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Ultimate guide to neurodivergent causes of eating disorders

Ultimate guide to neurodivergent causes of eating disorders

We know that dieting for weight loss purposes is a major cause of eating disorders. But there are many different pathways to eating disorders that we’re still learning about, especially when it comes to neurodivergent kids.

These kids often don’t fit what we consider to be a “typical” eating disorder. They don’t begin by dieting to lose weight. They may not start with body image issues. (However, disordered eating often causes negative body image and more eating disorder behaviors.) 

The “story” of the eating disorder may be food and weight. However, the original cause of many eating disorders is being neurodivergent. Up to 37% of people with eating disorders have autism, and 31% of adults diagnosed with eating disorders also have ADHD. 

Research indicates that neurodivergent people benefit less and have poorer outcomes from traditional eating disorder treatment. Unless we address the neurodivergent pathways that lead to eating disorders, it’s much harder to achieve recovery.

There are many causes of eating disorders; they are complex and vary greatly. I put together the three pathways I see most often when working with parents who have neurodivergent kids.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Picky eating/food aversions

The neurotypical approach to food assumes that everyone enjoys eating and will eat most foods. We assume that most people can eat almost anything and that any quirks or preferences can be overcome by circumstance and social pressure. For example, we expect that if you don’t like cantaloupe, but that’s all there is, and your parents are telling you to eat it, you will eat cantaloupe. 

However, while this may be the dominant attitude towards food, it is far from universal. There are many people, particularly those who are neurodivergent and especially those with autism and ADHD, who have highly sensitive palates who are not just mildly averse to certain foods but who develop severe aversions to food based on their five senses (sight, smell, sound, taste, texture) as well as their memories of being pressured to eat the food even when they don’t like it. Combined, these aversions take a tendency to be picky about food to a full-blown food aversion. 

Once a person develops a serious food aversion, eating that food is not as simple as being hungry or receiving well-meaning pressure to try it. These people are strongly opposed to that food and may have physical symptoms like a racing heart, sweating, nausea, and even vomiting when faced with that food. Their list of “safe foods” may dwindle as they become more sensitive over time. This is how picky eating and food aversions can tumble into disordered eating and an eating disorder.

How to help

Parents can support recovery by feeding their neurodivergent child regular meals, having family meals, and gradually exposing them to more food variety in a non-pressured environment. They can support a child in exploring their food-based sensory and emotional issues and soothe them when emotional dysregulation makes eating hard. 

Parents also need to accept that kids like this are unlikely ever to have a neurotypical relationship with food and eating. Their recovery will not mean they become typical eaters. Parents who accept that food and eating are more complicated for neurodivergent kids help them learn to feed their bodies in light of their unique neurobiology and psychology.

Forgetting to eat/procrastinating eating

The neurotypical approach to food assumes that when you are hungry, you will eat. This idea assumes that anyone who skips meals or procrastinates eating is doing so because they want to lose weight. However, while this may be the neurotypical response to hunger, it is far from universal. Sometimes people assume a child who doesn’t eat is being stubborn, defiant, or lazy. However, there are many people, particularly those who are neurodivergent and especially those with ADHD, who don’t notice their hunger cues and/or are not motivated to interrupt what they are doing to eat. This is a neurological difference, not defiance or a choice. 

These people skip meals because they completely forget to eat or put eating off for a later time. This is a form of unintentional food restriction that can lead to a cascade of other eating disorder behaviors, including negative body image, more restriction, binge eating, and purging. It’s very easy to create the story that the reason they don’t eat is for weight loss. However, if we miss the essential lack of hunger cues and drive to eat, we will not truly address the cause of disordered eating.

How to help

People who don’t notice and respond to their hunger cues must address their underlying neurobiology and use intentional (vs. intuitive) eating to recover. Parents can support recovery by serving food regularly, having family meals, and prompting eating, especially when distraction is at play. They can also teach kids to prioritize eating and recognize non-typical signs of hunger. This is an essential skill that becomes particularly important when kids leave home.

Parents must accept that a child with this neurobiology will probably not turn into a neurotypical eater who intuitively feeds their body based on typical hunger cues. Instead, a person like this will need to learn how to feed themselves on purpose. 

Oppositional assertion of independence

When a child is picky and/or forgets to eat, parents tend to increase their focus on food and eating. This is appropriate, as we are responsible for helping our kids get the nutrition they need. Unfortunately, many times the way we go about this backfires. While parents need to support kids in eating, power struggles about eating are very common. They can compound the original issue that leads to picky eating and/or procrastinating eating. 

Psychiatrist William W. Dodson, MD, says that by age 12, kids with ADHD have heard about 20,000 more negative messages from adults compared to kids who don’t have ADHD. Since they are already highly sensitive to negative feedback, the level of negativity that they receive based on their neurodivergent qualities can be devastating and lead to oppositional defiance. 

Because they feel so criticized and marginalized, neurodivergent kids are often more resistant to even the mildest prompting from parents. Additionally, when food becomes an issue, parents can become hyper-focused on it, making eating even more stressful and, therefore, unlikely.

How to help

Parents can help a child who is oppositional and engaging in extended power struggles over food by learning how to co-regulate with their child before offering instruction. This means slowing the whole process of feeding down to attend to the child’s core need to feel connected to the parent before the parent tells them what to do.

It’s so crucial for parents to approach kids’ eating disorders with neurodivergent characteristics in mind. A child who is not eating because they are neurodivergent needs specialized care and treatment. Finding a therapist and/or dietitian who understands neurodivergence is essential.

The good news is that when parents learn to feed neurodivergent kids based on their unique symptoms and patterns, they can make a huge difference in eating disorders. A cookie-cutter approach doesn’t really work for anyone with eating disorders, but this is particularly true when neurodivergence is a factor. For example, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is a gold standard treatment for eating disorders. However, it is unlikely to help someone who is neurodivergent unless neurodivergent causes are understood and addressed.


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

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Insider stories about EMDR for eating disorders

Insider stories about EMDR for eating disorders

Gita has tried everything to help her daughter recover from an eating disorder. “I feel like there are so many options, and so little evidence of anything that is the magic bullet for eating disorders,” she says. But a few weeks ago her daughter’s therapist recommended trying EMDR, so Gita is curious about the treatment and wants to know if EMDR can work to treat an eating disorder. 

Parents like Gita feel desperate to find the treatment that will break through the eating disorder and trigger their child’s motivation to heal and recover. And while EMDR is far from a universal “magic bullet” for eating disorders, it has some evidence of being helpful for some people. 

What all of us want is clear evidence of a treatment that works for everyone. But eating disorders are complex and research on eating disorder treatment is vastly underfunded. So for now parents are left with trying multiple treatment modalities to see what works best for their situation.

What is EMDR?

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, or EMDR, seems strange, maybe even outlandish at first. And it was considered very fringe for decades. However, it has gained popularity and is supported by scientific studies as an effective method for treating traumatic memories. The treatment seems helpful especially when traumatic memories drive coping behaviors like eating disorders. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

An EMDR therapist first works with a client to build a sense of safety and security. Once a positive therapeutic relationship is established, the therapist will help the client remember a traumatic memory while simultaneously stimulating the right and left sides of the brain. This can be done using their fingers, sound, a light board, or other devices. The idea is that stimulating the right and left sides of the brain while thinking about a traumatic memory integrates and stabilizes the brain. 

EMDR shows promise as an eating disorder treatment. This is most likely because many people who have eating disorders also have PTSD and/or complex, relational trauma. Additionally, it is virtually impossible to live in our culture without encountering negative food and body experiences. Up to 90% of women have disordered thoughts about their bodies and food. Negative food and body experiences, compounded over years and even decades of a person’s life, are toxic and can contribute to disordered eating and weight behaviors. 

Food and body experiences as trauma

EMDR helps people process fear and trauma in an adaptive, helpful way. The idea is that by processing their trauma, a person will no longer use eating disorder behaviors to deal with the lingering impact of traumatic experiences.

In our culture, food and body experiences are very often traumatic. Almost everyone can think of many situations in which their body was observed and judged as either good or bad. This is particularly true for people who are on the higher end of the weight chart. And most people have heard countless statements about how eating is either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. These normalized behaviors are extremely common in our culture, and they contribute to disordered eating behaviors.

Many eating disorder therapists try to address disordered food and body thoughts with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and that can be effective. But EMDR is designed to reach beneath cognition and support subconscious processing and resolution. 

How EMDR works for eating disorder treatment

EMDR helps people identify a core fear that is driving behavior, find the touchstone memory that lies at the heart of the fear, and then process the memory in a safe, secure environment. The goal is that by processing the touchstone memory using the EMDR technique, the person will no longer feel so sensitive to the fear and may be able to cope with the urge to use eating disorder behaviors.

Core fears that may be addressed in eating disorder treatment include:

  • Fear of food/eating
  • Fear of not getting enough food
  • Fear of eating too much/having no control
  • Fear of gaining weight
  • Fear of criticism for living in a larger body

A touchstone memory is an event that shapes how we see ourselves and can drive eating disorder behaviors. These may include:

  • Rejection (especially based on weight and appearance)
  • Microaggressions (particularly those associated with weight stigma)
  • Food insecurity (strongly associated with binge eating and bulimia)
  • Food restriction in the home (including restriction for “health” reasons e.g. no sugar)
  • Physiological sensitivity to eating (e.g. highly sensitive gut, taste, smell, sensations etc.)
  • Messages from parents (e.g. don’t eat too much or you’ll get fat, etc.)
  • Negative feedback for weight gain (e.g. you need to watch your weight, I’m worried about your health, etc.)
  • Positive reinforcement for weight loss (e.g. you look great! Keep it up! etc.)
  • Eating food resulted in negative feedback (e.g. that’s bad for you! You eat too much junk food! etc.)
  • Restricting food resulted in positive feedback (e.g. you’re so healthy! I wish I could be as good as you!)

There are countless experiences that shape how kids feel about food and their bodies. This is hard for anyone, but it is especially traumatic for kids who live in larger bodies. 

Lived experience

Many people who have recovered from an eating disorders credit their recovery in part to EMDR. For example, Shayna, a high school senior in recovery from an eating disorder, says it helped her. “When you have an eating disorder you constantly have these pressures in your head for one of the most seemingly basic needs,” she says. “But your mind is telling you that you don’t deserve to eat, you don’t deserve to exist in your body, that you won’t be accepted in this society. It’s a very difficult thing to grapple with.”

Shayna was in treatment for years, feeling stuck. In residential treatment she was exposed to the competitive nature of eating disorders. “I felt like my identity was being a person with an eating disorder,” she says. “My whole life revolved around my eating disorder. My mind was consumed by how can I lose more weight, how can I sneak around, how many calories is this, constantly feeling like I wasn’t good enough.”

After residential treatment

When she left residential treatment and went to high school, she continued working with a therapist, who introduced EMDR as a part of treatment. Shayna says EMDR has helped her in recovery. “I talk about my trauma or certain events that have happened, and she’ll ask me to think about an event and on a scale of 1-10 how disturbing it is, and connect it to how I feel in my body.” she says. “She either gives me tappers that vibrate back and forth or she’ll move her hand and I’m supposed to follow it eye to eye. It helps me get balanced and grounded. You can’t be anxious because you’re going to lose focus on the patterned practice.”

Shayna says the most valuable part of EMDR has been feeling more grounded. “I struggle with anxiety,” she says. “EMDR helps me feel grounded in the present. Instead of feeling washed away by my worries, I’m in the present with what’s happening. I feel safe and calm and present.” 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Checking in with Gita

Gita’s daughter is medically stable, which is a prerequisite for EMDR. Gita’s main hesitation is that she’s worried the treatment may re-traumatize her daughter at a time when recovery is still very early and unsure. This makes sense, and it’s good to be cautious. It’s important to find a therapist who has training in EMDR and is trained in eating disorders. It’s a lot to ask for, but it’s more likely today than it was five years ago. 

Gita found a provider who fit the bill and her daughter has attended four EMDR sessions so far. “I think it’s helpful for her so far,” says Gita. “The eating disorder is still there. We’re still working on it. But I’ve noticed that she’s much calmer now, and it seems like the negative food and body thoughts aren’t quite so loud anymore. I can see this possibly helping her feel better.” 

