Category: Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Jeremy reached out to me with a simple but complicated question, “what’s a parent’s role when your child’s in eating disorder recovery?” There are so many ways to answer that question. But ultimately I think most of the advice can be boiled down to two main things: connection and boundaries. 

Someone with an eating disorder is struggling on many levels of both physical and mental health. And in order to heal they need connection with others. No matter how introverted or independent we are, we all need people. We feel best when we are deeply and meaningfully connected with the people closest to us, especially our parents. Right now things may feel tense and disconnected between you and your child. That’s normal when there’s an eating disorder. But reconnecting and building a sense of family belonging is an important way you can support recovery. 

Next, someone with an eating disorder does best with secure boundaries and expectations. If your child had cancer you would feel strongly about setting boundaries and expectations for their treatment. Even if your child complained, you would insist they go to the doctor. And even though it’s awful, you would get them the treatment they need. The same holds true for an eating disorder. Holding boundaries while maintaining connection is the key to success.

People who recover from an eating disorder agree that it’s one of the hardest things they’ve ever done. And they appreciate their parents’ love, strength, and support even if they don’t show it on their worst days. A parent’s role in eating disorder recovery is difficult, essential, and incredibly rewarding.

Connection

Parents often feel disconnected and shut out from their kids’ eating disorders. Sometimes their relationship was strained and challenging before the eating disorder. And it usually becomes even more difficult when there’s an eating disorder. Lots of parents feel helpless, as if there’s nothing they can do to help. 

But the good news is that parents are in an excellent position to help their kids recover from an eating disorder. It all begins with connection. Having a secure connection with a parent helps kids recover. Building a secure connection takes time and patience, especially because an eating disorder tends to create a lot of disconnection and distancing. 

3 ways to build your connection with a child who has an eating disorder:

1. Work on a positive mindset. If you approach your child with negative feelings, they will sense it, because kids are deeply tuned into parents’ emotions. A positive parenting mindset means you feel as if you can handle your child even when they’re at their worst, and this approach will build a secure connection. 
2. Spend time together. Kids with eating disorders may actively distance themselves from parents, but we know that recovery is harder when you’re lonely and don’t have a strong sense of belonging. It may be hard to engage your child in family activities right now, but it is part of their treatment and critical to their recovery. If things are very tense, family therapy may be the first step to making progress.
3. Approach problems with the goal of motivating vs. controlling. Hollywood portrays effective communicators as people who make demands and give impassioned speeches. These fictional characters succeed when they convince others to understand their point of view and give in. But this approach is incredibly de-motivating in real-life, particularly with teenagers and young adults. Rather than telling them what to do, try to understand your child’s point of view and support them in considering their options. Active listening is both much harder and far more effective than giving speeches.

A child who feels connected to at least one parent is more likely to feel good about themselves and take the steps needed to get into recovery. It can be hard to build a strong connection with a child in eating disorder recovery, but it is an important part of a parent’s role.

Boundaries

Parental boundaries are important when supporting your child through treatment because, just like chemotherapy, eating disorder treatment is not something most people want to do or would choose to do. It makes sense if your child resists treatment. They need your help and support to keep going. 

Residential treatment handles treatment in the short-term, but ultimately kids with eating disorders come home and must continue to engage in treatment. This may include structured and adequate meals, getting enough sleep, therapy, medical appointments, and prescription medicine. 

3 boundaries parents need when a child has an eating disorder:

1. Structured mealtimes and snacks. A core component of recovering from an eating disorder is eating regular meals on a schedule. Parents can help by setting up meal and snack times, serving the food, and sharing the food with your child. Is this time consuming? Yes. But it’s one of the most reliable things parents can do to support recovery. 
2. Scheduled bedtime and screen-free time. Sleep and real-life engagement with other people are both important for people in recovery. But in our culture it’s very hard for kids to get them, primarily because of our always-on devices. Your teen or young adult will not enjoy having a bedtime or screen locks on their phones, but consistently holding boundaries around these two things can go a long way to helping your child recover.
3. Emotional boundaries. It’s important to uphold your role as your child’s parent. This means maintaining clear emotional boundaries and not getting sucked into drama and distraction. Often parents engage in long, involved debates and discussions about weight, food, and exercise as well as things like appointments with professionals. It’s best to state your expectations and boundaries clearly, then hold steady. You don’t have to change your child’s mind to hold your boundaries.

Parenting a child with an eating disorder requires strength and endurance. You’ll need to dig deep and stay strong. It’s not easy to insist upon boundaries during recovery. You may feel tempted to give in and let things go because your child HATES IT when you set boundaries. I get it! This is hard. But stay strong, and get the support you need to keep it up as best you can.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Nicki reached out to me when her daughter Kiara was scheduled to return from residential treatment for her eating disorder. “My biggest concern is her safety,” said Nicki. “And I mean both physically and emotionally. I’m just so scared that she’ll come home and slip back into the disorder. I worry that all the hard work she’s done so far will be for nothing.”

I get it. It’s scary to have a child return from treatment, and of course you want it to stick. All most parents want is for their kids to be healthy and happy. Nicki’s concerns for Kiara’s emotional and physical safety are valid and important. 

Here are 4 things parents can focus on to help a child in eating disorder recovery stay safe:

1. Feeding structure

Most kids with eating disorders don’t want parents to impose a feeding structure; quite the opposite! They’ll ask for more flexibility and try to negotiate around any eating boundaries you create. And yet a feeding structure is vital to physical and emotional safety during eating disorder recovery.

