update: the food-criticizing nanny, the week-long retreat, and more

by Alison Green on December 15, 2021

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My employee keeps criticizing my food

So, I really appreciated the commenter’s perspectives about the opportunity costs involved – in finding a nanny during COVID and finding trusted, qualified childcare in general. I also appreciated your feedback about jumping to termination without really HAVING this conversation.

I had a conversation with her where I said, essentially, that the focus on our food choices felt uncomfortable for me. She was honestly very vulnerable in sharing that she was able to lose so much weight by simply never giving herself access to any treats and being in our home was very disorienting to her. She definitely had some fears that she was projecting, and I probably also had some insecurities that didn’t mix well there. After talking, she definitely was able to reflect and see how this came across, and we talked about shared expectations around food. I mentioned that I would be happy to keep any treats she found inordinately distracting out of line-of-sight and away from the foods she and the baby were accessing. I also mentioned that I would always include her in our grocery and meal planning and make sure we had options that were appealing to her and fit her goals, per your recommended script. We also talked about food/body/diet talk around the baby as she became more verbal and she really seemed to understand. We also talked about photos taken in our home and parameters for sharing them, as well as just discussing our family with anyone else. It did turn out that the photos she took were so she could investigate how they fit into her diet, something she didn’t want to spend time doing at work. I have not seen her do that again.

We don’t always execute this perfectly, but I think that conversation set a good baseline and we can return to those mutually agreeable principles whenever this is out of alignment. She’s been an amazing nanny and I would hate to have made a hasty decision based on behavior I didn’t fully understand. Things are going really well! So thankful for your support and perspective as well as the readers’.

2. I created amazing documentation for the job I’m leaving — but should I withhold it? (#2 at the link)

Thank you so much for answering my query and helping steer me away from the dark side.

I did indeed end up leaving all my copious handover notes when I left my firm.

It’s 4 months since I resgined now, 3 since I left, and they still haven’t replaced me. There was an advert for a junior version of my role on thier site for a couple of weeks, but it’s gone now, without being filled.

I mentioned the probability of an HR admin being saddled with my work, that was because a new HR ‘Guru’ had been bought in and given a dotted line above me in the weeks before I left. This person has now added 2 new people to thier team and there are another 3 advertised – not replacing people, all just additional bodies. That would make over 40 people in HR for a 600 person firm. I suspect they may have spent my wage on an HR body. Since I left a few of the fee earners who I worked closest with have left or retired. I’ve been told it’s because I left/wasn’t replaced.

On my last day they did make me go into the office, which freaked me out a little re covid, but it was the end of summer downswing and I know all my colleagues were jabbed. Everyone was lovely and the new HR Boss said if I ever wanted to go back they would have a place for me. It was surprising and really touching.

My new role is proving interesting. The firm is tiny, disorganised and full of unhidden competition between the various partners. It’s also a new subject for me and much wider responsibility (fewer people, more hats?) so I’m finding it exciting like the wild west! It is also still more money for less time. I had to call a meeting with my new manager this week as there hadn’t been any kind of check in since I started, apparently I’m doing well. I am still happy with my decision to leave and hope the notes may come in handy for some one one day : )

3. My incompetent coworker needs too much help from me (#2 at the link)

I took your (and most of the commenters’) advice about forcing my coworker to figure things out on her own instead of relying on me to do the work for her. I’d already set up an admin wiki page where we can all share resources, office protocols, etc., so I just added a section with links to MS Office tutorials and help files. Then every time she whined for help, I’d just tell her I was swamped at the moment, but I was sure she could find the answer on our wiki page.

Three months later she applied for and received a lateral transfer to the head office.

I’ve since learned that not one of the four managers she supported were happy with her, and that she’d received numerous complaints from other departments we work with. I’m annoyed that the way they handled it was to unload her on a different department. I figure she’ll get a different lateral transfer in a couple of years, then another, and another, until her reputation has spread enough that the last group is stuck with her until she retires.

Her replacement is also not super technically skilled, but she’s asking the right questions, and knows how to use Google. 110% improvement. After just a couple of months, she’s already more effective than my former cubemate.

4. Company is holding a week-long retreat in a Covid hotspot (#3 at the link)

Thank you so much! I read your response and many of the comments as soon as I received your email. It was very helpful. I needed the sanity check that insisting on not traveling to this retreat was a reasonable position to take.