Guidelines for using EMDR with eating disorders

If you are considering EMDR for your child who has an eating disorder, please keep in mind the following guidelines:

  1. Your child should be medically stable, not weight-suppressed, and eating regular meals and snacks.
  2. The therapist should have specific training in both EMDR and eating disorders. They should follow the EMDR protocol and practice from a non-diet perspective.
  3. The therapist should invest in building a therapeutic relationship that is safe and secure for your child. They should not rush too fast into traumatic memories without building a solid relationship first.
  4. You should be able to support your child’s emotional wellbeing and emotional regulation after and in between sessions. (Get help with this)

Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Eating Disorder Treatment Guide For Parents

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How to use punishment, rewards, and boundaries for an eating disorder

How to use punishment, rewards, and boundaries for an eating disorder

Bridget and Tom are struggling to figure out how to support their child Lex without enabling her. “We’ve tried punishment, rewards, and boundaries,” says Bridget. “But nothing seems to be working. The eating disorder isn’t budging. In fact it’s getting worse, and we’re getting so burned out. What can we do?”

I get it. When parents are using punishments and rewards, they’re trying to motivate a child to recover. But while punishment and rewards are commonly-used parenting techniques, they tend to fail with an eating disorder for various reasons. Many parents try to establish boundaries instead, but because they misunderstand what boundaries are (and what they are not!), this can backfire, too. 

The only way to motivate someone to recover from an eating disorder is to build their autonomy and identity, and punishments and rewards directly interfere with that. Meanwhile, boundaries are how parents can make sure they aren’t enabling or accommodating eating disorder behaviors. But not all boundaries are the same and understanding what does and doesn’t work makes all the difference.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Using punishment to deter eating disorder behaviors

A large portion of parenting advice has historically been based on punishing the behavior we don’t want our child to do. Since punishment feels pretty harsh to most of us, modern parents prefer the word “consequences.” Whether you call it punishment or consequence, the idea is something like this: if you don’t get off your phone, I’ll take it away for a week. Using punishments to teach a child makes perfect sense intuitively. After all, if you do something and receive negative feedback for it, shouldn’t that mean you won’t do it again? 

But unfortunately we know with certainty that as much as this approach makes intuitive sense, it is not actually effective parenting. Punishment is strongly associated with defiance, opposition, rebellion, and giving up. 

Punishment does not motivate kids to do the things we want them to do. Instead, it teaches them to avoid getting caught doing it. That’s why punishment can backfire when it comes to an eating disorder. The last thing we want is for a child to take their eating disorder underground where it becomes invisible. If we can’t see the eating disorder behaviors, we have almost no hope of motivating a child to change their behavior. 

There are a few limited situations in which you might use consequences/punishment for eating disorder behavior, but I would be very, very careful about this. Punishing a child for using a coping behavior (even one that is dangerous) is misguided at best, harmful at worst. And keep in mind that negative words, criticism, and judgment are just as punishing as physical consequences.

Using rewards to incentivize eating disorder recovery behaviors

The opposite of punishing negative behavior is rewarding positive behavior. This approach to parenting is also well-established. The idea is that rather than focusing on what you want your child to stop doing (e.g. restricting, binge eating, purging), you focus on what you want them to start doing (e.g. eating regular meals, going to therapy, etc.). And instead of punishing the behavior you want to stop, you reward the behavior you want to start. This is how most animal training works: when my dog sits, I give him a treat. 

This makes sense, and there is some good evidence for focusing on rewards rather than punishments. However, it can have unfortunate consequences in eating disorder treatment and recovery. Because while rewarding behavior makes intuitive sense, in humans it tends to reduce intrinsic motivation, or the desire to make behavior change for oneself vs. for external reasons. 

When parents reward a child for doing something, they can accidentally reduce their child’s intrinsic motivation to keep doing it. Getting a reward for taking positive action can, unfortunately, reduce a person’s perceived autonomy, or the idea that they are doing the action for themselves vs. someone else or exclusively to gain a reward.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ever reward your child for taking positive steps towards recovery. You just want to make sure you’re keeping in mind that their autonomous drive can be negatively impacted by doing so. To motivate recovery, you want to reinforce their sense of independence and agency at all times. Just like punishment, when your child has an eating disorder you must use rewards intentionally and with forethought.

Setting boundaries when your child has an eating disorder

The difference between punishment, rewards, and boundaries is mainly about who is taking action. When you punish or reward your child for an action they took, it’s about their behavior. When you set a boundary, it’s about your own behavior. 

For example, you may be in a situation in which your child is often yelling at you, which upsets you. You could either punish a child who yells at you or reward a child who speaks calmly. But this keeps the focus entirely on their behavior. On the other hand, boundaries mean that you tell your child during a calm moment that you don’t like being yelled at and are going to change the way you respond when it happens. Then when you are being yelled at, you tell them that you don’t like being yelled at. If they continue, you tell them that you don’t like being yelled at and are going to walk away. Finally, you follow through and consistently act on your boundary every time you are yelled at.

The focus is all about you. “I don’t like being yelled at” is very different from “stop yelling at me.” And “I’m going to walk away” is very different from “Why do you always yell at me? You’re so mean!” A boundary does not ask your child to change anything, do anything, or feel anything. It doesn’t make the child responsible for how you feel. It focuses entirely on what you like, dislike, and will do for yourself.

Focus on boundaries

This is the area you want to focus on most when your child has an eating disorder. Because short of force-feeding a child, which is rarely but indeed sometimes medically necessary, you can’t really control eating behavior. And even if you do, in the process you might damage your child’s sense of agency and their intrinsic motivation to recover. 

However, you can decide what you will do when your child refuses to eat, binge eats, or purges. How will you respond? What boundaries will you set about your own behavior? How will you make sure you aren’t enabling or accommodating the eating disorder? And to be clear, your boundaries should not feel like punishments or rewards. They should be clearly explained in advance and carried through without judgment or criticism. 

Clear boundaries about parental behavior is how parents can be supportive without enabling the eating disorder. It’s a tricky balance, but it’s possible. 

Checking in with Bridget and Tom

Bridget and Tom have agreed that punishments and rewards are not working to help Lex. And while they tried boundaries, they see now that their boundaries have actually been another form of punishment and reward. “I didn’t really see the difference between focusing on our behavior vs. focusing on what Lex is doing,” says Bridget. “In hindsight, I can see that our boundaries didn’t work because we were still trying to control her. Controlling myself, I’ve discovered, is actually even harder!”

I get it! When you switch the focus from changing your child to changing yourself, you realize how hard it is to build new patterns of behavior. Families all have patterns that unconsciously drive and support our behavior. Parenting a child with an eating disorder is about both supporting the child in getting treatment and also changing any parental behaviors that may be accommodating the eating disorder.

Bridget and Tom are working hard to disrupt their unconscious patterns and intentionally build parent-focused boundaries. “I’m already seeing a difference in how our household operates,” says Bridget. “And there are a lot of ways I can see we’ve been accommodating the eating disorder. Lex has resisted most of the changes we’ve made, but I’ve been surprised to notice that she ultimately accepts our boundaries. I think she feels more secure with our boundaries in place. I’m noticing small but important changes in her behavior now that we’re focusing on what we’re doing.”


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

For privacy, names and identifying details have been changed in this article.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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How to help your child with ADHD gain weight

How to help your child with ADHD gain weight

Dan reached out to me for some help with his son Braden, who has ADHD and needs to gain weight. “I’m not sure when it started, but suddenly Braden lost weight and his doctor tells us that we have to do something about it right away,” says Dan. “We’re really trying, but we feel totally stuck. Braden says he’s not hungry and rejects almost everything we offer him. We don’t know what else to do!”

I get it. Eating issues are common when you have a child with ADHD. And while it’s not easy, Dan and his partner Eric can make a big difference. They can improve Braden’s lifelong health by addressing this right away.

The link between ADHD and eating issues

People with ADHD are more likely to develop eating disorders than the general population. One study found that 31% of adults diagnosed with eating disorders also had ADHD. This is much higher than the general population, of which 3-10% of people have ADHD. About 36% of people who have bulimia and anorexia with a binging/purging subtype and 18% of people with anorexia have ADHD. Eating disorders have been described both as a symptom of and/or a coping mechanism for the emotional dysregulation that is common with ADHD.

Why it can be hard for a child with ADHD to eat

There are many reasons why eating issues are associated with ADHD. First, people with ADHD are usually highly sensitive to their five senses (smell, touch, taste, sound, and sight), all of which are involved in eating. This can lead to picky eating and a limited palate. They are also more sensitive to their interoceptive state, especially their digestive system, which can lead to disorganized hunger and fullness cues and/or feelings of nausea and other gastrointestinal distress. 

They are also highly attuned to neuroception, the sensation of other people’s emotional states, which can impact eating habits especially if family meals are stressful or chaotic. Together, these sensitivities combine to increase emotional dysregulation, making eating more difficult. A child who is both highly sensitive and has low emotional regulation skills is more likely to adopt coping behaviors like an eating disorder.

Also, a person with ADHD may not notice they are hungry or, even if they do, they may not be motivated to feed themselves. This tendency to be distracted and/or procrastinate eating can cascade into eating disorder behaviors. Most eating disorders begin with under-eating, either intentionally for weight loss or unintentionally due to distraction or avoidance. 

In cases of anorexia and ARFID, the person continues to eat too little. In cases of binge eating, the person restricts then binge eats. And in cases of bulimia, the binge eating episode is followed by purging. Either way, postponing and avoiding eating is a precursor to most eating disorder behaviors.

Finally, the medication used to treat ADHD can interfere with hunger cues, further affecting eating, weight, and digestion. This does not mean you need to discontinue medication, but it’s a good idea to check with your child’s psychiatrist to see if there are any adjustments that might help with eating.

Your child’s weight curve

A big thing to keep an eye on is your child’s weight and height curve. You should see a nice growth curve from birth through today, with your child staying approximately within their natural weight and height curve. This indicates your child is growing according to their body’s unique genetic blueprint. 

For example, if your child was born at the 95th percentile for weight and was there at age 2, 4, 6, and 8, but they have now dropped to the 65th percentile, your child may be weight suppressed. Though it surprises many parents, we don’t want a child from the 95th percentile to drop down to the 65th percentile. And if they do, you’ll likely see an increase in disruptive behaviors and a lower appetite, which leads to more weight suppression, more disordered eating, etc. 

If your child has dropped off their weight curve, they will need help eating enough food to get back to their healthy weight. The further they are from their natural weight, the harder it may be for them to eat. Nonetheless, it’s essential that you step in and intervene, as it is a serious medical and psychological issue. If your child has ADHD and needs to gain weight, please keep in close contact with your child’s doctor to monitor their health.

How to get a child with ADHD to eat

Getting a child with ADHD who has fallen off their growth curve to eat is extremely challenging. It’s also essential medical therapy. Start by seeking advice from a physician and/or registered dietitian (RD). However, beware of a professional who thinks it’s a good thing if your child has dropped off their childhood growth curve. That just means they’re stuck in outdated understanding of weight and health. Find a provider who recognizes that your child’s historical growth path should inform their weight trajectory. 

Assuming they agree that your child needs to gain weight, you can work with them on a plan for feeding. If your child is medically compromised, they may need residential treatment. But in most cases you will be told to feed your child more regular meals. You may get a meal plan with ideas for what to feed your child. But in my experience most parents already know what to feed their child. What you really need to know is how, given ADHD, you can feed your child enough food for them to gain weight. In these cases, parents need a behavioral intervention that won’t trigger their child’s oppositional tendencies or emotional dysregulation.

Here are my top four tips for feeding kids with ADHD:

1. Structure

It’s common in our culture for meals to be chaotic and grab-and-go style. Everyone eats separately and parents may be short-order cooks, feeding each child a different meal at a different time. However, a child with ADHD who needs to gain weight needs structured meals that acknowledge the ritual of eating as important and meaningful. We are social animals – we were never meant to eat alone. 

Create an eating and feeding schedule that involves you serving your child food on a plate, at the table, together with other family members as often as possible. Meals should feature high-calorie foods you know your child will accept as well as other foods they may currently avoid like fruits and vegetables. This will model for your child what a healthy meal looks like even if they are not ready to expand their palate yet. 

Keep the atmosphere at the table “light, bright, and polite.” Any criticism or negative discussions will result in emotional dysregulation and either a loss of appetite or a tendency to binge eat.

