From the author: Unpublished interview on the topic of eating behavior of children prone to obesity, for the Internet portal. Interview: Eating behavior of children.- According to your observations, are overweight children more often girls or boys? Are their parents more often plump or thin? Both plump girls and boys came under my observation. And so it turned out that the mothers who sought advice were also prone to obesity. - What are usually the causes of obesity? Obeseness has a psychosomatic component; in other words, mental processes are reflected in the body. If a child is unable to express his feelings naturally through speech, he “talks” through his body. After all, when a child feels emotionally bad (especially a small one), if he does not know how to communicate this, and there is no adult who will hear him and accept his experiences, what can he do? He gets sick. Moreover, in his body not only the individual conflicts of the child’s soul can find expression, but also the unconscious processes of the mother, the family or even the clan structure as a whole. - Do you think daughters copy their mothers in eating behavior or not? Why? A healthy animal, including humans, naturally has a healthy nutritional interest. He knows when and what exactly he wants to eat. If a child has a weak sense of self, if his parents suppressed his trust in his needs by forcing him to eat, as it is written in the table, or as his grandmother, who survived the war famine, insists, then there is a high probability that he will unconsciously follow the influence of his mother in childhood, or, conversely, to rebel and do things contrary, which, in principle, is the same thing. - Do you have any examples? For clarity, I would like to give an example from the series “In Treatment”, which (an example case) has similar features to cases from mine practice - the case of Oliver. By the way, Oliver's parents are incomplete people. We see that the family is going through a crisis, that in this family it is not customary to talk about important things with the child, even those that affect him, among other things. We see that a mother, experiencing fatigue from her current social role, tries to compensate for maternal sensitivity and warmth through literal overfeeding. We see that parents tend to ignore the human needs of the child, and when he finally finds a friend in the person of a psychotherapist, they deprive him of this joy. The boy, in turn, responds to this with a behavioral reaction that is not yet speech, but is closer to it than the withdrawal of affect into the body (he runs away). And the merit of this, of course, is the psychotherapist. - What do you recommend changing in your approach to food/eating habits if you have an overweight child? You should change not only nutrition, but also your entire lifestyle, the model of family and external relationships with the outside world. The child needs good nutrition, introduce him to the diverse world of foods - color, taste, aroma. Cook together, teach your child to cook. Let him understand that you can get pleasure not only from food, and drowning out mental pain with it is not the best way out. Communicate with your child more often, show sincere interest in his inner world, talk about your life. If you feel that it is not possible to establish communication with your child, or feel powerless, contact a psychologist. And most importantly, develop physical activity. A child who is afraid of a ball flying at him or chokes after climbing stairs is a sad sight. American doctor Glen Doman, in his book “How to Make a Child Physically Perfect,” emphasized the importance of physical development from birth. A normal preschooler should be nimble and tenacious, like a monkey, and consume a lot of calories. A schoolchild who is able to perform various sports skills with the help of his body, and gets pleasure from it, most likely has a harmonious psychological sense of self..