Ultimately, I was offered this job. The only aspect of the offer I wanted to negotiate was the required in-person participation at this retreat in December. After making my position clear, this organization (a nonprofit in fact!) ghosted my references after scheduling times to talk on the phone. Only after I followed up with the hiring manager directly to see what was going on was I informed that the job offer had already been withdrawn. I am certainly glad that this bizarre disagreement over this retreat came up – I likely avoided a lot of heartache over a job at a place with some pretty questionable professional ethical standards. And, for future interviews, I’m now planning on asking some generic questions about how prospective employers have responded to the pandemic. Evidently I can’t assume anything on that front.

Thank you again – your advice has consistently been very helpful, and I’m glad I was able to hear from you and your readers on this particular situation. I feel good about how it turned out and learned a good lesson for the future.

You may also like:
{ 81 comments }

{ 81 comments… read them below }

  1. Beany*

    OP1: “It did turn out that the photos she took were so she could investigate how they fit into her diet, something she didn’t want to spend time doing at work.”

    Really? She wanted to do after-work research into how OP’s snack drawer could be incorporated into her own meals? This sounds … unlikely to me.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      Why? That seems reasonable if she’s trying to decide how much she can partake of whatever’s around.

      1. BubbleTea*

        I agree – it’s pretty standard for nannies to be allowed/invited/encouraged to help themselves food-wise. When I worked as a nanny I was usually fed, despite having a different set of dietary requirements than the families I worked for.

    2. Need a WFH policy*

      I snap pictures at the grocery store of food, labels and packaging all the time. I could see myself doing that in someone’s home if I am uncertain of the nutrition and how it fits into my diet. The WW app literally pulls up the points if you do this.

    4. Melly*

      See, as someone who uses food journaling as an important tool for my personal health, I didn’t bat an eye at this. She probably plans her day ahead of time and wants to check into options to see different options fit her calories/macros.

      1. dresscode*

        Yep, exactly. When I was calorie counting, I definitely would have scanned a bar code to see if something I liked was in my range or not.

      2. mcl*

        Yes. I use a calorie counter app and I definitely take photos of packaged food for reference later. I also use the in-app barcode scanner to load nutrition info, which would probably look to someone like I was taking a photo.

    5. Leilah*

      In the most popular calorie counter, MyFitnessPal, the main advantage of it is that you easily snap a picture of the UPC on any box and it immediately pulls it up for you to log. Taking pictures of food boxes is actually a very, very normal part of modern calorie-tracking.

    6. Pants*

      I snap photos of things I want to research all the time. Book covers, food, restaurants…. I’d rather snap a photo than put a note in my phone. It’s quicker and I’ll see it more often, prompting me to research.

      1. TiffIf*

        Same–I also take pictures of something I liked (product, food, etc) so I can remember which brand/variety I liked so I can purchase it again.

    7. Lacey*

      It totally makes sense if she’s doing calorie or nutrient tracking. She wants to know exactly what’s in them when she’s doing her planning.

    8. Zona the Great*

      I found it odd too but these replies make so much sense. I’m someone who eats what I want without a thought and cannot relate one bit to the nanny. I’m not thin so this isn’t a “I eat anything and never gain weight” but I sure appreciate everyone’s input.

    10. Clefairy*

      As someone that has been calorie counting on and off for 15 years, this is super normal. I personally would be embarrassed spending time researching this in front of my employer, especially if they were fit or had a different attitude towards nutrition/weight loss than I did.

    11. FearNot*

      I am specifically instructed by my dietician to take pictures of all of the food I eat and to work it into my plan for later. This is totally reasonable and a common thing.

    12. Beany*

      OK, from all the responses it sounds like this is a failure of imagination & experience on my part. I had no idea that this was a common practice.

      1. TooTiredToThink*

        Thank you for this follow-up comment! I didn’t comment earlier, but I was in agreeance with everyone else; that this would totally be something I would do. That’s the nice thing about this comments section – we often can learn near things because we have such a wide range of people here.

    13. JSPA*

      “I can resist for now on the basis of the hopeful fiction that I can have some later”–works for some people. (And, as OP was trying to create a path forward, not block one, it’s reasonable to choose to believe it, even if it’s a polite fiction.)