2. Fed is best 

If your child is weight-suppressed they need a lot of calories to make up the deficit and get back on their growth curve. While it’s common for parents to worry a lot about the nutritional content of their kids’ diets, at this point your main focus is on feeding a lot of calories as efficiently as possible. Worry less about the nutritional content and instead use the saying “fed is best” to remember that your primary goal is to feed your child enough food regularly so they gain weight. 

Offer fruits and vegetables and other non-preferred foods at every meal. Put them on the table so your child sees them. But your focus is high-calorie, high-fat foods that will help them gain weight. You will have a lot more flexibility and can expand their palate more as they gain weight.

As your child with ADHD achieves weight gain, you will notice that rigid or chaotic eating patterns reduce and you’ll have a lot more leeway for increasing food flexibility.

3. Validation + Expectation

Kids with ADHD are extremely sensitive to demands and criticism, and yet many adults use these techniques to try and motivate them to do things. You will have a lot more success if you change your approach and consistently use a combination of validation and expectation. Here’s how this works: 

  1. Validate that they have an opinion, complaint, or resistance
  2. State your request or expectation

Always do these two things together, not apart. And resist the temptation to add defensive arguments or compelling incentives. Keep your communication kind, short, and direct.

Here’s a good example of validation + expectation: “I understand that you’re playing a video game right now, but I’d like you to come to the table.” Or “I get it, you don’t want to eat right now, but I think you can handle it.” You may have to repeat yourself several times, varying the words a bit, but this technique is 100% more effective than arguing, negotiating, and debating with a child who doesn’t want to come to the table. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

4. Build emotional regulation skills

While eating and weight gain are the outcome we’re seeking, emotional regulation is the underlying skill that will keep eating and weight, and therefore health, on track for life. Building emotional regulation skills is essential for any child with ADHD, and it will make a difference in every aspect of their health, including their ability to maintain a healthy weight. Parents can do this by building kids’ emotional regulation skills, and we are actually the best people to do this since we’re biologically wired with our kids. Building emotional regulation skills includes:

  • Emotional literacy – building an emotional vocabulary so kids can label, name, and talk about their feelings. 
  • Emotional co-regulation – regulating your child’s emotional state with your calm, regulated emotional state. You may want to get some training and coaching to do this.
  • Skill-building – teaching your child the emotional regulation skills they need to process their emotions rather than coping with automatic, subconscious behaviors. My emotional regulation worksheets can help with this.

Measuring success

If your child with ADHD is weight suppressed it’s important that you restore their weight as quickly as possible. This will not be easy, but it is possible. And many times parents are the best people to help a child in this situation because you know your child best. Your aim is to achieve steady weight gain every week until weight restoration (getting back in their original growth curve) is achieved. Please remember to maintain close contact with your child’s medical and therapeutic providers and get support for yourself, too!

Checking back with Braden

Dan and his partner Eric met with me over the course of several months to optimize their meal structure, behavioral interventions, and emotional regulation skills. They put tremendous effort into Braden’s health, and it paid off. Braden slowly but steadily restored his weight and is back on his growth curve. And the family structure is now set up to support Braden’s nutritional needs.

They have noticed a big difference in Braden’s emotional regulation skills, and their own! Braden is still fairly picky, so Dan and Eric are working on food flexibility, but overall he’s doing great, and the family is closer and more connected than before. “The best part of all of this is that we’ve become much better parents to Braden and partners to each other,” says Dan. “We feel a whole lot more confident about what we’re doing now.”


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

For privacy, names and identifying details have been changed in this article.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Eating & Feeding A Child With An Eating Disorder

This site is designed to provide information and resources. It is not intended as, nor should it be used as medical advice pertaining to any individual person’s healthcare. People should always consult with a qualified medical professional regarding their specific health needs.

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How to help with emotional dysregulation and an eating disorder

How to help with emotional dysregulation and an eating disorder

Whether your child is refusing to eat, binge eating, purging, or using other eating disorder behaviors, emotional dysregulation may be at the heart of it. And the good news is that emotional regulation skills can be built. These skills are key to reducing stress and anxiety at the table and helping your child relax enough to eat (and hopefully enjoy!) food.

Emotional regulation is part of our neurobiology, which is the biology of the nervous system. Recent scientific advances have revealed that the nervous system is incredibly complex and influences everything we think and do. The breakthroughs we’ve made in neurobiology have been led by the invention of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique in 1990, which has driven a startling amount of progress in understanding our brains and nervous systems. This technique facilitates many insights into emotional dysregulation, and helps us understand why certain eating disorder behaviors show up. 

People used to think eating disorder behavior was driven by the mind, something called top-down thinking. This is best shown by the common accusation that having an eating disorder is a vanity-driven choice – it’s not! Instead, what we’ve learned is that most disordered behavior comes from the bottom-up. It begins in the nervous system, which is constantly scanning the environment for threats and triggering emotional dysregulation when threats are detected. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Emotional dysregulation and eating disorders

Emotional regulation is a state in which we feel calm, engaged, and in balance. In this state, we have a healthy appetite, are happy to eat a variety of foods, and are pleasant dinner table company. However, when our nervous system perceives a threat, all that goes out the window. Instead of being emotionally regulated, we become dysregulated, which makes us either over-active (fight/flight) or under-active (freeze/shutdown).

A person who is dysregulated may feel nauseated and have no appetite. They may be sobbing uncontrollably. They may be disassociating with food and not even notice how much and how fast they’re eating. You can try to force them to eat or tell them to stop eating, but it’s unlikely you’ll be successful. Because until your child is emotionally regulated, they’re going to have a really hard time eating well.

Emotional dysregulation is both a cause and a symptom of an eating disorder. People who are frequently emotionally dysregulated are more likely to develop an eating disorder. But also, once an eating disorder develops it becomes a way to cope with emotional dysregulation. Thus, eating disorders and emotional dysregulation can grow together in a feedback loop.

Signs of emotional dysregulation

Most people describe someone in a regulated state as calm, confident, and engaged. This is when we get along with people and feel pretty good in our bodies and about ourselves. Eating is easy and delicious in this state and we are in tune with our hunger and fullness cues. When we become emotionally dysregulated, we either go to fight/flight or freeze/shutdown state. Here’s what this looks like:

Fight/Flight

Most people describe someone in a fight/flight state as either angry or anxious. Eating is extremely hard in this state. The digestive system is shut down and all the blood is diverted to the limbs for running and fighting. Most people can’t eat. Those who do may eat very fast, but since the digestive system is shut down they will become very uncomfortable and even less regulated. Symptoms include:

  • Racing heart
  • Nausea
  • Sweating
  • Anxiety
  • Anger
  • Arguing and negotiating

Freeze/Shutdown

Most people describe someone in a freeze/shutdown state as either depressed or zoned out. Eating is extremely hard in this state. Some people just don’t care about food, feel physically incapable, and are completely uninterested in eating. Others will eat food, sometimes a lot of it, as a way to try and get back to a regulated state. But food doesn’t work well for this purpose, and they usually end up even less regulated. Symptoms include:

  • Slow, sluggish movements
  • Dissociation 
  • Emotional withdrawal
  • Depression
  • Suicidal thoughts*

*If you or your child are feeling unsafe or in crisis, please call, text, or chat the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline to communicate with a trained professional.

What causes emotional dysregulation?

Our nervous system is attuned to internal and external threats. Threats can come from inside or outside of the body. When a threat is detected, our nervous system signals the amygdala, raises cortisol levels, and triggers emotional dysregulation. This is a physiological response meant to protect us from bodily harm. 

We get activated into a fight/flight state when our nervous system drives us to run from or fight off a threat. And we go into a freeze/shutdown state when our nervous system drives us to hide to avoid a threat. This system was developed to protect us from predators, enemies, and natural disasters. However, in our modern world it’s more likely to sense threats in less-dangerous things like a food we don’t like or a situation that makes us uncomfortable.

People with highly sensitive nervous systems are more likely to be triggered into emotional dysregulation. Everyone can learn to get better at emotional regulation. However, people with a highly-sensitive nervous system who don’t intentionally build emotional regulation skills will tend to get more emotionally dysregulated over time.

Here are the benefits of having better emotional regulation skills:

  • More balanced and calm state of mind 
  • Able to cope with worry, negative thoughts, and difficult emotions 
  • Greater self-awareness 
  • Able to think more clearly and make better decisions 
  • Greater emotional balance 
  • Able to respond rather than react in stressful situations 
  • More fulfilling relationships 
  • Greater self-acceptance and self-compassion 
  • Less embarrassment and shame

Also, when a person is emotionally regulated, they are able to eat regular, healthy meals and snacks to fuel their bodies and minds. Eating well both improves emotional regulation and is improved by emotional regulation.

Foundations of emotional regulation

Physical health is a foundational requirement of emotional regulation. Your child needs to meet their basic physical requirements to achieve emotional regulation: 

  • Enough food, regularly throughout the day (every 2-4 hours) 
  • Not weight-suppressed 
  • Enough sleep based on the guidelines for their age 
  • Emotional connections with others 
  • Not sick

Even though it is harder for someone who is emotionally dysregulated to eat, it is also part of their recovery to eat. It will be very hard for your child to be emotionally regulated if they aren’t eating enough food regularly throughout the day. 

If this is an issue, increase the number of structured meals and snacks, which will reduce massive physiological spikes and dips. If your child is currently weight suppressed, then weight restoration is a priority.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Improving your child’s emotional dysregulation

If your child is in therapy, their therapist will teach and model emotional regulation skills like reframing thoughts, naming feelings, having self-compassion, and more. 

Your child can also improve self regulation skills with activities like meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, and other things that connect the mind and body and develop a felt sense of safety. My emotional regulation worksheets also help your child build these skills.

Best of all, your nervous system has shaped your child’s nervous system, so you are deeply attuned and responsive to each other. If you learn skillful co-regulation, you can help your child build their emotional regulation skills. This will make mealtimes much less stressful and help your child get the healthy nutrition they need. You can learn to more effectively co-regulate with your child to support them as they build emotional regulation skills.

When we co-regulate with children, we help them to feel safe, and to tolerate and make sense of their sensations and basic feelings.

Dr. Mona Delahooke

Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide to Emotions And Eating Disorders

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Parental attachment and eating disorder recovery

Parental attachment and eating disorder recovery

Parental attachment impacts eating disorder recovery, and luckily there is a lot you can do to improve it. I’ll outline the steps to improve your parent-child attachment, but first let’s review attachment theory. Attachment theory is a well-established and deeply-researched psychological concept. All children develop an attachment style with their parents. There are two main styles of attachment: secure and insecure.

We all wish that everyone had a secure attachment, but it’s actually not as common as you might think. Just over half of the population (~56%) have secure attachment. A child who is securely attached feels they can rely on their caregiver to meet their needs. When the child is emotionally dysregulated, they seek their caregiver’s attention and are soothed by their caregiver.

There are three types of insecure attachment styles: 

  • Anxious-ambivalent attachment (~20% of people): a child who is anxious-ambivalent feels insecure about their caregiver. When emotionally dysregulated, they will seek attention and soothing by doing things like whining, yelling, crying, and being rude. However, the caregiver is typically unable to soothe the child.
  • Anxious-avoidant attachment (~23% of people): a child who has anxious-avoidant attachment does not seek their caregiver out when they are upset. When the child is emotionally dysregulated, they tend to go inward and avoid the caregiver and brush off any attempts to draw them out of their shell.
  • Disorganized attachment (~1% of people): a child who has disorganized attachment does not rely on their caregiver for any reliable care. When the child is emotionally dysregulated, they may exhibit ambivalent or avoidant attachment patterns, but it is inconsistent, and they are rarely (if ever) soothed by their caregiver.

Parent Scripts For Eating Disorder Recovery

Scripts to help you figure out what to say to help your child with an eating disorder. Use these scripts:

  • At the dinner table when behavior is getting out of control
  • When you need to set boundaries – fast!
  • After something happened so you can calmly review the triggers and events

What is the risk of insecure parental attachment?

Children are dependent on their parents for emotional support, comfort and availability, especially during stressful situations, transitions, and change. Securely attached children learn that their parents are available, understanding, and responsive to their emotional and physical needs. As a result of this caregiving, they will feel competent and valuable as people. This core belief usually lasts for life and leads to better mental and physical health.

That’s great for them! But the other half of humans are insecurely attached to their parents and often feel incompetent and unlovable. They struggle to build secure emotional bonds with others. This is because the way we attach to our parents shapes how we attach to others. Parental attachment becomes the blueprint of how worthy we feel of love and what we believe we deserve from partners and friends in the future. Keep reading though, because we can build more secure attachment with our kids!

