Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Vogue Article Sparks Controversy: Should Kids Diet?
By Lynne Gots, posted on April 4th, 2012.
There’s been much buzz recently over an article in the April issue of Vogue, in which writer Dara-Lynn Weiss chronicles her yearlong mission to put her overweight seven-year-old daughter Bea on a diet. At four feet four inches tall and 93 pounds, Bea was in the ninety-ninth percentile for weight and, technically, “obese.”
To her credit, Weiss acknowledges her own problems with food and body image. “Whether I weighed in at 105 pounds or 145 pounds hardly mattered—I hated how my body looked and devoted an inordinate amount of time to trying to change it.” By her own account, even though she’s currently at a healthy weight, she still seesaws between bingeing on “decadent pursuits” (cheeseburgers, cupcakes, and cookies) and purging—if not through vomiting or laxative abuse (although she admits to having used those methods, too), then by going on juice cleanses or rigidly adhering to a restrictive food plan for a week or two.
Clearly, then, Weiss is no role model for either healthy eating or body acceptance. “Who was I to teach a little girl how to maintain a healthy weight and body image?” she says, in her only display of self-awareness in the entire article.
Who, indeed?
Over the course of the weight loss project she undertakes on behalf of Bea, Weiss earns herself a lifetime membership in the Tiger Mother club. (Ironically, she criticizes the “Tiger Moms who press their kids into private-school test prep at age four, or force them to devote countless hours to piano or dance or sports [yet] find it unthinkable that anyone would coax a child to lose weight.”)
She polices the little girl’s food choices. She berates a Starbuck’s barrista for not knowing the exact calorie count in a kid’s hot chocolate. She withholds dessert, extra portions, and dinner (when she felt her daughter had consumed too many calories at a school French heritage celebration). She alienates friends and family, including her husband, who “soon tired of the food restrictions and the glacial rate of weight loss and stopped actively participating.”
The “Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right” program the family followed, created by Joanna Dolgoff, MD, seems, at least on the surface, to promote sensible eating habits without being overly restrictive. For example, on her website, Dr. Dolgoff distinguishes between “healthy” and “junky” green light (low calorie) choices. But Weiss manages to put her own personalized, eating-disordered spin on the doctor’s recommendations, filling Bea up with diet soda and fat-free, processed snack foods while limiting fruits (which can be eaten freely) because she found Bea’s consumption of them “excessive.”
By demonizing entire categories of foods, making others available solely on the basis of their negligible calorie counts, and subverting Bea’s hunger with low-cal cookie facsimiles devoid of nutritional value, Weiss might as well be giving her daughter a tutorial on how to develop an eating disorder. And instead of seeing Bea’s weight as a behavioral issue involving modifiable eating and exercise habits, she prefers to medicalize it, liking the word “obese” because it “carries a scary, diagnostic tone.” Some sports are added, and Bea even enjoys them, but physical activity doesn’t become a family endeavor because Weiss herself hasn’t been to a gym in over a decade.
By her eighth birthday, Bea had grown two inches, lost sixteen pounds, and acquired, as a reward for her weight loss, a feather hair extension and wardrobe of designer dresses. Weiss hastens to add, “Incredibly, she has not yet exhibited symptoms of intense psychological damage.”
Talk to me in ten years.
When Weiss presses her daughter to take pride in her new appearance, telling her how different she is from “that fat girl [who] is a thing of the past,” Bea responds with a depth of insight that far surpasses her mother’s. “That’s still me,” she replies. “I’m not a different person just because I lost sixteen pounds. Just because it’s in the past doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
In the way of many controversial media figures these days, Weiss has gotten herself a book contract. I wonder what she’ll write. . . A parenting book? A diet book? Or a sociopolitical treatise on the childhood obesity epidemic in early 21st century America? I can hardly wait to find out.
Tags: dara-lynn Weiss, diet, eating disorders, Parenting, seven-year-old
Posted in General, Mental Health and the Media, Parenting |
Coping with College Admission Stress: Why Parents Should Care Less about Getting Their Kids into the Ivy League
By Lynne Gots, posted on March 1st, 2012.
I was out walking my dogs the other day when I passed a woman with a fluffy puppy. As I fed Freddie bits of freeze-dried liver to keep his mind off barking, I asked if her pup was a Labradoodle. “No!” she said emphatically. “He’s an Australian Labradoodle.”
