thrash
Speaker 2: that out of bit further Thank you so much and
Speaker 2: all the best for everything you're dealing with.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: There we go, Thanks Jane. I mean it is it's
Speaker 2: difficult to have these conversations when you because there always
Speaker 2: is this implication that this is what parents should do
Speaker 2: and this is how we should handle it. But we're
Speaker 2: not saying that if you don't therefore blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: I think one thing that struck me with Jane's cause too,
Speaker 3: was that level of guilt that parents can feel in
Speaker 3: these situations when somebody has, you know, a child has
Speaker 3: developed and eating problem. Is that often parents can feel
Speaker 3: a tremendous amount of guilt. And as Jane, I think,
Speaker 3: really since she said, hey, look at it wasn't actually
Speaker 3: anything to do with us, there was heaps going on
Speaker 3: in our teens' lives, but you know, we don't want
Speaker 3: it as parents contribute to an environment that encourages that
Speaker 3: sort of difficult eating behavior or over emphasis on way
Speaker 3: or image.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny, it's actually I was just reflecting right
Speaker 2: now on really what I think the value of having
Speaker 2: ours like this is is that also it gets the
Speaker 2: chance for parents to just don't know, people who are
Speaker 2: listening as well to head call us like Jane, and
Speaker 2: it helps that sense of solidarity with every parent who's listening.
Speaker 2: You're not alone with all the emotions you're feeling about
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, let's take let's go, Let's go to another
Speaker 2: call Matthew.
Speaker 6: Hello, Yeah, Hi there guys. Now, look, I'm just listening
Speaker 6: to the common station and I'm just I'm incredibly proud
Speaker 6: of my son. He doesn't have an eating disorder, but
Speaker 6: he is dyspractic, dyslexic, and on the autistic spectrum, and
Speaker 6: so in that he he obsesses over a lot of things.
Speaker 6: But I'm very proud of him and the fact that
Speaker 6: when he was at intermediate he got incredibly bullied and
Speaker 6: that didn't lead to it, but what that has done
Speaker 6: is it's made him very aware of other people's disabilities
Speaker 6: and eating disorders. And through his high school years he
Speaker 6: had quite a few friends that did have eating disorders
Speaker 6: and he really got on board and helped them. He's
Speaker 6: into cycling, so he encouraged them to get into cycling
Speaker 6: and you know, and that sort of thing. So he's
Speaker 6: really supported people along the way. So maybe it's it's
Speaker 6: a bit hard to say that that you know, it's
Speaker 6: the parents, but it is hopefully some these people with
Speaker 6: deceaving kids with it they're eating disorders that they get
Speaker 6: now a friend that will guide them and help them
Speaker 6: along that doesn't judge them on.
Speaker 2: That really important.
Speaker 3: And I think the link Jans James call and Matthew's
Speaker 3: call really is that influence of peers, isn't it and
Speaker 3: around you know how the people around you your age
Speaker 3: can have a massive influence as well as parents.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 6: Matt And yeah, it's very sad when when when kids
Speaker 6: don't have peers that help them. And I'm just incredibly
Speaker 6: proud of my son and he's gone on to do great,
Speaker 6: great things and his sporting things and now he's in
Speaker 6: and just going on to the guy who was before,
Speaker 6: I would say as a parent, yeah, getting kids involved
Speaker 6: in sport is great, but if they can get them
Speaker 6: involved in the in the organization side of it. Like
Speaker 6: when my son was thirty and he decided he wanted
Speaker 6: to do downhill mountain biking. When we went along to
Speaker 6: the local club and I said, Max, clubs don't run themselves.
Speaker 6: So at thirteen he and I joined onto the committee
Speaker 6: and he spent twelve years on the committee organizing all
Speaker 6: the races from thirteen he would set the courses. That's
Speaker 6: also out there on the night before, which has then
Speaker 6: gone on and he's now on the mountain White New
Speaker 6: Zealand accipt it. Oh yeah, he has made a huge
Speaker 6: amount of friends through that, And I would just say
Speaker 6: to any parents, yep, get them involved in sports, but
Speaker 6: also get involved in organizing it.
Speaker 2: Well, that's probably also great for her self. Esteemed to
Speaker 2: be making that contribution. Thanks Matthew, I really appreciate your cool.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to quickly read this text, but them,
Speaker 2: we'll take the break. Survivor of disordered eating here, My
Speaker 2: most important lesson for parents is to demonstrate body acceptance
Speaker 2: for themselves. My mother was of the generation outwardly vocally
Speaker 2: hated her body, hating her body, so even if she
Speaker 2: said I was beautiful, slim, whatever, when my body changed,
Speaker 2: A huge part of my eating disorder roots was my parents'
Speaker 2: lack of demonstrating on modeling body acceptance in their own bodies.
Speaker 2: If you can model that for your children, that's huge. Also,
Speaker 2: create an environment where kids can talk to their parents vulnerably, vulnerabily.
