A Chance to Heal, the eating disorder prevention group, is offering teachers, coaches and counselors a chance to help stem the obesity trend in children and educate both children and themselves to eat in a healthy way and feel comfortable with their bodies.
On Oct. 20, A Chance to Heal is hosting a one-day conference at Abington Hospital. The conference, titled "BodyTalk: Tools to Prevent and Recognize Eating Disorders in Our Youth," will present techniques, curriculum and advice to educators and role models - such as nurses, counselors, coaches and community leaders - that will help them understand what children are going through growing up and how to guide them into a healthy lifestyle.
"We need to help kids feel good about themselves and feel good in their bodies," said Harin Feibish, a board member of A Chance to Heal. "You can really measure a teenager's self-esteem by their body's esteem."
For almost nine years, Feibish ran a program for overweight women at Renfrew Center of Philadelphia, an eating disorder clinic in Roxborough. Now she practices privately from her Mt. Airy home, working with children and adults.
She said people do not always realize the influence they have on a child's (and the future adult's) self image and health.
She said that when she was working at Renfrew, she would ask her clients to tell about their worst body image experience - something that led them to their disorder.
"A lot of their memories had to do with coaches telling them they weren't able to compete in a [swim] meet because they were getting chubby, or dance teachers telling their students they were getting chubby," she said.
And it is not always the way a leader talks to the children, Feibish said. Children and students can pick up on how coaches and teachers feel about their own bodies and will react to that.
"If someone is always dieting, then the child is likely to feel the need to diet too," Feibish said. "A lot of how kids feel about their body reflects the way you feel about your body."
The same influence is found at home and in the community, which is why religious and community leaders are encouraged to attend the conference.
"If [fruit and vegetables] are not what you eat in your family, then why would you pick up an apple instead of potato chips?" Feibish asked.
Anne Stout, a school nurse at Springside School, is attending the Oct. 20 conference to update herself on the obesity epidemic and children's needs, she said.
Springside already has a program integrated into its curriculum called Life Issues to help acclimate its all-female student body to the changes young women experience through life. The classes, which are required every few years from the grade school years through high school, focus on health, nutrition, stress, time management and more.
Teaching students about these topics, Feibish said, is just as important as teaching proper eating and exercise.
She said many children have unhealthy eating habits because they are unhappy or stressed. Eating, or not eating in some cases, is a type of comfort mechanism and a way of controlling something in their lives.
"If a kid is feeling really lousy, then it's a lot more fun to eat ice cream and cookies than an apple," Feibish said.
And ironically, this unhealthy eating adds to the stress later, as it adds pounds, and so a cycle begins.
Sharon Moak, the school nurse at Jenks Elementary, said she is not attending the conference, but she sees awareness to the obesity issue growing.
As a school nurse for more than 20 years, she said the perception that America's children are more overweight today is the result of increased awareness to children's weight and the problems this can cause later in life.
"I think it's becoming much more of an issue," she said, even though she does not see America as fatter than it was 20 years ago. "But now [obesity is] included as a 'problem' on physical forms, where before it wasn't."
Pennsylvania's new requirement of sending home to parents the Body Mass Index (which rates a child's weight based on their height) is helping keep the issue on parents' minds without worrying the children.
Feibish complained about pediatricians who will discuss a child's weight with his or her parents while the child sits there listening.
The BMI is a way of telling parents that there is a problem without needing to scare the children.
"It alerts the family that this is really an issue," Moak added.
The conference, which lasts from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., is being held in the Lenfest Pavilion of Abington Hospital. Educators and community leaders that work with children in grades 4 through 12 can register at www.achancetoheal.org or call 215-885-2420. Cost is $75.
Contact staff writer Kristin Pazulski at 215-248-8819 or Kristin@chestnuthilllocal.com.