Little did she know she was talking to a dog and people expert who would profile her, possibly incorrectly and certainly unfairly, solely on the basis of one verbally italicized modifier: Australian. Quick assessments are my métier, and I decided on the spot that the puppy’s owner was a status conscious mom new to dog ownership.
You’ll need more information to understand how I came to that conclusion.
Labradoodles are extremely popular these days for their allegedly hypoallergenic properties and adorable shagginess. Every dog class I’ve helped teach usually has two or three. The Labradoodle isn’t an AKC-recognized breed; nor is the more highly coveted Australian Labradoodle, although breeders in Australia are trying to develop a uniform breed standard so as eventually to gain entry into purebred dog clubs. “Australian” signifies that a dog is a “ multigenerational hybrid” descended from parents who are Labradoodles, not from a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle, the original provenance of this fancy mixed breed. Breeders draw an even finer distinction between American Australian Labradoodles and Australian Australian Labradoodles, which is more information than you probably care to know.
But Labradoodles are still technically mutts, albeit very trendy, expensive, and genetically modified ones.
Like first-time parents who latch onto every enrichment gimmick in the hope of turning their infant into a baby Einstein, new dog owners are suckers for marketing ploys that claim to produce a superior pet. High on the list of the Australian Labradoodle’s merits is its “nonshedding” coat (which actually varies in degree of sheddability from dog to dog). This feature, along with the affable temperament these dogs are bred for, attracts many new owners who are put off by doggie odors and dog hair—in other words, those who are less likely to be diehard dog people.
Families with young kids love Labradoodles because of their hypoallergenic rep (a false one, as it turns out: no dogs are truly hypoallergenic) and because they look cuddly and goofy and are usually good-natured. But [public service digression] untrained, they may turn out to be more than a busy family can manage, which is why so many quintessential family dogs like Labs and Goldens wind up in shelters after they outgrow the cute puppy stage.
It may seem I feel superior because I have an AKC-registered, pedigreed dog, an Australian Shepherd (a breed originating in the United States, not Australia, by the way). But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m actually rather embarrassed about my dog’s aristocratic lineage. As a dog lover, I’m a staunch supporter of rescuing animals in need of a home and would have taken the adoption route with our newest dog had I been able to find a suitable puppy at the time. My next dog, purebred or mixed, will definitely be a rescue.
And I’m not disparaging Doodles, either. I also have one of those—a Cockapoo (shouldn’t they be called Cockadoodles, like Labradoodles and Goldendoodles?). He’s turned out to be an excellent dog, even though we acquired him in a highly questionable fashion, without knowing anything about his temperament, from a backyard breeder who placed an ad in the newspaper.
What does all this arcane talk about dogs have to do with elite universities?
The puppy owner’s need to announce her dog’s “bone fidos” [sic] made me think of all the cars in my neighborhood (my own included) with designer-brand college stickers on the rear windshields. And of all my conversations with fellow, hypercompetitive Montgomery County parents about where our kids were applying to college and where they would be heading after the acceptance and rejection letters arrived. There was a lot of bragging (“She got a full scholarship to Maryland, but how could she pass up the opportunity to go to Brown?” and a lot of defensiveness (“He’s going to Maryland, but he’ll be in the Honors Program”).
With two of my children out of college and the last one more than halfway through, and having seen many students in my practice over the years, I’ve acquired a different perspective. The students I treat are all struggling, whether they’re at Georgetown (#22), GWU (#50), or American (#82). I’ve come to believe that where our kids end up going to college doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think it does.
So does Harvard graduate Jay Mathews, education writer for the Washington Post and author of the book, Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyond the Ivy League to the College that Is Best for You. Mathews claims, and offers research data to back his argument, that traits such as persistence, honesty, optimism, and character count far more than an elite college degree in determining future success.
I’m not surprised. I’ve worked with Princeton and Yale graduates whose emotional issues kept them from doing well in college despite their perfect SAT scores and who continued to underperform in graduate school and beyond. I’ve also seen high-level government officials and corporate lawyers who, in spite of having attended mediocre colleges, went on to elite law schools and achieved success in their careers.
And just look at Freddie, my Australian Shepherd. He’s endowed with superior physical attributes and a keen intelligence passed down from his award-winning show dog and herding ancestors. But when I looked into enrolling him in a sheep herding class to channel his instincts into a more productive activity than corralling our guests, I realized it would be out of the question. Freddie is highly sensitive. He recoils when strangers reach out to pet him. Teaching him to herd sheep, it seems, would involve prodding him with sticks. He’d probably bite the trainer in fear, and I’d suffer a nervous collapse anticipating the lawsuit.