Attachment theory and eating disorders

The majority of people treated for eating disorders report they have insecure attachment with their parents. Insecure attachment is nobody’s fault. Notably, researchers recognize that parents who have insecurely attached children likely had insecure attachment with their own parents and also have a history of unresolved trauma that impairs their ability to securely attach with their child. It’s not your fault if your child is insecurely attached!

Studies have found that children with insecure parental attachment have:

  • Poor self-concept, self-esteem, and self-worth
  • Low identity differentiation
  • Poor emotional regulation
  • Dissatisfied with body and self
  • Fear of gaining weight
  • Impaired recognition of hunger and satiety
  • Higher rates of perfectionism
  • Unhealthy coping mechanisms
  • Difficulty getting along with others and feeling connected
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Dissociation
  • Substance dependency

All of these are also linked with eating disorders, which is likely the reason many people with eating disorders also have insecure parental attachment. That said, not everyone with insecure parental attachment develops an eating disorder, and not everyone with an eating disorder has insecure parental attachment. Eating disorders always involve a complicated web of causes, and cannot be attributed to a single cause. 

What can parents do to build a secure attachment?

Luckily, parents can improve their parent-child attachment. It takes effort and you may need professional support. But working on this may be the most efficient way to help your child recover from an eating disorder. Attachment can’t be forced, but parents have a lot of leverage when it comes to improving attachment. Because at the end of the day, children want a secure attachment. Even full-grown adult children still look up to their parents and crave their love and affection.  

1. Change your mindset

If your child is insecurely attached to you, there’s a good chance there’s a lot of anxiety, opposition, and defiance in your household. Maybe there’s yelling and arguing. Or perhaps your child just stonewalls you, retreating behind their bedroom door and refusing to interact. These behaviors are hurtful to parents, and it’s easy to feel hopeless and think there is nothing you can do to make things better. But these are just symptoms of the attachment relationship. Things can improve! The first step is to adopt two key mindsets. 

First, the growth mindset says that you can learn and grow. You are never stuck, and things are never hopeless. While it may not be easy, you have the power to change your own behavior. And what we know about children (even adult ones) is that when parents change, kids change. That’s just how we’re wired.

Second, you need a mindset of unconditional positive regard for your child. This can be hard if your child has been beastly towards you. But it is essential that you assume your child is doing their very best and means well. If you can’t find a way to adopt this mindset, please seek support from a therapist or coach. It’s an indication that you likely have unresolved trauma and/or insecure attachment with your parents. You’ll need to resolve that in order to build a secure relationship with your child.

2. Learn how to co-regulate

Your kid’s emotional regulation system is wired in direct response to how you co-regulate with them. Our kids automatically co-regulate with us, so it’s not a matter of starting to do it, but rather being intentional about how you do it. Your ability to stay emotionally regulated, calm and present when your child is upset is how your child learns to regulate their nervous system. Emotional regulation is an essential part of eating disorder treatment, so working on this with your child is taking direct action that will make a difference in their recovery. 

When you improve your own ability to self-regulate, you will improve your child’s ability to self-regulate (check out this course for help). This is easier said than done, but you can learn self-regulation techniques. And when you do this, you’ll naturally co-regulate your child’s emotions. Then everyone can calm down and feel better!

This is a practice that takes time. Mindfulness, therapy, and coaching all help to build your emotional regulation skills. You can also get specialized help in learning how to co-regulate with your child when they are feeling anxious and upset during eating disorder recovery.

3. Do things together

Find ways to be physically in the same room as your child. I know this can seem impossible, but it is a requirement of building a more secure attachment. Unless you don’t live together, find ways to be together every day. A great way to do this is family meals, which are an essential part of eating disorder treatment.

Next, find ways to connect with your child over shared interests. It’s OK if it seems like you have absolutely nothing in common right now. You can develop new interests or reframe your kids’ interests so that they become more compelling for you.

Start by picking something your child cares about. For example, if your child is passionate about a sport, you could ask them to tell you about it. Let them be the authority and show you their passion and excitement. Resist the urge to be an expert. Give them the floor! Admire your child’s knowledge, passion, and ability to teach you about something that matters to them. This will help them feel valuable and worthy of your love and attention.

If things go well, plan outings to watch the sport live. Or just plan dates to watch it at home together on TV. The main point is that you are going to show up and participate in your child’s interests. Over time, you will gradually build your connection and attachment.

4. Validate feelings

When kids are upset, most of us want to quickly soothe them. We say things like:

  • You’re OK!
  • Don’t cry!
  • But you liked it last week!
  • Stop that right now!
  • I can’t believe you would say that to me!

These responses make sense, but it leads kids to shut down their emotional expressions. It can feel invalidating, and we may even be accused of gaslighting. This breaks trust and damages attachment.

To build parental attachment with your child who has an eating disorder, you need to be responsive, not reactive to their emotional bids for connection. When your child reaches out to you with any form of emotional communication, rather than shutting them down or trying to make the feelings go away, acknowledge their feelings.

Let their feelings exist without trying to change them. Work on understanding the breadth and depth of the feelings. Talk about the experience. Don’t give advice right now. Listen more than you speak. Just stay in the moment, with the feelings in real-time. Trust that your child will get through these feelings safely.

One important note: validating feelings means you don’t argue with or try to convince your child to feel something other than what they are feeling.

Your child’s big feelings, even horrible ones, should not be repressed, but felt in the safety of your love and acceptance. Once you accept and even welcome your child’s feelings, they will begin to trust that you can handle them. This will build your parental attachment, support eating disorder recovery and make parenting a lot easier for you.

Parenting a child who has an eating disorder isn’t easy, but you’re the right person for the job! You can help by practicing these techniques and building a more secure attachment.


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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Habits of a happy family with an eating disorder

Habits of a happy family with an eating disorder

Cara was feeling anything but happy when she called me. “It just feels like no matter what we do, everything is hard and dark,” she said. “I feel like this eating disorder has sucked the joy out of my family, and I want it back!” I get it. An eating disorder can put a damper on even the happiest families. But the good news is that regardless of what challenges they face, happy families share some common habits. And Cara’s family can pursue happiness even as they face an eating disorder. Here are the habits parents can work on to build a happy family during eating disorder recovery:

Connection

Happy families have deep and meaningful connections with each other and as an integrated group. There is a strong sense of belonging and identity. Each member of a happy family feels as if they are a part of something important and special. There is a lot of warmth and goodwill, a sense of well-being and mutual respect and regard. Happy families feel as if each person matters and that the family as a whole matters, too. 

If your child has an eating disorder: seek ways to build belonging by creating opportunities and rituals to do things together. Make family togetherness times a non-negotiable part of being in the family, and strive to make them pleasant and uplifting. Parents set the tone! The eating disorder doesn’t have to take center stage all the time. Instead, find ways to center your family’s strengths and enjoy each other.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Differentiation

While happy families are deeply connected, they also value individual differentiation and individuation. This means that each individual is respected and accepted for their unique individuality. Every person is an autonomous being with their own beliefs, thoughts, and actions. And each person takes responsibility for their own emotions and identity. Therefore, nobody is triangulating or putting another member into an ill-fitting role in order to feel better about themselves. 

If your child has an eating disorder: very often we want to change the person with an eating disorder’s beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. However, we must first seek to understand who they are and why the eating disorder showed up. What purpose is it serving for your child? Honor your child’s differentiation and autonomy as an individual who has their own hopes and dreams. Work with them to build a sense of personal identity that is neither trapped in the family system or their eating disorder behaviors. 

Authenticity

Happy families value authentic communication. They are not deceiving or lying to each other regularly because they don’t feel as if they need to lie in order to get along and be accepted as a member of the family. There are no big family secrets that are swept under the rug and never discussed. People aren’t walking on eggshells or ignoring the elephant in the room. Family members don’t pretend that big blowups, tantrums, and problems haven’t happened. They acknowledge them with honesty and humility. Feelings are accepted and validated without guilt, shame, or blame.

If your child has an eating disorder: it’s very possible that you are afraid to talk about things because your child becomes explosive and has big feelings. Maybe when you talk about eating with your child, they throw a tantrum. Learn how to respond to tantrums and emotions without either exploding or collapsing. Show your child that you can tolerate their big, authentic feelings by maintaining your own emotional regulation. Authentic communication requires that your child trusts that you can handle what they say. Doing this takes practice, so get some help recognizing your patterns and learning some new skills.

Security

A happy family offers security to everyone in it. There is a strong belief that each person is loved regardless of what they do or don’t do. There is no physical, verbal, or emotional violence. Parents provide a safe and secure base, including regular family meals as well as expectations and boundaries about eating, chores, bedtime, and acceptable family behavior. Kids can trust that what parents say is well-intentioned and has unconditional love at its core. Parents take responsibility for when things go wrong and repair emotional mismatch, arguments, and other relational ruptures intentionally and with skill. 

If your child has an eating disorder: create a sense of order and structure in the household. If meals have been casual or chaotic, establish regular family meals. Set clear expectations about what you expect your kids to do and hold your boundaries unapologetically while validating kids’ feelings about your boundaries. Hold yourself to the highest standards and avoid physical, verbal, or emotional outbursts or stonewalling. However, if your child gets violent, learn to respond to their outbursts effectively to maintain security for the whole family. Follow up with your child when things go wrong and repair the relationship. 

Fairness

Happy families know that not everything is equal, but it is fair. Rules and expectations are clearly and non-judgmentally communicated without drama, shame, or fear. They are consistently applied across the family system, not unevenly. Kids don’t wonder what they need to do to be “good” in the family, nor do they feel as if they are “bad” when they make mistakes. Consequences are given strategically, not reactively or out of anger. They are reasonable and fit the mistake. There is not a sense of shame or blame when things go wrong, just an acknowledgement of what is fair moving forward. 

If your child has an eating disorder: sometimes the person with an eating disorder is treated too gently and the other siblings feel things are unfair. Maintain expectations and chores throughout eating disorder recovery. Alternatively, sometimes the person with the eating disorder feels as if they have to do all the recovery work and nobody else in the family is working on themselves. If your child is going to therapy, it’s a good idea (and fair!) if you, the parent, gets therapy or coaching. Family therapy is also a great way to show fairness. An eating disorder is never about just one person. It’s also an interpersonal event that integrates into the family and thus requires a family-wide response.

Flexibility

A happy family realizes that circumstances change all the time. Jobs are lost, breakups happen, kids may announce a gender or sexuality you didn’t see coming. Happy families are able to learn and grow into new situations all the time because they don’t expect happiness to be a steady state of affairs. Relationships change, identities change, and each family member is able to roll with the punches of change. A happy family has a growth mindset, recognizing that life is meant to be experienced, and they are capable of being flexible no matter what happens.

If your child has an eating disorder: many people with eating disorders are stuck in a rigid and perfectionistic mindset. Rather than telling them to relax, start practicing and modeling a growth mindset in your family. Talk about mistakes and try new things. When you make mistakes, talk about them from a perspective of growth and learning (not self-recrimination). Sometimes you can make mistakes on purpose just so you can model this behavior. If you struggle with perfectionism yourself, get some therapy or coaching to expand your own flexibility. 

Your family can be happy even with an eating disorder

Parenting a child with an eating disorder doesn’t have to mean everyone is sad and anxious all the time. Sure, the eating disorder is a condition that you’re going to work on together, but it doesn’t have to define your family. With these habits, you can bring happiness to your family even as you navigate eating disorder recovery. And doing so will benefit everyone. 


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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My child is too young to have an eating disorder

My child is too young to have an eating disorder

Colleen called me in tears because her daughter Raleigh is eight years old and Colleen says “She’s too young to have an eating disorder! I can’t believe it.” I totally understand. It’s hard to believe that young kids can have an eating disorder, but in fact disordered eating can start even younger. Eating and feeding disturbances affect about 19.8% of kids ages 11-17, but some treatment programs for eating disorders start as young as age 5.  