Speaker 3: Couldn't have said it better that's such a great text,
Speaker 3: and I think that that just sort of goes to
Speaker 3: the heart of what we've been trying to say. I think,
Speaker 3: isn't it it's around Actually, it's not just what we
Speaker 3: say to our kids, it's how we behave around them.
Speaker 3: And I think, particularly going back to your situation, Tim,
Speaker 3: it's before your kids are an adolescence, when family and
Speaker 3: parents still have that big influence, is the time that
Speaker 3: you really want to get this right. Because once they
Speaker 3: go into adolescence, years takeover and same age kids, you know,
Speaker 3: they become the big influence and we lose a lot
Speaker 3: of our influence over kids. So trying to get that
Speaker 3: right when they're younger is a great thing.
Speaker 2: Right, We're going to take a quick moment. We'll be
Speaker 2: back in just to Ticlarly. We've got some calls lined
Speaker 2: up talking about how do you navigate those difficult decisions
Speaker 2: around your children when their bodies are changing and all
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. Eight hundred eighty, ten eighty it's
Speaker 2: ten minutes to six News Talks. He'd be Y's Welcome
Speaker 2: back to the Parents Squad. I'mton Beverage. My guest is
Speaker 2: Google Google Sutherland. He is the CEO of Umbrella, well being,
Speaker 2: what's the website addressed for you there?
Speaker 4: Google?
Speaker 3: The website is Umbrella dot org dot m Z.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Right, we're talking about navigating those changes in your teenagers,
Speaker 2: and you know, hopefully helping them navigate things without developing
Speaker 2: an undue focus or neuroses about their own body image,
Speaker 2: et cetera. I'm struggling, so you can see I'm pussy
Speaker 2: footing around the worm even trying to describe the problem
Speaker 2: Google that I'm you know that it is. It's a tricky,
Speaker 2: tricky topic. So let's take some more course. Robin.
Speaker 7: Hello, Hi, I wasn't rung erring. But then Roscot, actually,
Speaker 7: as much as I have a we negative story with this,
Speaker 7: he's also some quick still positives as well. So I'm
Speaker 7: fifty four now. In eight years old, I was put
Speaker 7: on a protein diet shape because I was fat, apparently,
Speaker 7: and so because compared to my older sister by a
Speaker 7: couple of years, she was incredibly slight and I wasn't.
Speaker 7: And that taught me from that age that if I
Speaker 7: lost weight, I was a good girl, and if I
Speaker 7: gain weight, I was a bad girl. And so in
Speaker 7: a bit of trauma and some pretty big life things.
Speaker 7: And I have done the anorexa and I still suffer,
Speaker 7: not so much with the blimia. Lo Like I've worked
Speaker 7: incredibly hard to get to where I am today, But
Speaker 7: food that's still my go to, if you get what
Speaker 7: I mean. And it's really changed, you know that self
Speaker 7: how I saw myself. But in that there's two sort
Speaker 7: of real positives. Supposed one of them is sometimes this
Speaker 7: issue with your children and weight and things. And this
Speaker 7: wasn't the case in mind, but some parents and in
Speaker 7: especially women have been bullied themselves about weight, and so
Speaker 7: they are so incredibly terrified that their children will be
Speaker 7: the same that their normal, healthy, chubby little children. But
Speaker 7: you know that we all go through those stages. They
Speaker 7: can actually cause eating disorders because they're so panicked about
Speaker 7: their child gaining weight that they get you know, it's
Speaker 7: come from us. And I look after I clean and
Speaker 7: garden for people and the family homes. And I saw
Speaker 7: the most incredible thing a couple of years ago, so
Speaker 7: mom and dad, six year old little boy, eight year
Speaker 7: old little girl, and Mama just she talked to me
Speaker 7: and she just sort of noticed, especially over the Christmas break,
Speaker 7: and that those sort of high sugar, those foods that
Speaker 7: you know are our sometimes foods we're really becoming the
Speaker 7: big thing, you know, and sneaking in And I think
Speaker 7: she saw her putting sugar and water in a glass
Speaker 7: and decided, ah, no, this is getting instead of I
Speaker 7: suppose berating her. Or they sat down as a family,
Speaker 7: Mum and dad, the little boy, the little girl, and said, hey,
Speaker 7: we've noticed over the holidays we're not eating a lot
Speaker 7: of healthy food, you know, and how about we cut
Speaker 7: back on that a bit. It's all right for us
Speaker 7: to have that food, but we've been having it all
Speaker 7: the time, you know, and so you know, and I
Speaker 7: know that's sort of slightly different to how we see ourselves.
Speaker 7: But I think, you know, sometimes there could be asue
Speaker 7: with what we're eating that has caused us to, you know,
Speaker 7: have maybe an unhealthy weight name that can be solved
Speaker 7: so easily. But on the other side, not even to
Speaker 7: our children, because our children will hear this. In our
Speaker 7: general conversation with other human beings, we see someone, oh
Speaker 7: my gosh, you've lost so much weight. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 7: that's so good, and you look so good. Gosh, that
Speaker 7: makes you look good. Oh gosh, that colors so you know,
Speaker 7: it's so flattering or my whole world became food and
Speaker 7: how I saw myself. And you know, I'm very fortunate
Speaker 7: that I've had an incredibly amazing psychologist and I've got
Speaker 7: a lot of coping skills. But you yeah, that's a.