It just goes to show you, an Ivy League degree (or impeccable papers, in Freddie’s case) isn’t everything. The flip side is also worth considering. A less impressive resume isn’t necessarily handicapping. Take Uggy, the plucky Jack Russell terrier, who stole the show in “The Artist.” He was a nine-year-old Death Row inmate when his trainer rescued him and made him a star.
Parents of high school students, and the students themselves, could take some of the pressure off the intense college application process if they remembered one point: just because a college is the best doesn’t mean it’s the best for you.
Tags: college admission
Posted in College, Dogs, Parenting |
Parenting French Style: Just Say “Non!”
By Lynne Gots, posted on February 28th, 2012.
What’s with our admiration these days of all things French? If the Oscars are any indication of current trends, Francophilia is having its day. More than a few awards went to films that were either written, directed, or starred in by Frenchmen (“The Artist”) or featured nostalgic scenes of Gay Paree (“Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris”).
A recently published book about the virtues of the French style of childrearing also romanticizes the Gallic way of life. In Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, American ex-pat Pamela Druckerman extols the strict rules, authoritarian methods, and no-nonsense attitude towards emotional expression characteristic of French parents. True, they may produce children who are “good little sleepers [and] gourmet eaters . . .” But a New York Times reviewer pointed out a less enviable byproduct of the French approach. During an emergency room visit the reviewer experienced with her 14-year-old daughter, who had broken her wrist during a soccer match, the examining doctor manipulated the injured extremity so brusquely that the girl started to cry. The physician responded in typical French parental fashion by shaming her: “He’s a little boy [pointing to a quiet four-year-old nearby] and you’re a big girl, and he’s not crying. Why can’t you be more like him?”
While I don’t think American-style indulgence is the best way to encourage self-sufficiency and independence, the French approach may be taking it a little too far.
I was on the receiving end of such methods when, at fourteen, I attended a French private school during a year my family spent in Paris. This was a very long time ago, of course, and I’d thought (hoped?) times had changed. But after reading about contemporary French parenting and researching the French educational system, I’m not so sure.
I felt lost and self-conscious my first day of school because I knew almost no French and, having already reached my full height, towered over my more petite and slower-to-mature classmates. There was no student ambassador appointed to show me the way. The teachers and headmaster ignored me. Fortunately, I attached myself to an American girl who told me where to go. But the next day, when I sat down next to her, she got up and moved across the room. Her parents, she said, had forbidden her to associate with other Americans. They were afraid her French would suffer.
For months I remained mute, too scared to risk making a grammatical error until one day, pushed by an impatient, chain-smoking (in class!) teacher who’d had enough of hearing me say I didn’t understand, I stood at attention as per the rules and answered her question in fluent French.
French teachers don’t coddle their students. They don’t care about encouraging creativity or independent thinking. And they certainly don’t worry, as American teachers and parents do, about damaging a young person’s self-esteem. In middle school, the French system tracks students by test scores into classes with others of similar ability.
My performance on the school’s entrance exams, which I took in French before I had even a rudimentary grasp of the language, had landed me in the slow class. And even among my low-achieving peers, I was at the bottom. We all knew everyone’s place in the hierarchy because after every test the teachers read out the grades from highest to lowest, mocking the students who had performed poorly. Ridicule and humiliation were—and still are, from what I can tell—as much a part of the standard, French pedagogical repertoire as memorization and recitation of passages from Molière and Racine.
In the end, though, I had my revenge. Handing back the final exam, the science teacher did a double take and rechecked the top paper to make sure he hadn’t miscalculated the grade. He grimaced. “Gots? C’est incroyable!” (“It’s unbelievable!”). Never a “Good job!” or an “I knew you could do it.” But, to me, the victory was still sweet.
I’m not saying we should adopt the French, tough-love approach to raising our kids. We anxious American parents could never pull it off, just like we can’t manage to look as effortlessly chic as the French. But maybe there’s a middle ground, somewhere between enrolling our kids in infant swimming lessons and swaddling them in life jackets before letting them near the water and throwing them in to sink or swim.
Tags: French parents, Parenting
Posted in Parenting |
