Advice for parents: if your daughter has an eating disorder, here are my top 10 recommendations
You may be seeing changes in your daughter’s demeanour, like increased emotional outbursts, withdrawing to her room more often, and avoiding situations where she has to eat with the family. You may notice physical changes like weight loss or gain, and lack of energy. Psychologically, she may be having a hard time concentrating, becoming more forgetful and saying negative things about her body.
Eating disorder diagnoses like anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder or another specified eating disorder can be hard on whole families, who want to support their daughter but don’t know what to do.
Recommendations for parents
It is common for tension to be high in households affected by eating disorders. The topic of food can set off tempers and mealtimes are often a time of contention, which need to be faced several times a day, every day.
I’ve put together some general advice that I give to the parents of my clients, who are unsure how they can help. I hope these recommendations are helpful for you:
Pause. Notice if you’re starting conversations from a highly emotional place. If so, it’s okay to acknowledge that and agree to come back to the conversation in half an hour. Then go and do something that helps you regulate.
Vice versa if you notice your daughter is highly emotional – she will not be able to have a rational conversation with you in this state, so encourage her to do what she needs to do to regulate before coming back to the conversation.
Focus on her feelings. Fights about food will be an ongoing struggle until she is further along on recovery. When you notice this happening, try to refocus your attention on how she’s feeling and what she’s experiencing.
For example, is she scared? Angry outbursts often mask feeling hurt or scared. Overwhelmed? Having a hard time identifying how she feels? Having a bad day overall? Ask her more about these things, rather than focusing on food.
Don’t take it personally. And try again. It might feel like you’ve tried everything to have open communication with your daughter, but she remains aloof or resistant. It’s unlikely this is personal – it probably has more to do with her not being ready.
If you’re not getting much of a response from her, remember #2 above: focus on her feelings and what she’s experiencing. Remind her that you support her no matter what she’s feeling and she can come to you anytime to talk. Opening up needs to be in her time.
Separate her from her eating disorder. It can be helpful to think of the eating disorder as a separate voice or entity. The illness has taken over her brain and likely diminished the personality of the person you know, putting her thoughts onto two parallel tracks: food and her body.
When you’re arguing with your daughter about food, you’re arguing with her eating disorder. Remembering that separation can help you not be angry at her for not eating. In fact, you can both be angry at the illness.
Don’t DO anything. Knowing when to act and when to step back is difficult, but it’s important to remember that your daughter doesn’t always need you to take action. Most of the time, she probably just needs to be reminded that you support her (not the eating disorder). Take the time to regularly check in and connect with her (even if she pushes you away) and genuinely listen without distractions when she does share something.
Saying that, it’s time to switch into action when she needs to get into treatment and advocate on her behalf with the healthcare system. This is something she probably doesn’t have the motivation or energy to do for herself.
Don’t punish her if she’s being secretive about food. If your daughter’s hiding food or won’t tell you what or when she’s eating, this is part of her eating disorder, not because of her relationship with you.
The secretiveness around food is an issue that can be resolved through therapy, so for now see this behaviour as an indicator that she’s struggling but not something that needs to be punished or emphasized by you.
Mealtimes are not about food. When sitting down to eat, make an effort to talk about anything but the food. In fact, it’s even better not to focus on your daughter much during the meal, as it’s a stressful time for her.
Try to keep the mood light and talk about “easy” things: activities people are involved in, funny stories from the day, updates on friends and family members, upcoming plans, and reminiscing about a past trip or experience together. Essentially, things that are distracting and non-stressful.
No diet foods. When stocking your cupboards with food, be mindful of diet, low-calorie or fat-free foods. Having them in the house signals to your daughter that it’s okay to choose them, which reinforces her restrictive mindset and can lead to binging. It’s important for everyone in the household to avoid diet culture and for parents to model balanced eating and exercising.
If one of you is on a special diet for health reasons that includes low-fat food (for example), remind your daughter that this way of eating is a “prescription” from a doctor for a specific reason and is not how everyone should be eating. Whole foods should be encouraged and normalized.
Explore your own values. At some point, your daughter started to measure her self-worth by her weight and what foods she eats/doesn’t eat. It can be helpful for her if parents explore what their core beliefs are for her: how is she rewarded? What achievements are focused on and praised?
As well as valuing a thin body, your daughter probably also values all things productive: achieving the best and doing things perfectly. Emphasizing other things – like personality, generosity and kindness as measures of self-worth – this can help oppose her (very narrow) values.
Enlist outside help. If you can see that your daughter is eating very little but is still refusing to get help, I recommend my online course, How to help your teenager with anorexia.
It was developed for teenagers who don’t believe there is anything wrong with the way they’re eating. I designed the course to gently introduce them to what is going on beneath their reluctance to eat and how this can lead to a more serious illness, all in a casual and non-threatening way.
Above all, know that eating disorders are not caused by parenting. Your daughter is experiencing a complex illness that is caused by a combination of biological, psychological, and social and cultural factors. Getting her help early is key to turning her thoughts and behaviours around.