1. Assess the behaviors

The first thing you want to do is assess your child’s eating disorder behaviors. Most people jump to conclusions about which eating disorder their child has, but it helps to review various eating disorder behaviors and consider whether they are involved in your child’s condition. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Restriction

Most eating disorders begin with restriction. There are three main reasons why kids restrict food: 

  • Highly sensitive to taste, texture, and other sensory feedback and/or how their body feels when they eat, for example, fullness, hunger, and nausea can be uncomfortable and lead to restriction. This sensitivity makes eating more stressful than it is for a less-sensitive child. 
  • Negative food-based experiences. If your child has experienced a recent stomach flu including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, or constipation, they may have developed an aversion to eating for fear their symptoms will return. 
  • Weight-loss goals. One of the biggest culprits of eating disorders is weight stigma and a fear of getting fat. 42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner, and 81% of 10-year-old children are afraid of being fat. This can lead your child to restrict their food in an attempt to lose weight.  

Binge eating

When a body is restricted, it tends to crave food. Binge eating is often a response to a sense of being restricted. There are three main drivers of binge eating: 

  • Child-led food restriction. When a child restricts their food for any of the reasons listed above, they will become fixated on food and are likely to binge eat. 
  • Parent-led food restriction. When a parent restricts the type and quantity of food available to a child, particularly sweets and carbs, the child is more likely to binge eat. 
  • Chaotic eating. If a child does not eat regularly and enough food throughout the day they are more likely to binge eat when food is available.

Purging

There are two main reasons kids purge: 

  • Stomach discomfort. If a child binge eats, they may feel uncomfortable and over-full. This may lead them to induce vomiting in order to feel better. 
  • Fear of weight gain. If a child is afraid of gaining weight, they may induce vomiting in an attempt to rid themselves of food ingested during a binge eating episode. 

Kids may also over-exercise. Typically girls will attempt to get smaller (look like a Barbie™), but boys may try to gain muscle mass (look like a superhero). They may also use body checking as a compulsive behavior. This includes looking at their body, measuring and pinching their body, and asking parents for feedback and reassurance about their body’s appearance. 

2. Assess the circumstances

Once you have an idea of which eating disorder behaviors are active and why they are there, consider any circumstances that may be contributing to the eating disorder.

Autism, ADHD

Undiagnosed and under-managed autism and ADHD can result in eating disorder behaviors. Kids who have autism and ADHD tend to be highly sensitive to their five senses as well as their internal sensations like digestion. If your child has been diagnosed with either or both, you should evaluate their treatment and symptoms and get those under control as best you can. If you have ever suspected your child might have autism or ADHD, consider getting an evaluation. There is a lot of stigma about both of these disorders, but they can be managed, and doing so can transform a child’s life. Keep in mind that females are probably just as likely to have autism and ADHD but are much less likely to be tested or diagnosed.

Anxiety, PTSD, OCD

When a child has anxiety, PTSD, or OCD, they are much more likely to have eating disorder symptoms. If your child has been diagnosed, then please check with their therapist and/or psychiatrist to ensure they are being adequately treated for these conditions. If your child has not been diagnosed but you suspect they may have a diagnosable disorder, you can get them evaluated. Not addressing these underlying factors means the eating disorder symptoms will be harder to manage.

Life events

Eating disorder behaviors are much more likely to occur when there are stressful life events. These include divorce and remarriage, job loss, financial problems, moving, changing schools, body changes like early puberty, and a major accident or natural disaster. If your family has been going through transitions or having a hard time, that doesn’t mean it’s your fault that your child has an eating disorder, but it is likely a sign that your child needs support in managing the experience.  

Bullying

If your child is being bullied about their weight, they are much more likely to attempt to lose weight. Both weight-based bullying and intentional weight loss are major risk factors for eating disorders. Weight-based bullying is very common. Unfortunately, it happens in schools, sports teams, and very often at home. Even gentle teasing by parents, siblings, and extended family members about weight can have serious consequences since we live in a deeply fatphobic culture. Consider this carefully in case you need to make some changes in your own behavior when it comes to weight. Most of us are unaware of weight stigma and how it shapes our behavior. Your child’s eating disorder is a great time to start understanding the dangers of weight stigma.

3. Find treatment

Regardless of the specific behavior and conditions, your child needs treatment for their eating disorder. There are three types of treatment to consider. 

Child-based treatment

Your child will need treatment from a team, most likely including a therapist, registered dietitian, pediatrician, and possibly a psychiatrist. These professionals can work with your child to monitor their health and determine the appropriate treatment. 

Parent-based treatment

Parent-based treatment is highly effective for childhood mental disorders. Parents are never the cause of an eating disorder, and yet parental behavior and beliefs can create an environment in which eating disorders either thrive or your child recovers. Working with an eating-disorder-trained therapist, RD, or coach can help you put a plan in place for improving your child’s home environment to optimize recovery.

Family-Based Treatment

An effective treatment for eating disorders is Family Based Treatment (FBT). This is when the parents take full responsibility for weight restoration and feeding their child. You can do FBT with the help of a specially-trained therapist. You can also work with an FBT-informed RD or coach who can guide you in a less formal approach.

Parent Scripts For Eating Disorder Recovery

Scripts to help you figure out what to say to help your child with an eating disorder. Use these scripts:

  • At the dinner table when behavior is getting out of control
  • When you need to set boundaries – fast!
  • After something happened so you can calmly review the triggers and events

4. Make some changes

Regardless of how you approach treatment, there are three essential steps you should take at home to support eating disorder recovery:

Structure feeding

It’s best if parents provide a structured feeding environment. Many families don’t eat together and it’s hard to manage everyone’s schedules. However, when parents are in charge of feeding their kids, kids do better across almost all measurements of health, including eating disorders. Learn about the Ellyn Satter method of feeding kids and get the support you need to make this happen.

Reduce household stress

All families face stressful events, but when families are chronically stressed it impacts everyone’s health. Seek guidance and advice from a therapist or coach who can help you reduce household stress levels. While you can’t change circumstances like divorce and financial strain, you can change the experience of feeling stressed by learning and teaching your child emotional regulation skills.

Respond to food and body anxiety

Most eating disorder behaviors are a response to anxiety. Learn to recognize your child’s signs of anxiety and respond effectively. Most parents either ignore or try to overcome anxiety with reassurance, but neither of these responses actually reduces childhood anxiety, and they may even make it worse. Learn about the SPACE method of responding to kids’ anxiety more effectively.

Having a young child with an eating disorder is not what Colleen thought she would be facing, but she took it one step at a time, and Raleigh is already making progress in her recovery. “I’m so happy to see glimpses of my happy little girl again,” says Colleen.


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide For Parenting a Young Child With An Eating Disorder

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Depression and your child’s eating disorder

Depression and your child's eating disorder

Your child’s eating disorder and depression are likely linked. Depression is both a risk factor and maintaining factor of an eating disorder. This is important, because both eating disorders and depression are common and increasing among all populations, particularly children and teens.

As with anxiety, your child’s treatment for depression first and foremost needs to focus on eating regular meals containing enough nutrition. If your child is weight suppressed, restricting, purging, and/or skipping meals, then the lack of nourishing food is likely contributing to and maintaining their depression symptoms. Even with treatment, it is unlikely that your child’s depression will decrease if they lack nutrition.

Additionally, depressive symptoms are strongly associated with both stress and a lack of sleep. Evaluate your child’s lifestyle right now and determine whether you need to take things off their plate to reduce stress and ensure they are able to get the hours of sleep recommended for their age. Few people get enough sleep, but impaired sleep is both a risk factor and a symptom of depression, and it must be addressed for any other attempts to treat depression to work.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Psychological symptoms of depression

Depression is both physical and psychological. Most people are familiar with and look for the psychological symptoms of depression, which include:

  • Feelings of sadness, tearfulness, emptiness or hopelessness
  • Angry outbursts, irritability or frustration, even over small matters
  • Loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities
  • Anxiety, agitation or restlessness
  • Feelings of worthlessness or guilt, fixating on past failures or self-blame
  • Trouble thinking, concentrating, making decisions and remembering things
  • Frequent or recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts or suicide

Physical symptoms of depression

Parents should be aware that physical symptoms of depression are common. In fact, physical symptoms may be your child’s only symptoms of depression. There is a strong link between increased sensations of pain and depression based on a shared neurologic pathway. Physical symptoms of depression include: 

  • Headache
  • Joint pain
  • Limb pain
  • Back pain
  • Fatigue
  • Sleep disturbances
  • Slowed thinking, speaking or body movements

Importantly, other physical symptoms of depression include gastrointestinal distress (stomachaches, nausea, etc.) and a change in appetite (either high or low), which makes it a major risk factor and maintaining factor for eating disorders.

Depression affects the way your child perceives food. Some kids with depression find that food looks and tastes “gray” and dull. This can exacerbate restrictive eating issues. Other kids will seek comfort and solace in food when they are depressed. It may be the one way they can “feel” something, which may lead to increased binge eating. In other words, your child’s depression is very likely interacting with their eating disorder behaviors.

What causes depression?

Many different factors cause depression. Like eating disorders, depression is a biopsychosocial disorder that combines biological, psychological and social risk factors, including:

Biological risk factors: Reduced production of the neurotransmitters in the brain including serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine, gamma – aminobutyric acid (GABA), cerebral nerve growth factor and more.

Psychological risk factors: Other mental disorders including anxiety, eating disorders, and depression (people who have one depressive episode are more likely to have another). Low self-esteem, emotional repression, cognitive distortions, a lack of emotional regulation, and low self-efficacy or agency.

Social risk factors: Adverse childhood events, childhood trauma, early adversity including food insecurity, stress, parental depression and substance use, non-supportive school or family environments, and social forces of oppression like sexism, racism, weight stigma, etc.

How depression works

Like anxiety, depression occurs along a spectrum. Most people feel sadness and even despair regularly – even daily. Sadness is a natural human emotion that is ideally noticed and processed when it arises. However, if a person avoids feelings of sadness and represses their experiences of sadness, leaving those feelings unprocessed, they may experience a depressive episode.

“I often think of depression as “stuck sadness.” In fact, when clients come in for therapy and tell me that they are depressed, my first thought is, “What is the sadness they are not allowing themselves to experience?”

Elaine Carney Gibson / Your Family Revealed

In a depressive episode, clinically called “major depression,” a person has persistent symptoms for at least two weeks. However, if the episode extends to two years, it is called persistent depressive disorder. Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in people who die by suicide, making it an important condition to treat, especially when combined with an eating disorder.  

Treating depression and your child’s eating disorder

If your child is in a depressive episode, they should receive therapy to treat it. The most common treatment for depression is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Another evidence-based treatment for depression is interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), which focuses on improving interpersonal functioning.

I have seen success in treating depression with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy as well as somatic therapies. Your child’s doctor may recommend psychiatric medications. These medications are short-term interventions and should be used in conjunction with psychotherapy and emotional development. If your child does not learn emotional processing skills they remain at risk for future depressive episodes.

Keep in mind that feeling sad sometimes – even every day – is not the same as being depressed. Sad is a core human emotion and is both normal and natural. Support your child in feeling their feelings and emotions during eating disorder recovery. Most feelings, even the hard ones like anger, jealousy, and sadness, pass in about 30-90 seconds. The danger is not feeling sadness, but rather repressing or getting lost in it. If your child’s sadness is persistent and feels hopeless for two weeks, seek professional support for depression. 


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

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Anxiety and your child’s eating disorder

Anxiety and your child's eating disorder

Anxiety disorders, which very often show up with an eating disorder, are both the most common and the most treatable mental disorders. And parents who have been trained in how to respond to kids’ anxiety are the most powerful treatment providers.

The biggest barrier to recovering from an anxiety disorder is the belief that “being anxious” is a personality type rather than a pattern that can be changed. When we have a child with an anxiety disorder and we say “oh, that’s just how they are,” we miss an important opportunity to help them learn the skills that will free them from the tyranny of an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety is a common underlying and co-occurring factor in eating disorders. And like eating disorders, anxiety is on the rise. Almost 12% of kids had anxiety in 2012, up 20% from 2007. In 2020, those numbers nearly doubled, with reports showing that more than 20% of kids struggle with anxiety symptoms.

The good news is that there are things that parents can do to reduce kids’ anxiety, and this work will benefit eating disorder recovery. The more parents understand and respond to anxiety strategically, the better their chances of success.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is a feedback loop between the body and mind.  All animals have anxiety because it’s essential to survival. However, our modern lifestyles bear almost no resemblance to the environments in which our brains evolved. Today our most common threats are not to our bodies (predators, enemies, and natural disasters), but our emotional safety (attachment and self-worth). Instead of protecting us from physical danger and death, as they were designed to do, today our anxiety system reacts to non-deadly threats to emotional safety.