Early recovery rests heavily on weight restoration, and any dips in weight are a reason for concern. Many experts say that the psychological work of eating disorder recovery can’t truly begin until full weight restoration is attained. 

The best way to minimize the risk of weight loss in recovery is to insist upon a feeding structure. This means parents take over feeding responsibility (plating and serving meals and snacks) completely in the beginning. As kids reach recovery milestones, parents can gradually and with checks and balances shift responsibility in an age-appropriate manner.

No, your child will not like you insisting on a feeding structure. But it’s like the seatbelt in a car: it’s not optional. Just because a kid tells us they don’t need to wear a seat belt every time they’re in our car, we still insist that they wear one. We insist because not doing so is a risk we’re not willing to accept. A parent-led feeding structure is necessary to help your child stay safe during eating disorder recovery.

2. Professional support

Monitoring your child’s physical and mental health in recovery should continue for a substantial amount of time after full weight restoration is achieved. Ideally, your child should see a medical doctor, a registered dietitian, and a therapist. The schedule and format of these check-ins vary widely. You can ask each provider for their recommendation in terms of how often your child should see them. 

As long as your child is under 18, under your care financially and/or physically living with you, you can insist on a minimum level of ongoing check-ups. You’ll want professional providers to monitor your child’s physical and mental health for as long as possible. 

I’m a big fan of therapy, but most parents tell me their teens don’t like going to regular therapy appointments. If this is the case with your child, you can possibly be more flexible with therapy. However, this applies only if your child is steadily improving in other areas of their recovery. 

For example, if they’re meeting weight restoration goals and being monitored by a medical doctor and dietitian, at least one of whom has specific training in eating disorder treatment. In these cases, psychotherapy may be less essential right now. Another option if your child doesn’t want to go to individual therapy is family therapy. Family therapy can be just as helpful, sometimes even more so, as individual therapy.

3. Relational safety

Someone with an eating disorder is struggling to feel emotionally safe and secure. Anxiety and worry about weight, food, and exercise typically linger even when you’re seeing a reduction in other symptoms. It takes time to fully recover and enjoy life without those worries. And they’ll usually also have anxiety and worry in other areas of life. Luckily, parents are well-equipped to provide emotional safety and security to their kids. Children are born seeking security in a relationship with their parent. Our ability to soothe our kids is hardwired in their nervous system. 

That said, when an eating disorder is in the picture it can be really hard to soothe your child. It’s not unusual for kids to seek support in confounding ways. They often behave in ways that are frustrating, irritating, or even infuriating. For example, kids with eating disorders can be argumentative, highly emotionally reactive, aggressive, withdrawn, or a combination of these things. The important thing is to recognize their behavior is communication and an attempt to connect with and be soothed by you. 

When you see your child’s behavior as a form of communication that you can interpret and understand, you’re more likely to respond in a way that helps them calm down and feel safe in your presence. Feeling safe with you can be the foundation on which your child’s recovery is built, so the more you can build your skills in this area, the better. A great book to help with this is The Power of Showing Up by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson.

4. Social engagement

We tend to focus on eating, exercise, and weight when we talk about health, but it turns out that the most important factor in health is actually the quality of our social connections. Long-term meta-analyses (considered by many to be the most reliable form of scientific analysis) have shown that social relationships are more important than health behaviors like not smoking, avoiding alcohol, and getting a flu shot. 

And many people are surprised to learn that social relationships FAR outweigh the impact of diet, exercise, and BMI on our health. 

Kids with eating disorders have high rates of social isolation, loneliness, and a history of feeling different, even being bullied by peers. They’re also more likely to have social anxiety. Their social skills are further compromised by eating disorder symptoms. 

A key way parents can help kids be safe during eating disorder treatment and recovery is by helping them build social skills and expand their social engagement. Investing your time and energy in supporting your child’s social development is a worthy effort and will help recovery.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Colleen’s daughter has been stepping in and out of eating disorder recovery, and one of the biggest barriers has been self-criticism and negative self-talk. “It’s as if we’re trapped in a cycle,” says Colleen. “We make a little bit of progress in recovery, and then the negative self-talk ramps up and we’re right back where we started.” 

Self-criticism and negative self-talk are strongly associated with eating disorders, and studies show that the more intense they are, the more severe the eating disorder symptoms become. And it makes sense because a significant symptom of an eating disorder is anxiety about eating and weight. Negative self-talk is an attempt to protect against anxiety and fear of the unknown.

Parents often feel helpless in the face of a child’s self-criticism and negative self-talk. But the key is to know why it happens and how you can help – because you can! That said, you can’t talk your child out of negative self-talk. Doing this backfires because it triggers more anxiety, which triggers more negative self-talk.

Instead, you want to model positive self-talk by validating your child’s feelings while also holding boundaries and expectations about how your child behaves and what they say. While it may seem counterintuitive, this approach is more motivating than telling your child to stop saying negative things about themselves. But it’s a total 180 from what most parents are doing, so it takes some practice. Here are five steps to respond effectively to your child’s negative self-talk:

1. Notice negative self-talk

You want to start by noticing the patterns and styles of self-talk your child uses. How do you know they’re having negative self-talk? Your child might say just 10% of what they’re thinking. But there are usually other behavioral signs that they’re engaging in negative self-talk. Do they spend a lot of time looking in the mirror? Does it take them hours to get dressed? Do they feel nauseated when you serve them food? You can guess that negative self-talk is behind many of these behaviors.