    14. Observer*

      Really? She wanted to do after-work research into how OP’s snack drawer could be incorporated into her own meals? This sounds … unlikely to me.Really? She wanted to do after-work research into how OP’s snack drawer could be incorporated into her own meals? This sounds … unlikely to me.

      Why? As others have noted, it’s very normal for nannies to eat food from their employer’s pantry. It makes sense for her to look that stuff up off schedule.

    15. NerdyKris*

      I use photos to remember things all the time. It’s more readily accessible and faster than a pen and paper. That’s not strange.

    16. Victoria Nonprofit (USA)*

      Does it? I’m sure she uses an app of some sort to track calories or macronutrients; by taking a picture of a nutrition label she can see how many chips she can fit into her meal plan for the next day.

    17. bluephone*

      “OP1: “It did turn out that the photos she took were so she could investigate how they fit into her diet, something she didn’t want to spend time doing at work.”
      Of all the updates and curveballs in AAM Letter history, this is honestly the most normal thing. My Weight Watchers leader has been encouraging people to bring in (clean) food and drink packaging so people can get ideas for options that fit into their plans. Snapping a photo of the box is even easier because I could just text it to the leader if I wanted to.

    18. Floaty Thing*

      Would it seem less weird if she got out a notepad and pen and individually copied the brands and names and flavors of every variety of snack in the drawer one-by-one? Would it seem like a good use of time at work to do so? Snapping a photo probably took about 5 seconds all together and accomplished the same goals. The letter writer had already mentioned the nanny eating lunch with them, so sharing in the snacks isn’t at all a stretch, and as a method of rapid notetaking, smartphone photography has a lot to recommend it. I take pictures of stuff I want to remember/look up in more detail later all the time for all sorts of reasons, it’s so much faster and convenient than writing it all out. If you personally don’t want to take full advantage of the miraculous technology the modern age has to offer you by all means don’t, but I don’t see what’s suspicious or unlikely about this explanation at all.

      1. Beany*

        It wasn’t the technology used — I agree that a quick photo or two is much more efficient than writing it all down by hand — but the idea of recording the snack foods at all. It sounded like a weird practice to me, and thus a flimsy excuse to cover judgy sharing of OP’s eating habits with friends or social media.

        As I noted upthread, however, I’ve learned from previous replies that this recording isn’t unusual at all. So my impressions and conclusion were wrong.

    19. Mrs. Featherbottom*

      I often do pretty extensive googling on processed foods because of my dietary restrictions (gluten intolerance among other things). Trust me when I say that it can become all consuming to try and understand what exactly is on food labels and you and can go down some pretty deep rabbit holes. I often take pictures of food packaging to have on file for future research.

      1. Eldritch Office Worker*

        1:20 is the absolute maximum I would expect, including a director, payroll specialist, benefits specialist, generalist, employee relations specialist, recruiter, etc. (many of which are combined roles in smaller orgs)

      3. Boop*

        We have 16 for ~2500 full/part time employees, ~900 casual employees. Six have been with the company less than 1.5 years, including the ENTIRE leadership team, two positions are currently vacant.

        Why, yes, we are stressed out. Thank you for asking.

      4. Daisy-dog*

        A *rough* rule of thumb is 1 HR rep per 100 employees. This varies based on what is included in job responsibilities (ie: is payroll under HR or accounting?), how much recruiting is needed, how many states/countries, etc.

      5. blood orange*

        Depends a ton on the workforce and the duties included in HR. 1-100 is a good starting point. I can tell you I was a department of one for a workforce of 100 at a behavioral health facility and I was completely overworked and overwhelmed. Payroll did fall on me, compliance too (not regular HR compliance; healthcare compliance), we had a ton of recruiting (I could easily have kept a full-time recruiter busy), and we had a huge amount of employee relations that I was directly involved in.

        It sounds as though OP’s former firm might have been putting a lot on HR that might not have belonged there.

    2. Green Beans*

      I’m so glad to have that confirmed as very unusually large!

      We have 2.9 for 300 at Old Job (with support from parent organization) and 2.5 or 3 for 100 at New Job. Old Job was completely overwhelmed but New Job seems a good mix of relaxed and busy.

  3. Bookworm*

    Thanks to all the LWs who wrote in. For #3, was reminded of a similar experience, although I suspect the transferred person was “promoted” so the higher ups could more concretely let him go by looking at metrics of the location’s performance. It’s no fun for anyone but am glad you seem to be in a better position with a co-worker who is able and willing to learn.