Our incredible minds are what makes us susceptible to anxiety disorders, and they are also the solution to anxiety disorders. Here’s how anxiety works:

1. Body-based anxiety

Anxiety is an emotion we feel in our bodies. It comes from the nervous system and is a body-based alert to perceived danger from things we see, smell, taste, touch, or hear, the sensation of our internal organs, and even other people’s emotional states.

When alerted to danger, our nervous system automatically sends an alert to the thinking mind. Think of it as a smoke alarm. There may be smoke, there may be fire, or the smoke alarm may be over-reacting. Regardless, the smoke alarm makes a noise to get the mind to pay attention to the risk and take action.

Something to consider is that a major reason for a smoke alarm to overreact is hunger. A hungry brain is an anxious brain. If your child is weight-suppressed, restricting, purging, and/or eating chaotically, this needs to be addressed immediately in order for anxiety symptoms to reduce. If you need help getting your child weight-restored, consider increasing their level of care. Weight gain and consistent eating should be a priority, since weight suppression and chaotic eating will interfere with all other treatment approaches. 

2. Mind-based anxiety

When the smoke alarm is triggered, the mind responds. This is a healthy response to feeling anxious. After all, if there’s fire, you need your mind to kick into action fast. If you are in physical danger, you need your mind to respond and tell your legs to run. But if there’s not actually a fire, the body and mind can get stuck in a loop of anxiety, ramping each other up. Here’s what this looks like:

Body: I sense danger!

Mind: We’re in danger!

Body: We’re in serious danger!

Mind: We’re going to die!

Body: Run!

But since we’re almost never in true physical danger, this is an over-reactive pattern. Here’s a more mindful response:

Body: I sense danger!

Mind: OK – let me look around and see if we’re in danger

Body: I feel nervous

Mind: Makes sense, but we’re actually safe. Thanks for the warning though!

Body: OK

Our bodies are going to alert us to danger because that’s what they are designed to do. Recovering from an anxiety disorder means learning to use the power of our minds to evaluate the risk rather than overreact to the body’s alarm system. Over time, our body’s alarm system learns that it doesn’t have to be quite so reactive, and our anxiety reduces though it never disappears because that would be dangerous. Anxiety is a feature, not a flaw. We just need to learn to work with it.

Luckily, there is a lot parents can do to reduce kids’ anxiety. Studies show that parents have a tremendous impact on kids’ anxiety. And the good news is that parents can learn to reliably reduce their kids’ anxiety by acknowledging it and helping kids mindfully engage with anxiety rather than automatically reacting to it. You can help your child interrupt the anxious body-mind loop and teach them to step back and recognize false alarms. With practice, the smoke alarm gets less alarming and life gets a lot easier.

What doesn’t work

There are a lot of things that parents do when anxiety shows up that are well-meaning and automatic but simply don’t work. If they worked, they would decrease anxiety, stress, and worry over time, but that’s not usually the case. They include:

  • Reassuring, rescuing & overprotecting
  • Providing certainty and making promises
  • Identifying your child’s anxiety disorder as a personality trait rather than a treatable condition
  • Allowing behavior like yelling, swearing, tantrums, hitting, refusing to eat, over-exercising, and purging because it’s driven by anxiety 
  • Responding to your child’s anxiety with your anxiety 
  • Pushing too hard to shut anxiety down, becoming angry, explosive, and punishing 

Unfortunately, most of the time, when we respond in these ways, our kids’ anxiety gets bigger (not smaller) over time.

An example of anxiety in an eating disorder

Anxiety feels terrible. There’s no fire, but the body and mind are activated. They want to take action. The want to DO SOMETHING! There are two ways people with anxiety disorders try to calm their anxiety. First, they seek certainty, and second, they seek reassurance

Seeking certainty typically looks like trying to control what’s happening or what could happen. For example, your child may feel anxious in fast food restaurants so they refuse to go into fast food restaurants. It seems like if they follow this rule, they will not feel anxious. But it doesn’t work. Soon it becomes all restaurants, then parties, then family meals. Their anxiety keeps expanding despite their best efforts to control it.

Seeking reassurance looks like getting people around you to tell you things are OK. For example, your child may complain about their body. You respond by engaging in long, fruitless conversations about their body, but it doesn’t make the anxiety go away. In fact, the more you debate, the worse it gets.

The key with anxiety is that the more your child tries to control things and seek certainty, the more anxious they will become. This is why anxiety and eating disorders typically worsen over time if this anxious pattern isn’t interrupted. 

An unintended impact

Well-meaning parents don’t want their kids to be anxious. Of course we don’t! Anxiety is terrible! But when we accommodate anxiety’s demands for certainty and control, we accidentally make it more likely the anxiety and eating disorder behaviors will get stronger over time. 

Parental accommodation looks like this: if the child is seeking certainty by not eating carbs, parents allow them not to eat carbs. If the child seeks reassurance by body-bashing themselves, parents engage in long, drawn-out conversations about how beautiful their child’s body is. 

Again, if these responses worked and made the anxiety and eating disorder better, that would be great. But typically, we see an increase in symptoms when we accommodate anxiety-driven eating disorder behaviors.

How parents can respond to anxiety differently

To help kids recover from their eating disorders, parents can respond to anxiety differently and ensure they aren’t accommodating certainty- and reassurance-seeking. Instead, try this:

  1. Expect anxiety to show up. Stop being surprised by each new occurrence of anxiety. Look for anxiety, especially when your child is eating or thinking about their body.
  2. Manage your emotions first. If you are anxious, your child’s anxiety is likely to get worse. Learn how to recognize your anxiety and respond to it with self-compassion.
  3. Validate your child’s feelings of anxiety. Don’t ignore anxiety or jump into action with certainty and reassurance. Acknowledge that they are having feelings like worry, stress, and anxiety.
  4. Support your child in doing and thinking things that make them feel anxious. Don’t accommodate them and help them avoid doing or feeling the things that make them feel anxious. 

My favorite phrase when validating and supporting a child through anxiety is: I get it – this is hard, but you can handle it.

Anxiety disorders are both the most common and the most treatable mental disorders. Anxiety disorders do not need to be a life sentence. Changing your natural, loving, and understandable accommodation patterns when your child is anxious is really hard. But it can also transform recovery and support your child in feeling much better. If you’d like to learn precisely how to stop parental accommodation, check out Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE). Also, you can see our guide to psychology and eating disorders.


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Mental Health And Eating Disorders

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Almond moms and eating disorders

Almond moms and eating disorders

The recent TikTok trend of calling out mothers for being “almond moms” brings up the obvious question: are almond moms related to eating disorders? The answer is nuanced.

The almond mom trend blew up on TikTok in late 2022. It’s primarily driven by teens and young women posting videos that mock their moms for diet behavior like undereating and overexercising. These posts parody the mothers as being stuck in diet culture and eating disorder behavior. The mothers are presented as being rigid and ridiculous in their own weight control behavior. They also blame these mothers for inflicting diet culture on their daughters, even causing disordered eating and eating disorders. 

Body Image Printable Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to feel calmer and more confident in their body!

  • Boost confidence
  • Improve self-esteem
  • Increase media literacy

Almond moms are parodied saying things like:

  • “Are you sure you’re still hungry, or are you just bored?”
  • “I’m starving … I’ll just eat a few almonds, and that’s plenty.”
  • “Sugar is the devil.”
  • “A moment on your lips, a lifetime on your hips.”
  • “I want you to eat healthy, so no junk food.”
  • “No chips for you – have a couple of almonds instead.”

Is an almond mom helpful or harmful?

In the TikTok videos, an almond mom is presented as being silly, harmful, and sometimes traumatic. Almond moms are shown using classic diet behavior that were actively taught to girls and women in the 1990s, like cutting food into tiny bites, ignoring cravings, substituting desired food for less-palatable low-calorie food, ignoring hunger cues, counting calories/points, and believing that being in a small body is essential.

In the parodies these moms are passing these diet culture beliefs onto their kids. They teach their kids diet behaviors and restrict the food available in the home (e.g. no junk food). Almond moms also critique their kids’ hunger and appetite.  

Can almond mom behaviors be linked to kids’ eating disorders?

Diet culture is a known contributor to eating disorders. Therefore, perpetuating and modeling diet culture at home can be linked to eating disorders. We know that how a family talks about eating, exercise and weight impacts how kids feel about them. 

As biopsychosocial disorders, eating disorders are highly responsive to the home culture. So yes, almond moms may be linked to eating disorders, but it’s not a simple cause and effect. Eating disorders affect about 10% of the population. But I estimate that almond parent (diet) behavior is present in at least 80% of American households. 

Not everyone with an “almond mom” will develop an eating disorder. And, of course, people who don’t have an “almond mom” may develop an eating disorder. In other words, having an almond mom may be a risk factor for an eating disorder, but it’s not the sole cause.

Do almond moms have eating disorders?

Many almond moms may be women with disordered eating and/or an unrecognized/undertreated eating disorder. Remember, moms today were raised in a highly body-toxic environment that actively taught girls and women to adopt diet culture. Women are both the primary target of the ~$80 billion diet industry and are mocked and vilified when they follow its rules. Ouch. 

Surveys have identified disordered eating behaviors among at least three out of four American women. In 2013–2016, 49.1% of U.S. adults tried to lose weight in the last 12 months. All weight loss efforts utilize eating disorder behaviors, and intentional weight loss is a significant risk factor for developing an eating disorder. 

Many adult women have active eating disorders that have never been identified or treated because they follow what the diet industry calls a “healthy lifestyle.” It is effortless for eating disorders to fly under the radar in our body-toxic diet culture.

It is impossible to diagnose strangers on the Internet, but I think we can have compassion for women being called almond moms because they may be living with some form of disordered eating, if not full eating disorders.

My opinion on the almond mom trend

I think the almond mom trend exposes a dangerous thing that we know is common in homes. It’s a conversation we must have. However, I don’t think publicly shaming women is a helpful way to resolve the pernicious nature of diet culture.

The truth is that when parents (including dads!) are stuck in disordered eating and diet culture, they can’t help but model that for their kids. Even parents who say they are focused on health, not weight, show their kids that weight is a huge deal by controlling their own body size with disordered eating and exercise patterns.

The fact is that when parents are stuck in diet culture, their kids are at higher risk of eating disorders. So I think we need to have more conversations about how parents’ attitudes towards food and weight issues need to change. 

At the same time, I’ve seen some really upsetting TikTok videos in which “almond moms” are filmed without their knowledge and mocked for their disordered behaviors while eating. I’m absolutely not a fan of public shaming or invasions of privacy, especially when it comes to something as personal and fraught as a woman eating. 

If you’re an almond mom

If you think you might be an almond mom, thank you for being vulnerable to notice that! It’s hard to look at ourselves in a negative light. If you have been accused of being an almond mom, I’m sorry. It’s not nice to be called names. 

Either way, being an almond mom is a call to action. I invite you to explore your beliefs and behaviors about eating, exercise, and weight. Diet culture is virtually invisible when we’re stuck inside its tangled web. I know – I’ve been there! But it’s essential that you do the work to uncover diet culture beliefs and heal from your harmful behaviors, for your kids’ sake and your own.

Here are some steps to get started:

  1. Learn about diet culture and a non-diet approach to health
  2. Talk to a non-diet dietitian, therapist, or coach for expert feedback and advice
  3. Ask yourself how your beliefs about your weight have shaped your health behaviors
  4. Consider the impact of your weight-control behaviors on your child(ren)
  5. Heal your relationship with eating, exercise, and weight so you can pursue a healthy lifestyle without weight control
  6. Talk to your child about what you’re learning and apologize for past behavior if necessary
  7. Don’t stop exploring! Diet culture is deeply ingrained. Keep working to counteract weight stigma and weight control beliefs and behaviors.

While I don’t like the method, I think the almond mom trend on TikTok has a lot to teach parents everywhere. Our kids are watching us all the time, and they are affected by our beliefs about weight, eating, and exercise. If you think you might have an eating disorder, please reach out for help and support. You deserve it!


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Parent’s Guide To Diet Culture And Eating Disorders

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Am I enabling my child’s eating disorder?

Am I enabling my child’s eating disorder?

We are often afraid to talk about how parents may enable an eating disorder. One reason is because we unconsciously believe that if a parent is “enabling,” they are therefore at fault or responsible for the eating disorder. So I need to start by clearly stating that parents are not responsible for a child’s eating disorder, and, by the way, the person who has the eating disorder isn’t at fault either.

