Lift the Shame: The Podcast - Mothering Free From Diet Culture, Food Guilt, and Body Shame · Crystal Karges, MS, RDN, IBCLC

When You Want to Unconditionally Accept Your Child but Can't: Here's Why You're Stuck

·32 min·2 clips

A child’s appetite can trigger memories of being forced to clean the plate or denied seconds.

1. Lift the Shame: The Podcast centers this episode on why a mother can want to accept a child unconditionally but still feel stuck. 2. Crystal, the host, introduces herself as “mama of five” and “your family’s intuitive eating dietitian,” so her parenting and nutrition lens shapes the whole discussion. 3. The episode asks why so many mothers feel shame when they cannot accept a child’s body, appetite, or food preferences. 4. Crystal says the topic comes up often with the moms she works with, especially when children’s bodies change and food behaviors trigger old feelings. 5. She describes “parallel processing” as the way a child’s experiences can activate unresolved experiences in a parent. 6. Crystal says a mother may project onto a child because the parent’s own food and body story is still active. 7. She names fear of looking like a failure as a parent when a child is in a larger body, a smaller body, or prefers sweets. 8. Crystal says diet culture, social media, and “information overload” make parents more likely to connect a child’s size or eating to their own competence. 9. She says some parents feel distress about a child’s appetite, especially when the child wants more food or eats with high interest. 10. Crystal gives childhood examples such as being forced to clean the plate, not getting seconds, and having sweets kept off-limits. 11. She says those rules can reappear emotionally when a parent sees the same behaviors in a child. 12. Crystal recalls reading a runner’s magazine article about “the benefits of losing weight to be a faster runner,” which fed her own eating disorder. 13. She connects that memory to watching her girls move into the teen years and reach an age that once felt painful in her own body. 14. Crystal says a child’s changing body can feel especially alarming around puberty, pre-adolescence, or a sport that emphasizes a certain physique. 15. She says many parents feel they are not only seeing a body change, but revisiting their own age-eight, age-10, or age-13 wounds. 16. Crystal says the real work is to ask what the parent needed at that age and what care was missing. 17. Her tone is reflective and confessional, and she pauses often to clarify that she is “not saying love your body” but asking for acceptance. 18. The format is a solo teaching episode with direct address, repeated examples, and a closing invitation for email, newsletter replies, and Instagram messages. 19. People working on food neutrality and body-image repair would likely connect with this episode. 20. Listeners wanting quick tips without reflection work may want to skip it.

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