Your goal is to be able to recognize the different ways that negative self-talk shows up in both words and behaviors.

2. Identify the cause of anxiety

Negative self-talk is a way we try to reduce anxiety by reassuring ourselves that we can control the outcome. The focus of negative self-talk might be weight gain or how clothes fit, but the cause of negative self-talk is fear of uncertain and imagined outcomes. It’s not really about what’s happening right now but what it might mean about the future.

For example, if one pound of weight gain leads to negative self-talk, the anxiety might be based on uncertainty about how much more weight they’ll gain, how other people will respond to weight gain, and what it means to gain weight in our society. In other words, it’s not about one pound, but fear of what one pound will do to their future. Anxiety is future-focused.   

3. Don’t debate the details

It’s very tempting to debate the details of your child’s negative self-talk. For example, you may want to try and convince them that one pound isn’t very much. Or that they need to gain that pound, nobody will notice one pound, etc. You may be tempted to say “You look beautiful/amazing/perfect.” But this means you fall into anxiety’s trap. Anxiety is a pattern, but it acts as if it’s about an individual event.

You almost never want to debate the individual details that anxiety is worrying about but rather try to explore the pattern beneath it and support your child in facing their fear and getting through it without causing harm. The only way to reduce anxiety long-term is to face it over and over again and realize that your imagined outcomes are never as bad as anxiety makes them out to be.

4. Validate the feelings behind the anxiety

Rather than debating the details, focus on the feelings behind the anxiety pattern you’re observing. Validation is a parent’s most powerful tool because our kids crave being seen, heard, and understood by us.

Debating increases distance and pits you against each other. On the other hand, validating your child’s feelings brings you closer together and increases trust. For example, you can say “It seems like you’re having a hard time getting dressed today,” “This is hard for you,” or “I can hear how frustrated you are right now.”

Many parents worry that validating a child’s self-talk will make it worse. But the key is that you’re not agreeing with your child’s self-talk, but noticing that it’s there. It exists. Focus on the feelings, not the details, and you’ll help your child feel better. Here are some more ideas for validation for kids with eating disorders. 

5. Hold boundaries about behavior and language

Parents are responsible for setting and holding appropriate boundaries around behavior and language in the home. This includes food, eating, body behaviors, and body-shaming language. For example, if your child’s treatment plan involves eating regularly throughout the day and/or eating a certain quantity of food, you can hold boundaries around eating.

Similarly, you can hold boundaries around how your child talks about their body. Boundaries are best when they’re short, reliable, and repeated over and over. It’s not enough to set a boundary one time, and you usually don’t need to justify your boundaries, just say them simply and clearly again and again and again …

For example, you can say “I understand you don’t want to eat right now, but please sit back down. This is what’s for dinner.” Or “I hear how upset you are about this right now. We can talk about how you feel, but please stop using that language about fat.” You may want to print out our Policy of Body Respect to help with this. 

You can help!

Negative self-talk during an eating disorder is expected, but you’re not stuck; you can do something to help. Just because the bulk of negative self-talk takes place inside your child’s head doesn’t mean you can’t influence their thoughts and shape their behavior, nudging them in the right direction. Parenting a child with an eating disorder is hard, but you have more power than you know. With a little bit of practice, you can make a big difference in how your child views their body and food, and support them in moving from negative to positive self-talk.

That’s what happened to Colleen. “I assumed I had to either do nothing or try to convince her that her self-talk was wrong,” she says. “But when I started noticing the patterns, validating her feelings, and holding boundaries, it was a game-changer. It’s a constant effort for me to respond to her like this, but I’m starting to notice some changes in her behavior, and it’s pretty exciting!”

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Having a child with an eating disorder is not your fault. There are so many reasons kids get eating disorders, and no parent causes an eating disorder to happen. At the same time, there are things parents can do when a child has an eating disorder. Making changes in your own behavior is a hard but vital part of your child’s recovery.

Here are my top five things parents should avoid doing when they have a child with an eating disorder:

1. Don’t get into arguments about the eating disorder

It’s really common for parents to get into extended arguments with their children about the eating disorder. An argument means going back and forth in an attempt to convince the other person to see your point of view. For example, you might argue about how much they should eat, why they should eat, what they should eat, how they should dress, how they should feel about their body, and more. These arguments are very tempting. When you hear your child say something that is factually wrong and perpetuates the eating disorder, of course you’re going to want to try and correct their belief. 

The trouble is that the eating disorder loves arguments because it gives it time to present its point of view. Rather than convincing your child’s eating disorder that you’re right and it’s wrong, arguments are likely to embed disordered beliefs even deeper. Unfortunately, the eating disorder may grow stronger when it defends itself against you.  

Instead of arguing with your child’s eating disorder, validate that your child has an opinion and beliefs, and hold your boundaries. For example, “I understand you don’t want to eat this right now, but this is what’s for dinner.” No matter how hard your child tries to engage in debate about whether the meal is good or not, stick to a simple, clear message. This is not an argument because you aren’t trying to convince your child to agree with you, but you are holding steady with your boundaries.