✴️ As a parent myself, I prefer the less-fraught word “accommodating” to “enabling.” But since you are more likely to have heard and understand the word enabling, that’s the word I’ll use in this article.

Parent Scripts For Eating Disorder Recovery

Scripts to help you figure out what to say to help your child with an eating disorder. Use these scripts:

  • At the dinner table when behavior is getting out of control
  • When you need to set boundaries – fast!
  • After something happened so you can calmly review the triggers and events

Are you enabling?

OK, so we know that parents are not at fault for eating disorders, and now you want to know whether you are enabling your child’s eating disorder. And the short answer is that yes, you probably are. But remember, this isn’t because you’re bad! It’s because eating disorders cause a lot of distress for your child, and enabling is just a way that parents try to reduce distress. Enabling has a nasty reputation, but it’s really just a natural thing parents do to help their kids avoid distress. 

Let’s say your child is afraid of getting in an elevator because a man is inside yelling into his cell phone while loosely holding onto two big, growling dogs. Your child is afraid, and you understand, so you turn around and walk up a short flight of stairs to get to your destination. No problem. It makes sense, and it was easy to do. 

But let’s just imagine that after you do that one time, your child says they don’t want to go in any elevators, even if there isn’t a yelling man with growling dogs inside. Whenever you encounter an elevator with your child, they want to take the stairs. And you find it irritating (and tiring!), but you also see how scared your child gets when faced with an elevator and you don’t want to make them feel scared, so you avoid the elevator.

Anxiety escalation

Soon your child starts to sweat and shake even thinking about an elevator. So when you enter a building, you don’t even walk towards the elevator shaft. No matter how many flights there are to climb, you find the stairwell and trudge up the stairs with your child. After all, you don’t want your child to be upset. Sometimes you try to convince them that it’s safe, but nothing seems to work. In fact, getting on an elevator with your child now feels impossible. You cannot imagine them doing it. You keep taking the stairs with them.

The first experience with the man and the dogs in the elevator was a reasonable decision to protect your child from a scary situation. But continuing to avoid elevators, while it makes perfect sense and feels like the most loving, kind thing to do, is enabling your child’s anxiety. 

Tolerating distress

Enabling always starts as a reasonable accommodation. I’ve never met a parent who didn’t enable with all the best intentions. And remember, the intention is to avoid the child’s distress. But unfortunately, we know for a fact that when parents accommodate anxiety, it gets worse and more debilitating. 

In fact, the only way to overcome anxiety is to learn to get through the distress it brings. That doesn’t mean you should put your child in a dangerous situation with growling dogs. But it does mean that when doing something that is very safe, like going on an elevator without a yelling man and growling dogs, you must help your child tolerate their anxiety and use the elevator even though they feel anxious about it. The longer you enable your child to avoid the elevator, the harder it will be for them to overcome their fear and learn to tolerate an activity that is perfectly safe and reasonable.

The difference sounds like this: 

Enabling: “it’s scary, so we’ll avoid it.”

Supporting: “I’ll help you do this while you feel scared.”

Enabling an eating disorder

Let’s switch to an eating example now. Say your child came home from school one day realizing that eggs could turn into baby chicks, and they declare that they are disgusted by eggs, and the thought of eating them makes them gag. You figure that makes sense, and you don’t want your child to be upset, so you agree to change their breakfast from scrambled eggs to oatmeal – no big deal. 

But a few weeks later, your child says that eating any animal is disgusting, and they are now a vegan. Since your family is omnivorous and you enjoy cooking family meals, this is a big deal. In fact, family dinner is the only time you all sit down together, and you really enjoy eating together. Since the other family members aren’t vegan, you now have to cook two separate meals, which you don’t enjoy. But your child seems really upset about the animal thing, and you don’t want them to be upset, so you do it

Escalating anxiety

A few weeks later, your child says they don’t want to eat “junk food” anymore. This means you must figure out how to feed them a virtually sugar-free, fat-free, vegan menu. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but when you suggest they eat some french fries, something they enjoyed just a few months ago, they have a panic attack. They accuse you of not being sensitive to their needs and making them anxious. So you learn a new way to cook and start walking on eggshells when it comes to food.

Now you notice your child is losing weight and getting increasingly anxious. You also see them looking in the mirror and pinching their skin. They start to talk about not getting fat and worry that they’ve eaten too much. Restaurants are out of the question, and parties have become tense and strenuous. They rarely join the family for dinner anymore. You suspect they have an eating disorder, but you’re afraid to bring it up because talking about food has become impossible.

This is just one type of eating disorder + enabling presentation (there are many varieties!). And at every stage, the parent responds in the best way possible. This is not bad parenting! All of the steps they took are loving and well-meaning. They are doing their best. And they are also enabling the eating disorder

Parent Scripts For Eating Disorder Recovery

Scripts to help you figure out what to say to help your child with an eating disorder. Use these scripts:

  • At the dinner table when behavior is getting out of control
  • When you need to set boundaries – fast!
  • After something happened so you can calmly review the triggers and events

Wonderful, loving families

Almost every family dealing with an eating disorder has some form of enabling pattern. I hope I’ve made it explicitly clear that this is not because these families are bad. In fact, it’s the opposite. These are wonderful, loving families. But once you know you have an eating disorder in the family, you also have to recognize that it’s not just the person with the eating disorder who needs to recover.

Your child will need to get treatment for their eating disorder. This will require them to eat differently and think differently about food, eating, and their body. Meanwhile, you’ll need to start noticing how enabling patterns show up in your family and with your child’s unique eating disorder and begin changing the enabling patterns. Learning to stop enabling an eating disorder is extremely hard but also has a tremendous impact on recovery. 

I hope you see that none of this is parent-blaming. The parents with the most empathy are the ones who usually get into enabling patterns. You are not bad for enabling any more than your child is bad for having an eating disorder. But if you’re committed to your child’s recovery, then recovering from your enabling patterns is the key to making a difference.

Recovering from enabling

To recover from enabling patterns, parents need to: 

  1. Recognize when and how you enable eating disorder behaviors
  2. Change your enabling patterns
  3. Tolerate your child’s distress with empathy and strength
  4. Repeat, recommit, and practice daily

Like recovery from an eating disorder, ending your enabling patterns is really hard but also profoundly worthwhile. It will require tremendous fortitude and strength, but the payoff is enormous. Parenting a child with an eating disorder isn’t easy – please give yourself a lot of self-compassion!


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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Preparing for your child’s return from residential eating disorder treatment

Preparing for your child’s return from residential eating disorder treatment

The return from residential eating disorder treatment can be a hard thing for parents. When you enrolled your child in treatment, they were probably physically and emotionally at a low point. You probably spent significant time making the decision to send them to treatment and agonized over the details. And the weeks or even months apart have probably been intensely stressful for you and your child as well. So while there is relief and hope when they come home, there’s also trepidation and worry that treatment won’t stick.

This guide is designed to help you prepare for the reality of your child’s return from residential eating disorder treatment. For most families, this stage of recovery requires a tremendous amount of effort. But the payoff can also be tremendous. 

You can approach eating disorder recovery much as you would any other serious health rehabilitation and recovery. Don’t underestimate what is involved, but also don’t be afraid. I am 100% confident that you have what it taks to support your child’s recovery from an eating disorder. Here are some ways you can prepare for your child’s return from eating disorder residential treatment.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

Education

Become educated about eating disorders, their causes, symptoms, and recovery. Imagine if your child had cancer. You would learn about their cancer, become informed about symptoms and treatment, and be engaged in recovery tasks. 

Your education about eating disorders is even more important than if your child had cancer because of two things. First, there is tremendous stigma and misunderstanding about eating disorders. You need to uncover your own biases and misunderstandings to support your child’s recovery. Second, treatment for cancer is based on vast evidence and clinical trials. Unfortunately, eating disorders suffer from a deep lack of funding and knowledge. This makes your education more important than for almost any other type of illness. 

Parents need a lot of knowledge and new skills to support eating disorder recovery. If your child returns to the exact same home and family dynamics in which their eating disorder developed, they are very likely to relapse right back into their eating disorder when they come home. 

Reasonable expectations

The hard truth is that your child will still need a lot of ongoing support and treatment when they return from a treatment program.

You should be prepared for a minimum recovery time of 6-12 months. Under the best circumstances, that’s how long it takes for a person to fully recover psychologically and physically from an eating disorder. This recovery period will be challenging, and your child will need your family’s support. During early recovery, it is easier to return to eating disorder behaviors than to abstain from using them. They will need your constant, confident support. 

Imagine your child had a stroke and is now living with you. They’ve returned home from hospitalization or rehab, but they still need daily support to get to and from physical therapy appointments. They need mobility aids, and you may need to learn new ways of communicating with them while they regain skills, mobility, language, and more post-stroke. 

You can’t anticipate everything about what recovery will entail, but you know that your life will continue to be disrupted. Eating disorders require a long recovery with ongoing care and new skills to support the reality that early recovery is harder than relapse. Luckily, full recovery is completely possible and gets easier over time and with the right support.

Structure

Residential treatment is highly structured. From sleeping to eating and activities, everything is planned out in advance. Even free time is scheduled. This is because any stress and chaos increase eating disorder urges and behaviors. And the return home after residential eating disorder treatment will be a major stressor. Therefore, you want to minimize stress and chaos by having a good schedule in place. 

While you may be relieved to have your child home and they may want to have freedom and little oversight, a lack of scheduled eating and activities will likely make recovery harder. It’s best if you have a firm schedule at least for the first 30 days after they return home and then taper off as long as recovery stays on track. Most people are doing some form of ongoing outpatient treatment, so this may take up several hours of their day. But avoid being too flexible with the remainder of the day.

Remember: they will not come home wholly recovered and will need your ongoing support. Structure is a big part of that. 

At a minimum, they should have structured meal times for three meals and three snacks daily. These should be planned times that your child can eat with at least one other person who will uphold the expectation that they eat. It’s best if you replicate treatment by planning, preparing, and serving all meals at a structured time and – importantly – expecting your child to eat every 2-4 hours without fail.

Empathy

Eating disorder recovery is hard on everyone. It’s hard on the person going through it, and it’s hard on every family member. So it’s essential to have an intentional empathy practice. This means understanding that everyone is trying their best and is not intentionally being difficult. 

Practicing empathy is not easy in the best of times. Most of us subconsciously assume that when people frustrate or hurt us that they are doing it on purpose or have ill intentions. But most of the time when people frustrate or hurt us, it’s because they are having a hard time. And this is almost always the case with our kids.

Kids are biologically driven to seek care and attention from their parents. One of the key ways they do this is with behavior. They act out so we know they’re having a hard time within. When your child does something “bad,” they are showing you they feel really, really bad. 

Empathy means you realize this and try to respond from a place of calm curiosity rather than defensiveness and criticism. One way to do this is to remember, no matter what your child is doing at the moment, that they are “good inside” and worthy of your love and affection.

Importantly, self-criticism (a lack of empathy) is a significant cause and symptom of an eating disorder. Your ability to practice empathy with your child will model for them how to have empathy for themselves.

Parent Scripts For Eating Disorder Recovery

Scripts to help you figure out what to say to help your child with an eating disorder. Use these scripts:

  • At the dinner table when behavior is getting out of control
  • When you need to set boundaries – fast!
  • After something happened so you can calmly review the triggers and events

Relationships

Eating disorders are complex because they are “biopsychosocial” disorders. This means they combine biological, psychological, and social influences. Most eating disorder treatment focuses primarily on the biological and psychological drivers. But social factors, especially your child’s relationship with you and others in your family, are critical. 

An eating disorder is not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. But it’s also true that you have tremendous influence over your child’s psychology and environment. Parents matter a lot. Don’t lose sight of the fact that while your child has an eating disorder, everyone needs to “recover” by increasing mental health and learning new ways of communicating and relating to each other. 

Focus on building your relational skills and deepening your relationship with your child. Learn active listening skills and emotion coaching. How well you learn and grow as a parent in the next 6-12 months will impact how well your family functions far into the future. 


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Eating Disorder Treatment Guide For Parents

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How to motivate recovery from an eating disorder

How to motivate recovery from an eating disorder

Rachel is beside herself. “I know I need to wait for her to be motivated to recover, and I can’t do it for her, but this is excruciating!” Rachel had been watching her daughter Brooke struggle for over 12 months, and despite expert treatment for her eating disorder, there is little improvement. “This is impacting every aspect of our lives,” says Rachel. “I feel like a complete failure, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything I can do to help.” 