    #4: Yikes. It sounds like you avoided a disaster as you acknowledge. All the same, sorry that happened and good luck moving forward!!

  4. ConsultingIsFun*

    #4: As a people manager who is also actively hiring, I LOVE when people ask how our company responded to the pandemic. I also tend to mention that you’re required to be vaccinated to go into our offices but it’s purely voluntary if someone asks a “what’s the culture like/are you required to go into the office” question. I think that question will be appreciated by people working for a company with a slightly more sane response to the pandemic.

  5. ThereAreThoseWhoCallMeTim*

    #3 was so frustrating to read. They’re basically taking someone who has proven they can’t work well within the company, and passing them off to someone else. “Welp, not my problem anymore.”

    1. Pants*

      I’m in a company now where I’ve seen lateral transfers somewhat like this, but they’re done with a purpose. The Me before me was transferred out of my group and into another when they couldn’t really keep up. They were transferred to a group directly under the decision-maker, so that person could monitor Pre-Me to see if they would fit in better anywhere else or just needed to be released. Ultimately, that person was released. However, I’ve seen it once or twice since I started and both times were success stories. Pretty sure the company I’m in is the exception to the rule though.

      1. Eldritch Office Worker*

        Not necessarily. Sometimes it’s a matter of someone just not being a good fit for the position they’re in, as opposed to not being a good employee. I don’t think that’s exceedingly rare.

        1. Pants*

          Where I am, they do try to give the benefit of the doubt. I’m not used to it. They recognise we’re human. It’s weird. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

          1. Eldritch Office Worker*

            Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, you’re going to drive yourself crazy, if not actively sabotage yourself. Remember we hear the horror stories here. They’re horror stories for a reason.

    2. Purple Cat*

      It’s not always a “passing them off” situation. My company is large enough that we’ve had people who struggled in one department transfer to a different department and be successful there. Sometimes it was a different type of work, sometimes it was different management that made the difference. I think it’s “good” when a company is able to give their own employees a second chance. But sometimes it’s really unfair to everyone else to pass dead weight around.

      1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

        It’s probably not always possible to tell first time whether it’s just a bad fit or a dead weight, so one second chance is kind, two is probably unfair on the new boss.

  6. Wisteria*

    I really hope LW1 absorbed a lesson about not assuming the worst in people. Having a new baby and a new person in the house is stressful at the best of times, and that cognitive load makes it hard to step back and consider what might be going on with that other person. Keep remembering that, and give yourself some time to cool down the next time a situation like the picture taking comes up.

    1. Pants*

      I have to remind myself of this a lot and I don’t have kids or employees. I can’t imagine the psychological toll the apocalypse has taken on y’all. I feel like the ones who have really thrived through it all are our pets.

    3. pancakes*

      That’s what she did from the start, no? She wrote a letter asking for advice about how to handle the conflict.

  7. Pants*

    So, LW #4 had their offer withdrawn, but no one bothered to tell them? Yeah, that’s a totally sound business tactic. I wish there were more naming and shaming, but it’s probably better not to indulge my petty fantasies. With that type of crap happening, they probably won’t be around that long anyway.

  8. Raea*

    OP#1 I’m so glad everything seems to be working out well! Brava to you for handling this in a sensitive but direct manner. It was an uncomfortable situation, but I was a bit taken aback by some of the comment on the OG letter that went to the extreme of saying legal action should be taken against her, that she was inventorying your home goods for nefarious reasons etc. As someone that has struggled with my weight on both ends of the spectrum, it seemed pretty clear to me that this was being fueled by insecurities and I’m glad that it went in this direction rather than something more dramatic / nefarious. I hope everything continues to go well, and if for some reason it doesn’t – you know you’ve done what you can to find that middle ground!

    1. Artemesia*

      Most people find these direct difficult conversations difficult and it is the source of many disasters in the workplace. This was impressive on your part and a great demonstration of how being direct can often resolve issues gracefully whereas avoidance can make the situation untenable.

  9. Gary Patterson's Cat*

    #2. Wow, 40 people in HR for a 600 person firm. Why could they possibly need that many HR people? My company has 30k employees in the US and we only have about 25 full-time HR people + 25-30 contract recruiters who seem to come and go based on need (and there is almost always need in the lower-level staff positions).