Speaker 3: Really good thing.
Speaker 2: That's really good good advice, Robin, in terms of the
Speaker 2: way to address those stuff. If you you know, how
Speaker 2: do we as opposed to, Hey, look you've had too
Speaker 2: much sugar, No wonder you've packed it.
Speaker 3: It's a great it's a great, a really great piece
Speaker 3: of advice I think, you know from Robin, and you know,
Speaker 3: just wanting to acknowledge Robin and I think Jane a
Speaker 3: couple of calls before, who had the daughter with ANX,
Speaker 3: just the bravery that it takes to bring up the
Speaker 3: national radio station and your story out there, and and
Speaker 3: what great lessons from both of them. I really love
Speaker 3: that that you know from Robin about saying, hey, let's
Speaker 3: not let's just talk about healthy eating if we've noticed
Speaker 3: that our family eating patterns have slipped a bit, because
Speaker 3: let's face it, parents are the one that are buying
Speaker 3: the food in the house. So so but I love
Speaker 3: the way that She framed that about just having a
Speaker 3: conversation about let's let's perhaps change how we eat as
Speaker 3: a family so that we're healthier, rather than anything to
Speaker 3: do with Wait, all.
Speaker 2: Right, we've got time to squeeze in one more call,
Speaker 2: but Lee, we'll have to be quick. So when I
Speaker 2: got about a minute, but Lee, Hello, Hi, I'm.
Speaker 8: A long time listener. I yeah. I was raised in
Speaker 8: the family. My mum was overweighted and she was always
Speaker 8: on a diet. He died. That was going back in
Speaker 8: the seventies eighties, and my oldest sister I had a
Speaker 8: poor body of miss was just anxious, sad, but she wasn't.
Speaker 8: And I grew up probably from about eight I had
Speaker 8: a very poor body image and would try my mother's diet.
Speaker 8: From about the age of nine or ten, I was
Speaker 8: bodied at school about being or fat, and so from
Speaker 8: seventeen I developed and needing disorder and bolivia and I
Speaker 8: never got any help. I was so very shamed about it.
Speaker 3: Hi, it's not.
Speaker 8: My family is also very ashamed of me too. But
Speaker 8: also I went on to have two children. My daughter
Speaker 8: had twelve develop.
Speaker 2: Donna Exinger, how did you deal with that?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 8: The absolute guilt I felt was horrible. I had many
Speaker 8: family members blaming me, which I already blamed myself. I
Speaker 8: didn't actually had to put finger at me. It was
Speaker 8: just something I didn't have to skill myself. She knows
Speaker 8: how to raise my daughter, help me in that way
Speaker 8: to have good one hem I done myself.
Speaker 2: So did you manage to navigate it in some way
Speaker 2: or what?
Speaker 8: We're very lucky at twelve and a half she was.
Speaker 8: We went into Tustasia and I wanted to have she
Speaker 8: was one of the first patients to stay there given
Speaker 8: weeks to get her to a point where she was
Speaker 8: eating a healthy way to make.
Speaker 2: That sounds.
Speaker 8: Measures and the second year fifteen lots of support. But yeah,
Speaker 8: I just want to emphasize that because are very vulnerable
Speaker 8: and to be aware of they themselves.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, Haley, I'm sorry, really sorry. We would have
Speaker 2: loved to have talked a bit more about we're up
Speaker 2: against the clock. But yeah, Google, if people want, if
Speaker 2: people are concerned about their kids well being on this,
Speaker 2: what's what steps should they take to just get on
Speaker 2: top of it.
Speaker 3: Look, probably the easiest thing is actually going and have
Speaker 3: a chat to your GP. You know, if you if
Speaker 3: you can get an appointment. I think that the GP
Speaker 3: is a great place to start, and they may well
Speaker 3: be able to if you need to be put in
Speaker 3: touch with a psychologist or somebody to help with eating problems,
Speaker 3: that they can be the good first step for that.
Speaker 3: But they'll at least get the physical side of stuff,
Speaker 3: and it was a great place to start as seeing
Speaker 3: a GP.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, we had ran out of time a little
Speaker 2: bit there, Laba Hey and Doogle. Thank you so much, mate,
Speaker 2: Umbrella dot org dot NZ. If people want to check
Speaker 2: out your work, that's one.
Speaker 3: Thanks Tim, and just you know, wanted to shout out
Speaker 3: again to those particularly those people that rang in with
Speaker 3: their own stories of their own families and the bravery
Speaker 3: that takes and the great lessons that we picked up
Speaker 3: from them and they're the real experts. So that was great.
Speaker 2: Thanks mate, and excellent our Thank you so much, and
Speaker 2: thank you for the people who called. And we'll be
Speaker 2: back in a moment. It's nine minutes to see.
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