2. Don’t intentionally lose weight (diet) 

Most Americans are trying to lose weight or control their weight. But diet behavior is also eating disorder behavior. And it’s going to be very hard for your child to stop using eating disorder behaviors if you’re practicing diet/eating disorder behaviors.

It’s hard to let go of diet behaviors. I totally get it. And I’m not here to criticize you, but to gently remind you that our kids pay far more attention to what we do than what we say. So if you’re telling your child that they need to eat regular meals but you’re regularly skipping meals, it’s going to be hard to positively influence recovery. 

Instead of trying to control your weight, learn about a non-diet approach to health, which involves practicing health behaviors without a focus on weight outcomes. This is a major shift, but it is better for everyone’s health long term.

3. Don’t try to prevent your child from gaining “too much” weight

Many people will gain weight in eating disorder recovery, which can be really uncomfortable for parents. Keep in mind that most people with eating disorders don’t look “too thin.” Even if you don’t believe your child needs to gain weight in recovery, there’s a good chance they will gain weight, and that doing so is an essential part of healing their body and brain. 

This is a really complicated topic since we live in a culture filled with weight stigma. It’s not your fault if your child’s recovery weight gain is hard for you to handle. Still, it is your responsibility to work on your biases with a professional who can help you work out your feelings without negatively impacting your child’s recovery. 

Instead of worrying about your child’s weight gain during recovery, focus on their health behaviors. First and foremost, pay attention to whether they’re eating regularly and eating enough food as prescribed by their eating disorder dietitian. Next, are they getting enough sleep? This is an essential health behavior that is often missed. Additionally, how is their social media use? Parents can and should limit kids’ social media use, particularly if they have/had an eating disorder. 

4. Don’t talk about other people’s bodies

Talking about other people’s bodies is natural in our society, but it’s a habit we want to break when a child has/had an eating disorder. Eating disorders typically involve body objectification. This means viewing the body as an object rather than a living being. People who objectify bodies see them as parts rather than a whole, as objects to be manipulated rather than human beings to be respected. 

Notice whether you have a tendency to observe and talk about people’s bodies as if they are objects. For example: “I wish I had her arms, they’re so toned!” or “Look at the size of those thighs!” or “You look great! Have you lost weight?” Objectifying comments separate the body from the person.

Instead of talking about bodies, talk about people. For example: “I love spending time with her!” or “He is so dedicated to Pickleball.” or “You seem so happy right now!”

5. Don’t vilify food

Our culture likes to put food into “good” and “bad” categories. Little kids are taught that carrots are good and cake is bad. But this sets up an unhealthy relationship with food. If talking about food in good and bad terms was good for our health, perhaps it would be all right, but evidence shows that it’s actually better for health if we teach kids that all foods fit in a healthy diet.

If you tend to see food as either good or bad, work with a non-diet dietitian. A few sessions can help you start to unpack your beliefs about food and build a healthier relationship with food and eating. 

Instead of talking about food in good and bad terms, focus on how it looks, smells, tastes, and feels. Talk about how you feel when you’re hungry, full, and everything in between. Slow down and savor your food rather than dissect it into nutritional components. Food is not just mechanical for us, it’s also deeply social and emotional.

If you’re having trouble parenting your child through their eating disorder, you’re not alone, and help is available. You deserve support as you support your kid!

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Kylie and her daughter Brooke are locking horns. “I just don’t understand why we can’t have a calm, rational discussion about Brooke’s eating disorder,” says Kylie. “Normally we can talk about anything, but when it comes to the eating disorder, Brooke is so reactive and completely closed off to me. I have no idea how to help her anymore.”

I completely understand. Talking about eating disorders is incredibly hard, but also so important. And the good news is that every parent can learn some new skills that will improve these difficult conversations. You’ve got this!

Why is it important to talk about eating disorders?

It’s important to talk about eating disorders because they typically don’t get better on their own. And parental intervention can make a significant difference in treatment outcomes. That said, talking about eating disorders is hard and requires parents to learn new conversational skills. This is high-stakes communication, and while you may be great at talking about tons of other things, it helps to get some additional insight and training for conversations about eating disorders.

What are the risks of talking about eating disorders?

There are risks when talking about eating disorders. Well-meaning and deeply loving parents, teachers, doctors, and coaches can easily make mistakes. When a child has an eating disorder, they are hypersensitive to comments about weight and food. This is why talking directly about food and weight can be especially tricky during an active eating disorder. That doesn’t mean avoiding the conversations, just trying a different approach.

Remember that eating disorders are mental illnesses. They aren’t a choice, and they aren’t something your child can just “decide” to stop doing based on your good reasoning. Intense and emotionally distressing arguments about eating disorders can actually increase their power, so it’s important for parents to learn new communication skills to avoid reinforcing eating disorders.

What typically happens when we talk about eating disorders?

The most common outcome of an attempt to talk about eating disorders is defensive communication. Basically, both the child and the parent get stuck in defending their own position, demanding that the other person give in to their will. This will keep everyone stuck in the cycle of an eating disorder.

A child’s deepest wish is to be truly seen, understood, and nurtured by their parents. When they fight and argue, it means they don’t feel understood. The solution is not to double-down on your argument, but to open up to your child’s true needs.

Listening to your child talk about their eating disorder will be hard, but it’s best not to shut them down when you feel uncomfortable. Rather than getting into defensive communication with your child, practice non-defensive communication while still holding boundaries about treatment and recovery.

Why can’t I talk to my child about their eating disorder?