Rachel is not alone. So many parents feel helpless when their children have an eating disorder. It is true that your child needs to embrace eating disorder recovery for themselves. But there are also many things you can do to motivate their recovery from an eating disorder. 

The good news is that motivation is an interpersonal experience. In other words, you can motivate recovery from an eating disorder, and unfortunately you can also have a demotivating impact on your child.

In this article I’ll review the principles of motivational interviewing, a well-known, scientifically validated method of behavior change. It’s supported by over 200 randomized controlled trials across a range of target populations and behaviors including substance use disorders, health-promotion behaviors, medical adherence, and mental health issues. And the good news is that it outperforms other common methods of treating a broad range of behavioral problems and diseases.

What is motivational interviewing?

Motivational interviewing is a way to support change by building intrinsic motivation. It is widely recognized as far more effective than what most people do, which is to educate and advise someone when we want them to change. With motivational interviewing, you stop trying to directly change your child’s behavior and start building their inherent motivation to change. It is effective because the greatest changes come from within.

Motivational interviewing is also helpful because it allows you to have more realistic expectations of yourself and your child. Many people misunderstand motivation and don’t realize that it is interpersonal. That is, while motivation is an internal experience, it is heavily influenced by the outside environment. Your words and behaviors can either increase or decrease motivation.

And the good news is that parents who use motivational interviewing are more likely to succeed at increasing their child’s motivation. They’re also less likely to become frustrated by their child’s resistance to change and relapses. This leads to significantly lower levels of parental burnout, which can negatively impact recovery.

How not to motivate someone

Most attempts to motivate other people to do things fail. But this doesn’t mean people can’t be motivated. It just means the traditional approach doesn’t work. The traditional way that people try to motivate others is: 

  • Tell them what to do
  • Explain why they should do it
  • Give them health information and statistics
  • Attempt to persuade them
  • Negotiate with them
  • Confront them
  • Beg them
motivate child recover from eating disorder

Unfortunately, these traditional approaches have a predictable effect on the person you are trying to motivate. Most likely, when you try traditional approaches to motivating your child to recover from their eating disorder they will feel: 

  • Angry
  • Agitated
  • Oppositional
  • Defensive
  • Helpless
  • Overwhelmed
  • Ashamed
  • Trapped
  • Disengaged
  • Dissociated

How to help your child recover from an eating disorder with motivational interviewing

You can have a tremendous impact on your child’s motivation to recover from their eating disorder if you use motivational interviewing techniques. First, you need to be clear about the fact that eating disorders are not educable disorders. In other words, all the education in the world will not motivate your child to recover. That doesn’t mean you can’t provide education. But it does mean that you should not mistake education for motivation. They are entirely different things. 

Second, it doesn’t work to bully, convince, or beg a person to change. While some people will temporarily stop their eating disorder behaviors with this approach, it does not lead to lasting change because it is inherently not motivating. 

Third, keep the focus on you. That’s right. You want to motivate your child to recover from an eating disorder, but the only person you can actually control is you. So make sure you’re keeping your attention on what you are doing. It’s all too easy to focus on what your child is doing. Instead, think about your impact on your child. 

So what should you be doing? Motivational interviewing is more motivating than giving advice and education. It’s also something active that you can practice and work on while your child recovers from their eating disorder.

Motivational interviewing: the RULE acronym

Here are 4 principles of motivational interviewing. They spell the acronym “RULE.”

R: RESIST telling them what to do

Avoid telling, directing, or convincing your child about the right path to good health. Use a collaborative process to motivate them. If you try to control your child you will shut down intrinsic motivation. Your child must maintain a sense of agency, the belief that they are in charge of their own body and life, in order to recover. This means parents need to focus on collaboration rather than coercion. Think in terms of dancing, not wrestling. You can still absolutely ask and expect your child to do things they don’t want to do, but don’t mistake that for motivation.

U: UNDERSTAND their motivation 

Your child needs to feel as if you understand how difficult it is to change and that you can tolerate their distress while they face this difficult change. Seek to understand their values, needs, abilities, motivations and potential barriers to changing their behavior. Try to understand what your child is communicating with their behavior. Don’t rely only on words, or you will miss important feedback. Behavior is a sign of emotional and physiological distress. Understanding is essential to this process because compassion, empathy, and understanding are essential to motivating someone to change.

L: LISTEN with empathy

Show them that you care about who they are and what they think and say. Here are three ways to do this: 

  1. Ask open ended questions. Closed questions elicit a yes or no answer and will restrict the flow of the conversation. Open-ended questions allow them to tell their story and expand themselves. Examples of open-ended questions are “What do you think of …” and “How shall we …”
  2. Use affirmation and validation. Show your child you understand their point of view by validating what they have said. Highlight their key skills, strengths, goals, and competence. Examples of affirmation and validation are “I can understand …” and “I get it …” and “It makes sense that …”
  3. Reflective listening and mirroring. Listen carefully and repeat back or rephrase in slightly different words. This creates a sense of safety. This is much more effective than asking questions. You can say things like “What I’m hearing is …” or “You’re having a hard time with …” or “It feels as though …” or “It sounds like …” or “It seems as if what you’re telling me is …” or “What I’m hear you saying is …” or “I get the sense that …”

E: EMPOWER them

Work with your child to build agency and self-esteem by recognizing progress and strengths. Nobody can possibly be motivated if they feel disempowered, and yet this is so often what well-meaning parents and experts do when they give traditional forms of “motivation” like advice and information. Instead, build the sensation that they are capable of change and growth. Help them feel OK about who they are and what they are dealing with. And talk about their success now and in the past. Use a Growth Mindset to empower the sense that they can recover from their eating disorder. 

Expect resistance and relapse

One part of motivational interviewing is to expect resistance and relapse and not be thrown off by it. Resistance and relapse are part of every recovery journey. So if parents become upset and dysregulated when it happens, that can be demotivating to your child. 

Common signs of resistance are:

  • Excuses
  • Hostile
  • Pessimistic
  • Reluctant to change
  • Argumentative
  • Challenging
  • Discounting progress or potential
  • Interrupting

Expect these to show up, and respond as if you are not surprised. Instead, maintain your own emotional regulation and confidence that while this is hard, your child can do hard things. Have faith in your child’s ability to overcome resistance by themselves with your unwavering support. 

Likewise, parents should expect relapse into eating disorder behaviors that you thought were behind you. Relapse is not a sign of failure, but a part of progress. You are not going back to the beginning, you are already on your way. Stay confident and strong in your belief that your child can handle this. The goal is not to avoid relapse, but to manage it effectively. 

On the road to recovery

Rachel already feels better. “I felt so helpless before, but now I can see ways that I have been unmotivating,” she says. “I totally fell into the habit of educating and advising. But I can see how that’s not motivating her or making her feel good. In fact, it’s probably making her feel less powerful over this eating disorder.” 

With this attitude, Rachel is well on her way to improving her ability to motivate Brooke into recovery from her eating disorder. Parenting a child with an eating disorder isn’t easy, but Rachel’s doing great!


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

For privacy, names and identifying details have been changed in this article.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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Red flags that your child has binge eating disorder (#4 will surprise you!)

Red flags that your child has binge eating disorder

There are four red flags that a child has binge eating disorder, and some of them may surprise you. Binge eating disorder is the newest eating disorder in the DSM-5, the diagnostic manual used in the United States. Most people think of binge eating disorder as the opposite end of the spectrum from anorexia. They assume that people who have binge eating disorder love eating “too much,” lack self-control and have high body weight. 

However, these assumptions are both incorrect and dangerous. They can interfere with our ability to recognize and treat binge eating disorder. Here are the red flags parents should know about and how to respond to them when they show up in a child.

💡Remember: Binge eating disorder is a mental disorder, and therefore we want to pay attention to the state of mind that drives the behavior and the mental impact of their behavior. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give your child the best tools to grow more confident, calm and resilient so they can feel better, fast!

  • Self-Esteem
  • Self-Regulation
  • Mindfulness
  • Calming strategies

1. Binge eating episodes

Binge eating disorder is defined by binge eating episodes. These are specific episodes during which the person consumes more than is typical, faster than usual, and gets uncomfortably full. In contrast, a person can consistently and mindfully consume large quantities of food and feel satisfied and pleasantly full afterwards. This person is not binge eating. 

A binge eating episode is typically defined as consuming an unusually large amount of food in a short period of time. This will vary from person to person. One person’s “normal portion” can be very different from another person’s. But in general we’re looking for a quantity of food that exceeds that individual person’s “normal” serving size. 

Additionally, a binge eating episode involves consuming food more rapidly than normal. You will see your child eating more quickly, and maybe more messily than is typical. A binge eating episode may involve eating food when not hungry, when the food isn’t particularly palatable, and/or to the point of being uncomfortably full. This is due to the mindless or numb state which often accompanies binge eating episodes. 

💡How to respond to binge eating episodes: Never shame or embarrass your child for binge eating episodes. They result in significant physical and mental pain and suffering. Be kind, gentle, and accepting of your child during and after a binge eating episode. Soothe their body and mind with compassion and empathy. If your child has at least one binge eating episode per week for three months in a row, they qualify for a binge eating diagnosis and should be evaluated and treated as soon as possible.

2. Sneaking, hiding, and lying about food

Binge eating disorder involves tremendous shame and embarrassment. Therefore, a key symptom of binge eating disorder is signs of shame like sneaking, hiding, and lying about food and eating. It’s very important to keep in mind that shaming or embarrassing your child for doing these things will make binge eating disorder worse, not better. Treating shame with shame only makes shame worse and, therefore, the symptoms of shame more severe. 

💡How to respond to sneaking, hiding, and lying about food: If your child is frequently eating food alone to avoid embarrassment, that may be a symptom of binge eating disorder. Many parents believe the treatment for sneaking and lying behavior is to expose the behavior and talk about it as something that needs to stop. But you want to be very careful about how you approach this to avoid triggering more shame and pain. Get your child treatment and learn how to talk about food and eat together as a family without triggering the urge to sneak and hide while eating. 

3. Shame and despair

Remember that eating disorders are mental disorders. So while there are behavioral patterns you can observe, shame and despair are most likely driving the behaviors. In binge eating episodes, your child may be coping with unconscious emotions by eating. People with binge eating disorder experience a loss of control over their eating. They feel compelled and driven to eat in ways that do not make them feel good. 

Criticizing binge eating behaviors is deeply damaging and will make your child’s disorder worse. A child who has a binge eating episode will likely feel disgusted, depressed, and guilty after eating. They are experiencing extreme distress around the most natural and necessary human behavior: eating. 

💡How to respond to binge eating shame and despair: Never forget that your child’s binge eating episodes are physically and mentally painful. Do not prohibit your child from eating, limit their access to food, or restrict their eating. Instead, support them in emotional literacy and emotional regulation. Validate their feelings to build their self-worth and make them more resilient against shame. You doing this is possibly the most important ingredient for your child’s recovery from binge eating disorder.

4. Restricting food

Something that surprises many people is that a key sign of binge eating disorder is food restriction. Most people are so focused on the binge eating episodes that they don’t realize there is often a period of restriction preceding binge eating episodes. Most types of eating disorders have some form of restriction.

This often means skipping breakfast, or not eating all day. Physiologically, such restriction will result in a significant drive for food at the end of the day. The body will be literally starving. This drives the mind to become obsessed with food and feel compelled to eat a large quantity of food. Such cycles are very often present in people who have binge eating disorder but are rarely discussed. 

💡How to respond to restricting food: Make sure that you are doing the work to feed your child regularly throughout the day. Parents must prioritize feeding their kids’ bodies at regular intervals. During eating disorder recovery, your child should eat three full meals and 2-3 snacks every day on a regular schedule. This means eating every 2-4 hours. Just like with anorexia, parents must take responsibility to ensure their child with binge eating disorder eats regularly and adequately. When this happens, while the psychological urge to binge may continue, it will not be amplified by physiological urges. 


Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to raise kids who are free from eating disorders. She’s the founder of More-Love.org and a Parent Coach who helps parents navigate their kid’s eating disorder recovery. Ginny has been researching, writing about, and supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Parent’s Guide To The Different Types Of Eating Disorders