When recovering from an eating disorder, it's quite common to gain weight. Whether your child begins recovery in a body that is underweight, of “average” weight, or “over” weight, recovery requires a loosening of the food restriction that underlies almost every eating disorder. While your child learns to eat intuitively and feed their body what it … Continue reading When your child gains weight while in recovery from an eating disorder
Teenagers are biologically driven to differentiate and individuate from their parents. This is the main reason why parenting a child from ages 10-20 can be especially tricky. Adolescent brains are working very hard to prune childhood neural connections while building powerful new adult connections that will stay with them for life. This work can fundamentally … Continue reading What to do when your teenager refuses to get treatment for their eating disorder
By Laurie Dunham, MS, RD, LD, CEDRD I’d like to help empower all parents, educators and healthcare practitioners to take an active role in preventing eating disorders. Right now we are seeing an increase in eating disorders in certain younger age groups. I believe that with proper education of adults, we could help reverse this … Continue reading Yes, we can help prevent eating disorders! Recommendations for parents, educators and healthcare practitioners
The family dinner table can be a place of safety and love, a place at which everyone is nourished physically and emotionally. Surely this is our goal as parents when we gather our family at the table. And yet, even the kindest families sometimes trample through diet culture every time they sit down to eat. … Continue reading 5 phrases to never say at the dinner table to avoid eating disorders
Anxiety is one of the main underlying conditions that occur alongside eating disorders, which means that if you have a child who has an eating disorder, it's very helpful to learn about anxiety disorders and how loved ones can help someone through an anxiety attack. If you are a parent who has no experience with … Continue reading Scary things your child may say while having an anxiety attack and how to handle it
If your child identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, you need to be aware that more than half of a group of LGBTQ youth surveyed indicated that they had been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Of the LGBTQ youth surveyed, 54% of the participants indicated that they had already been diagnosed with an … Continue reading What to know about eating disorders if your child identifies as LGBTQ
Eating disorders thrive in appearance-driven cultures. The U.S. is filled with powerful advertising executives who spend billions of dollars every year convincing us that we are not good enough as we are and that happiness and fulfillment can only be ours if we meet their stringent body and beauty requirements, which will we can do … Continue reading Nobody makes billions of dollars if we believe we’re fine just as we are
Do you have a child who is living in a larger body? Are you worried about your "fat" kid? You should be, but not because of their adipose tissue. The reason you should be worried about your child who lives in a larger body is that fat stigma begins early and can have a significant … Continue reading Weight stigma and your child: what you need to know to help your child who is living in a larger body
If your child has an eating disorder, you may feel overwhelmed by all the new information coming at you. Parents who have children who have eating disorders have a lot to process, and none of it is easy work. Parents often look back at what they did or did not do that may or may … Continue reading Four Things to Stop Doing if Your Child Has an Eating Disorder
As the food industry has continued to deliver tastier, cheaper, and more easily available food, the $70 billion diet industry has simultaneously arisen to convince us that eating is something about which we should feel deeply ashamed. Diet trends have come and gone, but never have there been so many Foodphobic, elimination-based diets as there … Continue reading Foodphobia: why are there so many people restricting entire food groups in the name of health, and what does it have to do with eating disorders?