Talking about eating disorders is really hard. You’re not alone if it feels impossible sometimes. The good news is that you can learn to have more effective conversations with your child. Don’t blame yourself if it hasn’t been going well. It’s not your fault, but at the same time if you want to change the pattern of defensive and unproductive communication, you can learn new communication skills that will help.  

What is defensive communication?

Defensive communication is what happens when you’re facing off like opposing sides of a football team. Each of you takes your position and pushes, blocks, and tackles the other side’s position to try and win the game. 

This is the communication style we typically see modeled on TV shows and movies, and usually the “winner” is the person who presents the strongest argument. But this approach is actually counter-productive in most interpersonal relationships. When conversations are based on winning and losing, nobody wins.

Signs that you’re stuck in defensive communication patterns

Here are the signs that you and your child are stuck in a defensive communication pattern:

1. It seems impossible to have a rational conversation with your child
2. Talking to your child usually results in someone getting mad, screaming, crying, and/or stonewalling
3. Your child accuses you of dominating and not understanding their needs
4. Your child stops talking to you altogether
5. Conversations quickly turn to contempt and blaming

Let’s take a deeper dive into how we can practice non-defensive communication with our kids.

1. Recognize that your child has an opinion (and it’s not the same as yours)

Defensive communication begins with assuming that you’re on opposing sides, and that your side/argument deserves to win. But this is a non-starter for talking about eating disorders because it puts your child’s dignity and agency at risk. And dignity and agency are at the heart of eating disorder recovery.

The key to non-defensive communication is taking the fight out of the conversation. Instead of lining up against each other and pushing your opposing beliefs, sit down next to your child and consider their opinion. Your child has the right to their own beliefs. Counterintuitively, we can only motivate our kids to change their opinions when they believe we respect their opinions.

2. Take a deep breath and acknowledge your desire to push back

You’ll feel compelled to get into the defensive position and start pushing your beliefs. Take a deep breath. If you react without respecting your child’s opinion, you will remain stuck in defensive communication.

Take a breath. On the in-breath say to yourself: this is hard. On the out-breath say to yourself: I can handle this.

This is a mindfulness technique in which we acknowledge the difficulty of our situation and send ourselves compassion in the moment. Repeat this breathing technique throughout the conversation to stay present and aware.

3. Invite them to talk

It’s natural to want to shut down a person who seems to be holding onto their eating disorder. But this can backfire because it destroys dignity and agency.

The most powerful way to defuse tense conversations is to get curious about your child’s position. Give them the floor so that you can hear what they are actually saying. This has the added benefit of letting them hear themselves. Strange as it may seem, sometimes the best way to motivate your child to change is to allow them to hear their own opinions out loud in a calm conversation with you.

For example, if your child is refusing to do something, you can say “what does not doing this mean to you?”

If a child is yelling, you can say “I can hear how angry you are. I want to understand what’s going on for you right now.”

4. Listen with compassion and patience

Most of us spend the time while the other person is speaking coming up with our response to their position. This is what we do when we believe we’re more reasonable and rational than the other person. We think if we just say the right thing in the right way, we’ll win.

But this is not the way to resolve difficult conversations, particularly when it comes to eating disorders. Instead, listen to your child with compassion and patience. Hear what they are trying to tell you. Practice not thinking about your response when they’re talking. Instead, focus entirely on understanding what they’re trying to communicate.

5. Validate their feelings

When we accept a child’s feelings as valid and valuable, we give them the gift of dignity and agency. These are essential ingredients to motivating change. Here are some things to say to validate your child’s feelings:

• I hear you
• I get it. Let’s talk about this some more
• It sounds like [recap their feelings]
• Let me see if I understand. What you’re saying is [recap their feelings]
• I can understand why this feels unfair
• It makes sense that you’re feeling this way
• That sounds hard. I’m sorry
• I’m sorry I said that to you. It sounds like it made you feel [recap their feelings]
• It sounds like when I did that it made you feel [recap their feelings]

6. Set a boundary

Once you have listened well and validated your child’s feelings, you may need to set a boundary or make a request. Here’s an example of a boundary when a parent needs to feed a child who doesn’t want to eat in eating disorder recovery:

1. Your child threw a tantrum because you asked them to finish their meal.
2. You listened and understand that your child feels like you are trying to dominate and control them.
3. You validated your child’s feelings of indignation and unfairness because you’re asking them to do something they don’t want to do.
4. You say “OK, well I will pay attention to this, and I’d like you to keep talking to me about it. For now, I’d like you to please finish your meal.”

⭐ Notice: you’re still asking them to eat the food. But you’re also respecting your child’s autonomy by validating that they have feelings and opinions that are different from yours.

We are more productive and motivating when we listen non-defensively and validate our kids’ feelings. When we practice non-defensive communication while parenting a child with an eating disorder, we’re more likely to support recovery and increase the chances of our children maintaining close, healthy bonds to us for life.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With 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.

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.”

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

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

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.

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.

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child 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.

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. 

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An 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.

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. 

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!

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With 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

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!

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

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

Ian and Melissa were stunned to find out that Jake, their son, had an eating disorder. “We didn’t see it coming at all,” says Ian. “I thought he was really applying himself to his fitness and sport, but now I can see that his behavior became more and more disordered over time.”