    #4. Well. I guess that was a bullet dodged. I guess it did tell you quite a lot about the culture of the place, even if the job seemed great on the surface.

  10. Emily*

    #3: ‘Knows how to google’ is such a good skill. I’m not going to say it trumps every other skill in every context, but being able to recognize when you don’t know something, figure out what to look up, and then use the information you find is very high up there.

    1. Amethystmoon*

      Yeah, I had an annoying coworker for 3 years who always asked instead of checking the documentation. 99% of his questions were already answered in writing.

    2. ThisIsTheHill*

      I worked with a Compliance(!) head in ~2011 who, after our computers were upgraded, asked me, “How do I get to Google?”.

      She used a file explorer to get to the Internet. Didn’t even know how to get to her browser.

    3. TiffIf*

      I am sometimes very proud of my Google-fu. I barely know anything about sql and yesterday by looking at a bunch of different info sites and stack overflow questions I kludged together the query I needed to find some specific data.

      Knowing how to look something up and synthesize that information to solve your problem is a skill that needs to be taught in schools–research skills are needed, not just for work but in life! Media literacy goes hand in hand with research skills.

      1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

        yeah, my SIL was complaining that her kids were just looking all their homework up on Wikipedia. I told her that this was now how information was stored: people no longer remember information, but they remember the website they found it on. It’s not necessarily a bad thing: who needs to take up brain space with reams of info that you might just need one day?

        1. Imaginary Friend*

          Hey, back in the day, you had to remember what *book* something was in. (And probably your SIL remembers encyclopedias? That is what the “pedia” part of Wikipedia comes from, after all.)

    4. Hannah Lee*

      I still remember my 3rd grade teacher who emphasized the “it’s not as important to always know everything as it is to know how to find the answer when you don’t know something” mentality. It was a really good life lesson that had served me well.

  11. Elenna*

    So, the company in #4 rejected their top candidate just over not wanting to spend a week at a resort (or, more likely, over daring to push back against management)? That’s, uh, certainly a decision… that they made… for some reason… Yeah, LW#4 definitely dodged a bullet there.

  12. Eden*

    Really great update for OP1 – love when the update is talking it out with everyone bringing empathy and compromise to the table. Hats off for how you handled this situation.

  13. CatCat*

    #4, Only after I followed up with the hiring manager directly to see what was going on was I informed that the job offer had already been withdrawn.

    Sounds like they were planning on ghosting you too, OP! YEESH! Bullet dodged!

  14. Alexis Rosay*

    I don’t have any experiences with kids or nannies, but does it seem like an overstep that OP1 tried to put parameters around “discussing our family with anyone else”? That’s basically preventing the nanny from discussing her job with anyone else which seems a little extreme. At the same time, I guess this could mean “don’t gossip to the neighbors” if they live in a small community, which would be understandable. It just struck me as a bit weird. I used to babysit quite a bit in high school and college, and no client ever tried to put rules around how or when I could talk about it.

    The other requests, like not criticizing food choices and not sharing photos, all seem really reasonable; I’m genuinely not sure if this one request is odd or if I just don’t understand the norms for nannies.

    1. Jaybee*

      Does it seem extreme to you? Myself, my mother and my sister all work in jobs where we cam’t freely discuss what we do at work – all different jobs. My mother is a secretary at an elementary school, my sister works in a lab where they test medical technology, and I work at a bank in a department where I see new deals before they’re officially closed.

      It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about work, period. It DOES mean mom cannot complain about her job on Facebook, and that we ask my sister before sharing any work-related photos of her beyond the family, and that if I’m discussing work and mention a specific deal, I anonymize the information pertaining to that deal. We don’t loudly discuss work when out in public either. Similarly, the nanny will have appropriate places to discuss work – ideally with people who don’t know the family she works with and who have enough discretion to know not to turn that information into gossip.

      I’m sure there are plenty of jobs where you can just talk about them as much as and wherever you like, but IME many jobs have reasonable restrictions like this, and I think a nanny working in someone’s home with their child definitely qualifies!

      1. Alexis Rosay*

        Yeah, that makes sense. I was picturing something more extreme, but you’re right that it’s completely reasonable to know when and where it’s appropriate to discuss work, and what details of a job can be shared and which cannot.

