Need and Greed

I got to thinking about greed, need and eating while reading a novel in which a psychologist character explains to a patient, “Of course, you were greedy. You were a child, you’re supposed to be greedy. Parents are there to fill your needs. That’s the whole point of parents.” Do you have difficulty differentiating need and greed when it comes to food and other things in life? Do you understand why that is? According to the dictionary, greed is excessive wanting, a wish for more than your share and what you deserve. Children, especially very young ones, can’t possibly know what they deserve or require. When we’re young, we’re a bundle of desires—for hugs, food, attention, comfort, toys, help, and information. We want what we want and are run by our primitive brain, lacking a more mature brain component to help us filter our desires.  As the psychologist in the novel rightly insists, the whole point of parents is to be there to attend to our childhood wants. Well, maybe not the whole point. The other important thing parents are meant to do is help us see which wants are reasonable and which aren’t, when we truly are being greedy, that is, expecting or asking for too much. Unfortunately, there is no way of measuring greed across the board—what’s just fine in one family, or even on one occasion in one family, is too much in another. The job of parents is to guide us and teach us wisdom about our wants and needs.  But this doesn...
Source: Normal Eating - Category: Eating Disorders Authors: Source Type: blogs