Ian is a high school coach, and while he doesn’t coach at Jake’s school, there’s still a lot of overlap. “I’ve been coaching Jake since he was born, practically,” he says. “I love taking him out to throw the ball and practice his swing. We’ve been playing baseball his whole life. And now he can’t play until he gets better. I don’t know what to do with him anymore.”

Melissa agrees. “It’s like our whole life revolved around baseball – Ian’s and Jake’s, and now we’ve had to change everything,” she says. “Jake can’t play, and Ian doesn’t know how to connect with Jake without talking about baseball. It’s created a double problem. There’s the eating disorder, but then there’s also the loss of this connection they had.”

I get it. Making the transition from feeling as if everything is on track to dealing with an eating disorder is a major shift. But the good news is that Ian’s background as a coach can be really helpful in eating disorder recovery. While they’re taking a break from baseball, he can use his coaching skills to connect and support Jake through recovery.

Here are six skills Ian can use to coach Jake through recovery from his eating disorder.

1. Know your role 

A coach has played the game and honed their skills over years of practice. But the best coaches aren’t always the best players. Because being a coach is very different from being a player. The key difference is that a coach recognizes and honors their players’ autonomy, knowledge, and strengths. 

A coach can’t get on the field and play the game. Instead they help their players do it. A coach’s responsibility is to guide, not to control. They provide support, insight, and knowledge, but never lose sight of the fact that the person they are coaching is responsible for making his or her own decisions. 

This is a great model for parenting through an eating disorder. Just like a coach, Ian can’t do recovery for Jake. But he can support Jake nonetheless. And his support will be invaluable to Jake’s recovery. Knowing his role will help him embrace what he can do to help.

2. Know the game 

A great coach knows the game inside and out. Just because you don’t currently know everything about eating disorders doesn’t mean you can’t be a great coach. But it does mean it’s time to learn. Learn about eating disorders, then, learn about your child’s own unique form of disordered eating and over-exercise. No two eating disorders are the same. 

Get to know more about your child’s co-occurring and underlying problems, such as anxiety, depression or ADHD, ASD, OCD, PTSD, etc. Learn about what is going on by reading, talking to others, and researching everything you can to help you better understand your child’s mental health.

Ian feels out of his element with eating disorders, but that doesn’t mean he can’t become an expert on Jake and his eating disorder. He can apply the same time and passion that he’s dedicated to baseball to this.

3. Ask questions

A good coach asks a lot of thoughtful questions and provides few answers. Coaches know that a great question can open up new ideas and opportunities for a player. When coaches have all the answers, the player doesn’t “own” their own game. But when a coach asks the right questions, the player takes responsibility for their performance and plays better as a result.

When working with your child, ask questions that allow your child to find out more about him or herself. Talking through problems without having your offer advice and guidance (unless expressly requested), will help your child find their own solution. When someone finds their own solution, they are more engaged in the outcome. 

Also ask questions of your child’s treatment team, not just at the beginning, but constantly. Never be afraid to ask about progress and the system the therapist is following towards recovery.

4. Listen carefully

Coaches must listen carefully and reflect back what they are hearing. During this process, the coach allows the other person to work out what they are really trying to say or do. A coach is both authoritative and humble. Coaches know their stuff and aren’t afraid to show it, but they also honor each player’s autonomy and empower them by treating them with respect.

Be humble enough to recognize that you do not know your child’s thoughts based on the simple fact that you are their parent. In fact, there is a very good chance that the fact you are a parent is making it impossible for you to guess at what your child is going through. 

When you learn to listen actively and supportively without judgment or opinion, your teenager will surprise you with how much they have to say. This is not easy, but it makes a huge impact.

5. Be organized

A coach comes to the table with an idea of what they want to accomplish with each player. Coaches know the skills their players need to succeed and are experts at recognizing who needs to work on what. Structuring practices so that everyone works on the skills they need requires organization and planning.

Talk to your child’s treatment team and find out what skills they are currently working in therapy. Ask for ways to reinforce that skill at home, and then work as a family towards that goal. 

Talk to your child about their own goals during recovery. What are some important milestones that you can help them work towards? Not all of the goals have to be about the eating disorder – life goals are just as, if not more important during recovery. Being a great coach through eating disorder recovery is a combination of organization and inspiration.

6. Leave your ego at the door

A coach must put the outcome – success or failure – in the hands of the player. A coach cannot get out on the field or force someone to achieve great results. Because great results must come from the player. 

Your child will only fully recover if they can find a way to be self-motivated. Coaches help players tap into inherent motivation by leaving their egos at the door. Coaches must disengage their success from that of the person they are coaching. Your child is not a reflection of you. Your child is a human being who needs to find his or her own way in the world.

Great coaches are not born, nor are they made overnight. The best coaches spend decades learning how to achieve the six points above. They learn through trial and error, research and deep reflection. 

Ian and Melissa don’t have decades to work with. But they have a lot going for them as loving, caring parents. And they can coach Jake through eating disorder recovery by attending to these six coaching concepts. Since we’re talking about their kid, for whom they’re willing to move mountains, I know they can do a lot to help. Parenting a child with an eating disorder isn’t easy, but they’re doing a great job!

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder

If your child has an eating disorder, then there’s a good chance you’re dealing with parental burnout. This describes a parent who is mentally and physically depleted. This depletion can lead you to feel like you are failing at parenting, and, unfortunately, parental burnout is associated with worse behavior from kids. This creates an unfortunate loop of the parent being burned out, the kids behaving badly, and the parent getting even more burned out, and on and on. 