    2. DJ*

      My guess is of the gossip variety and/or extremely private with information that goes online. Especially in regards to their child(ren). I can understand if OP wanted to make things clear about what about the kid goes online.

    3. Mimi*

      I think you’re imagining something on the level of a super-strict confidentiality agreement, which does seem extreme for most nannying jobs (though might be reasonable for a celeb or something). But “please don’t have catty gossip chats about how we live our lives, even privately with friends” or “please don’t publicly post pictures of our child/what we have in our home” seem like reasonable requests.

      I can talk about my job, but it’s understood that not all of our clients necessarily want it broadcasted that they use us as a vendor (and we’re not, like, a hiding dirty laundry company — we just don’t have explicit permission to share that) so if I mention clients, I generally restrain it to a handful of the big names that we post on our website.

    4. Observer*

      but does it seem like an overstep that OP1 tried to put parameters around “discussing our family with anyone else”?

      No. The issue here is not that the Nanny was talking to someone to figure out if her employer is being reasonable, etc. That is the ONLY acceptable reason for the Nanny to be talking to anyone about the particulars of the job. And even in that case, there are limits. The specific contents of the OP’s snack drawer, for example, would never be an appropriate issue to discuss unless the Nanny thought that there was literal poison in there.

      1. Calliope*

        Most people don’t care if their nanny says “oh the kid I nanny for loves the Llama Llama books”. So there’s a spectrum but “the family I nanny for eats tons of junk food”is definitely not ok.

    5. I'm Just Here for the Cats*

      this is very common. It’s not saying that she cant tell people she is a nanny and works for them. But she can’t gossip or tell about family issues that she may witness or overhear.

      Its no different than I cannot tell my partner which students came to our department

      1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

        yeah, OP doesn’t talk about which brand of lube she uses, and the nanny shouldn’t either. She can see the bottle on the shelf in the bathroom, but that’s confidential information.

        I don’t ever mention my clients by name for confidentiality reasons, I have made-up names like the “cheapo agency” and the “weird jazz musician” and “Mr VerbalDiarrhoeaMansplainer” and “NeverRainsButItPours” agency for those interested enough. Although since a lot of my work involves marketing and press releases, my clients are usually only too happy for me to mention their exhibitions, new collections and upcoming events.

  15. Clefairy*

    Update for OP1 made me really happy. So glad you were able to approach this kindly and with dignity. As someone who is obese and would LOVE to lose 100+ pounds, I am SO impressed by your Nanny’s drive, but also super sympathetic to food completely taking over her thoughts, and being really sensitive to trigger foods being easily accessible. I can 100% understand why this would have been stressful for you to be around, and love that having a direct and kind conversation led to the two of you better understanding each other’s perspectives and working together to find solutions that work.

    1. bookworm*

      Hi Clefairy, just wanted to throw out there that you (and OP, and others) might find the work of Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes interesting. I have really really loved their podcast Maintenance Phase, which has a lot of curiosity and empathy around weight and the pressure we’re all under to fit into the same size body (and what society/science really “knows” about dieting and obesity)

      1. Clefairy*

        Ooooh, I’ve been looking for new podcasts (because I’ve found going out for long walks to try to combat being sedentary is actually totally doable for me if I’m properly entertained) I am downloading it as we speak!! Thank you so much for the recommendation!

  16. Observer*

    #4- You dodged a bullet. I mean, even if you had been objectively ridiculous how did they just withdraw the offer without telling you? That’s beyond messed up!

  17. MyGoingConcern*

    OP1 Hooray for open communication with your nanny. I’ve been on both sides of that relationship and it can be such a difficult and unique one to navigate, but communication is a huge part of doing so.

    Food talk and feelings while living in our modern society is a rabbit-hole of its own, but I think you’re right to be conscious of what your baby sees from the very beginning. You and your nanny can both acknowledge that this is a thorny, often anxiety and insecurity-ridden area to navigate as adults and there isn’t one Right Approach but still set clear goals & guidelines for what is modeled for your kiddo. My internal approach to these things has evolved radically over the years (and putting it in action in my own life is always a work-in-progress) but my guiding principles & goals come from Intuitive Eating by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. There’s a chapter dedicated to parenting & teaching around food and raising intuitive eaters with healthy food-relationships that is definitely worth reading.

Comments are closed.