There are many reasons to address parental burnout when there’s an eating disorder, but the three most important reasons are: 

1. Parents who have burnout deserve care and support – they are no less important than their kids.
2. Parents who are burned out are less able to support their child through recovery.
3. Kids whose parents are burned out sense there is a problem and may act out more, making things even harder.

An eating disorder is a major family crisis, and a depleted parent will be less effective at getting through to the other side. But burnout is not your fault. It’s a failure in the systems that should be supporting you. I’m so sorry this is happening. I hate that we don’t have better systems of care so that you don’t have to be burned out. But this is where things stand today: if you have a child with an eating disorder, you are probably burned out.

So I’ll give you some ideas for what you can do to help yourself recover from parental burnout. But first, let’s get started with more about what parental burnout is and its impact on family life. I’m afraid that if you don’t fully understand the consequences of burnout you won’t get the care you need to succeed.

What is parental burnout?

Feeling stressed while parenting is normal and expected. But parental burnout goes beyond expected levels of fatigue and means that you are exhausted and overwhelmed. When you are burned out, you struggle to function. 

When you become burned out, your ability to respond to both everyday and high-level stressors is reduced. Parents who are burned out feel physically and emotionally unable to connect with their kids, which can, unfortunately, lead to even more struggles with parenting. 

A 2021 study conducted by researchers at Ohio State University found that parental burnout has reached dangerously high levels since the Covid-19 pandemic began, particularly for working parents. The study found that: 

• 66% of parents report feeling burned out
• Women are more likely to feel burned out than men
• Parental burnout is increased in households with 2-3 children, plateaued with 4-5 children, and increased again with 6 or more children
• 77% of parents who had a child with ADHD and 73% of parents who had a child with anxiety reported parental burnout
• 72% of parents who were concerned that their child could have an undiagnosed mental health condition reported burnout

Basically, burnout is common and responsive to how many kids you have and whether your kids have mental disorders.

What is the impact of parental burnout on kids?

Parental burnout can make it feel impossible to drag yourself through the day and you may feel like a failure in every aspect of your life. I’m so sorry about that. Unfortunately, parental burnout also impacts kids, which typically means they get even harder to manage than before. This can feel like an impossible situation, but don’t worry: I’m going to give you some solutions soon! 

Parental burnout is strongly correlated with depression, anxiety, and increased alcohol and substance use in the parent. Parents who are burned out are more likely to insult, scream at, criticize, and spank kids. All of these factors have significant negative impacts on kids’ behavior. In other words, when parents do these things, kids get even harder to handle, leading to even more burnout. It’s a vicious cycle.

Kids whose parents are burned out are more likely to exhibit attention issues, internalizing behaviors, and externalizing behaviors. Here’s what this looks like:  

Attention behaviors:

• Fidgety, unable to sit still
• Daydreams or zones out too much
• Has trouble concentrating
• Is easily distracted

Internalizing behaviors:

• Feels sad or unhappy
• Is down on themselves
• Worries a lot
• Feels hopeless
• Seems to be having less fun

Externalizing behaviors

• Refuses to share and may take things that don’t belong to them
• Does not understand other people’s feelings
• Fights with other children
• Blames others for their troubles
• Teases others

Source: Journal of Pediatric Psychology

And while I don’t have direct data linking parental burnout to eating disorder behaviors, you probably recognize some of the above symptoms in your child. They are all signs of distress, and while there can be a lot of reasons that kids are distressed, having a parent who is burned out is a major stressor for any child.

Why is burnout common when parenting kids with an eating disorder?

It’s probably pretty obvious why parents who have a child with an eating disorder are at high risk of parental burnout. The constant stress of having a child with a major mental disorder is exhausting, and it can feel as if you have no options. The healthcare system does an inadequate job of helping parents who have kids with eating disorders cope. In fact, many times there is no support for parents or the advice is ignorant and even harmful. It’s rough. I’m so sorry. 

Based on the data available, we know that 72% of parents who worry their child has an undiagnosed mental health condition, 77% of parents who have a child with ADHD, and 73% of parents who have a child with anxiety report they are suffering from burnout. I think it’s safe to say that at the bare minimum 72% of parents who have kids with eating disorders have burnout, though I would guess it’s even higher based on my experience. 

And it’s no wonder. Our healthcare system is not structured to adequately and comprehensively care for people who have eating disorders and their families.

Recipe for parental burnout with an eating disorder

Burnout was initially recognized in the workplace. Here’s the recipe for burnout when you’re facing an eating disorder:

• Lack of control: having a child with an eating disorder means you feel you are unable to influence their health, and you may lack the resources you need to parent effectively.

• Unclear job expectations: you are likely unclear about the degree of authority you have or what your child who has an eating disorder, their treatment team, your other children, your spouse, and others expect from you. It’s unlikely you feel comfortable while parenting, which is stressful.

• Dysfunctional dynamics: you may feel bullied by the eating disorder, micromanaged by your child’s anxiety, criticized by your other children, and undermined by your partner or spouse. This contributes to parenting stress.

• Extreme activity: parenting with an eating disorder is typically chaotic. The constant demands placed on you, combined with the fear and anxiety about your child’s disorder demand intense energy in order for you to remain focused on the task at hand, which can lead to fatigue.

• Lack of social support: most parents who have a child with an eating disorder feel isolated and unable to talk about what they are dealing with when talking to friends and family members. This lack of support leads to more stress.

• Imbalance: parenting a child with a mental health condition takes up so much time and effort that it seems impossible to invest energy in your own needs and pursue activities that fill you up. As a result, you can easily feel depleted. 

How do you know if you have parental burnout when dealing with an eating disorder?

Many times you can sense that you are burned out. It’s completely fine to self-diagnose yourself. In general, be on the lookout for these symptoms of burnout: 

• Irritability
• Fatigue
• Changes in sleep and/or appetite
• Mood swings
• Feeling like a failure
• The sense that you are underwater
• Complete overwhelm

What sets parental burnout apart from regular stress is that it negatively impacts daily functioning. Basically, you are less productive and effective and struggle to accomplish tasks that used to feel manageable.

What can you do if you are burned out from parenting a child with an eating disorder?

I know you have a lot going on with your child’s eating disorder. And while you need to continue the work of helping your child recover, you also need to care for yourself. As you know, when parents are burned out, kids do worse, not better. So if your lifestyle right now is leading you to burnout, then it’s essential that you get the support you need and deserve to feel better. Recovering from burnout takes effort, which is cruel since the primary symptom of burnout is the lack of energy to do anything. But you need to invest in yourself to recover from burnout. The consequences of not recovering are serious, so please reach out for help! 

Recovering from burnout is not unlike recovering from an eating disorder. It is essential to your health and wellness, and when you are burned out, everyone suffers. So this is not optional or selfish. You need to recover from burnout to operate effectively as a parent. Here are some ideas: 

1. Do less

It’s time to “Marie Kondo” your life. You probably have a lot on your plate right now. And there are a lot of things that were previously enjoyable and wonderful that may not be bringing you joy right now. Look at your life critically and decide what you can stop doing. This is urgent. Can you stop driving the kids to school? Maybe your child can unload the dishwasher so you can stop doing it. Can your neighbor walk your dog? List as many things as possible that you can stop doing, and stop doing them immediately. This can be temporary for as long as you’re dealing with the eating disorder, but don’t skimp on this step, as it is essential! You cannot reduce burnout if you don’t reduce what’s on your plate.

2. Non-negotiable self-care

No matter how busy you are, you have to prioritize non-negotiable self-care. Seriously. You don’t have the option of not taking care of yourself, because taking care of yourself is essential to taking care of your child who has an eating disorder. Sleep at least 7 hours per night. Move your body for at least 10 minutes per day. Drink 6-8 glasses of water. Feed yourself at least every 3-4 hours. And, most importantly, connect physically and/or emotionally with someone for 10 minutes per day. This could be asking your partner to cuddle with you on the couch (just make sure you aren’t doing anything else like scrolling through your phone). It could be calling a friend to talk about a TV plot line or crying about how hard your day was. If you can’t fit these essential self-care steps into your life, then go back to step 1 and figure out what you need to stop doing.

3. Take breaks

Even a 5-10 minute break a few times per day will help. During these mini-breaks, listen to your body. What feels right? Consider staring into space, guided meditation, stretching, drinking a cold glass of water or a hot cup of tea, walking around the block, or maybe dancing to Rage Against the Machine or the Mama Mia soundtrack. Do whatever feels good to you at the moment – make sure it is something that only benefits you! It doesn’t count as a break if you’re doing it for someone else.

4. Give yourself more love

Most of us are really mean to ourselves, and it often gets worse when we are burned out. We would never speak to our friends the way we criticize and berate ourselves. Start talking to yourself as if you are your best friend. Be kind, thoughtful, and understanding when things aren’t working out for you. Practice self-compassion. Research shows that people who practice self-compassion perform at much higher levels than those who do not. But even if there were no productivity benefits, being nice to yourself is the right thing to do!

5. Talk about it

Stay connected to family and friends, and pick at least one person to whom you can talk about the eating disorder. Shame thrives in secrecy, so bring it out of the shadows and talk about your experience with the eating disorder. It can be tricky to figure out the boundaries here, but a good rule of thumb is that you get to tell your story of the eating disorder, but not your child’s story of the eating disorder (because that’s theirs). It may be helpful to tell your friend in advance whether you’re looking for advice or just a compassionate ear. Hint: most of the time you’ll just want them to listen.

6. Ask for help

I know it’s hard, but you need to expand your help networks. Ask for help with meals, childcare, driving, and everything else you are struggling to fit into your day. Reach out to family and friends, neighbors, and online communities. We are social creatures, and we’re not supposed to handle life alone. Think of how good it feels when a good friend asks you for help, and remember that when we ask for help our friends usually feel honored and will help if they can. When you’re burned out you tend to get tunnel vision, and you believe that you have to personally do everything. This is a cognitive distortion. Reach out and get the help your community can give you.

7. Get professional support

Dealing with an eating disorder is not a small undertaking. Most of our care systems focus almost entirely on the person who has the eating disorder, but that leaves parents in the dark and they become prime candidates for burnout. Find a coach or therapist who can work with you to help you understand the eating disorder, your role, and how you can help your child recover. You don’t have to (and you shouldn’t) do this alone!

If you are suffering from parental burnout while your child has an eating disorder, it makes perfect sense. Please get the support and resources you need to start feeling better!

See Our Guide To Parenting A Child With An Eating Disorder