When our children are suffering with an eating disorder, they need connection and support from their parents. We can make a big difference in their recovery by connecting on multiple levels and providing a safe home environment in which to recover.

We have previously discussed watching videos together and trying some yoga poses. And we have emotional regulation sheets that you can do with your child. Another nice option is hand massage. As our children grow, they are figuring out how to separate from us and become independent adults. But they are still our children, and they still crave our loving touch. To avoid any awkward sense of dependence or any hint of sexuality, we can utilize hand massages with children of any age and gender to build connection and deliver healing touch.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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Touch therapy has been increasingly recognized as an important, though poorly understood (from a scientific standpoint) healing treatment. One of the best documented cases for touch being an effective therapy (and one that is exquisitely designed for the parent-child relationship), is Kangaroo Care, which is an increasingly medically prescribed treatment for premature infants. Numerous medical studies have linked skin-to-skin contact between a premature infant and a caregiver to reduced pain, reduced stress, and myriad other benefits that can drastically improve outcomes for premature babies.

Providing a hand massage for just 5 minutes is an excellent way to slow down and provide focused touch-based caregiving. When our children were little, we hugged and snuggled them. We held their hands when they crossed the street, and they sat on our laps while we read them stories. As teenagers, our children don’t get touched as much, but they still crave it. For our children who have eating disorders, touch can be a good way to reconnect their body-mind circuit, which is an important part of healing.

Here is a good video overview of how to provide a simple hand massage:

Here are the steps, according to http://www.Howcast.com:

1. Open the hand
2. Gently extend thumbs up the palm
3. Rub palm in circular pattern with thumbs
4. Rotate the hand upward as you rub the palm
5. Gently clasp hand
6. Gently rub back of the hand bones
7. Rub between thumb and wrist area
8. Rub hand in circular pattern
9. Gently press palm and fingers backwards

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

Love is not a feeling. Love is action.

Inherent love, love that lasts forever no matter what is a nice idea. But it is not enough for us or the people we love. Real love is active. It doesn’t rest, but it produces peace nonetheless. It requires intentional thought. Without action, love is empty.

Every single day, love is given and received.

Millions and millions of actions add up to love. Millions and millions of gifts of love are offered and accepted to build meaningful feelings of love. The deep, deep sense of being loved is built and maintained over time.

Love is not a moment or a person.

You can love a moment, and you can love a person in a moment, but love is what happens in the moment, and love is what a person does to make you feel loved. Love is caring enough to show up even when it’s hard … being there in the hard times and still showing love. 

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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Take action on your love every day.

Show everyone who you love that you love them. Connect with them. Let them know what it means to get love from you. Listen to them. Hear how they want you to love them.

Ask the people who love you to take action on how they love you.

Don’t accept that someone loves you just because they once showed you love. It is not enough. You deserve more. Ask them to keep showing your love. Ask them to show up. Tell them how they can help you feel loved.

We can ask for the love we need.

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

See Our Guide to Emotions And Eating Disorders

As we consider the reasons behind our daughters’ eating disorders, it can be helpful to consider what we have to learn as mothers, daughters, and women. Are our daughters providing a mirror? Are they offering us an opportunity to work on our own insecurities, anxieties, and obsessions?

Our daughters perceive so much more than they are capable of vocalizing. Our daughters can feel that mothers are increasingly overwhelmed and disconnected from their own needs as women. Since we are their primary role models for what it means to be a woman, this leads to confusion and distress about their future in this world.

This is why, even as we devote ourselves to caring for our children, we must also seek ways to be cared for ourselves.

As we seek therapies for our daughters, we must also seek therapies for ourselves.

Women who have eating disorders frequently learn during the healing process that they have been using food, or the absence of food, as a way to metabolize painful feelings. Our daughters who binge find they have been using food to push distressing feelings down when they arise. Our daughters who restrict often find that they use food restriction as a way to gain control of their lives, which feel dangerously emotional and unmanageable.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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As a society, we do not have many tools for the healthy metabolizing of uncomfortable feelings. It is not something most of us learn from our own mothers, at school, work, or anywhere else. Instead, most of us use external sources to metabolize feelings. Food, alcohol, prescription drugs, sex, shopping, and all sorts of compulsions large and small act as stand-ins for healthy emotional metabolism.

When we pay attention to our daughters who have eating disorders, we may begin to notice that we ourselves are using bingeing or restriction as a way to handle the stresses of life. We may notice that, as women, we are not getting our emotional needs met, and we are turning to external behaviors to help us cope.

Our daughters’ eating disorders can help us notice our own patterns of emotional metabolism. Do we really “feel” our feelings, or do we try to push them down or control them with unhealthy numbing behaviors?

One of the keys to eating disorder recovery is learning self-worth and learning how to get our needs met. As mothers support daughters in building self-worth and getting their needs met, we need to look in the mirror and determine how well we are getting our own needs met.

This is not something we can put off until later. It is not something that should wait until our daughters are healed fully and/or out of the house. It is not something that should wait.

When our daughters have eating disorders, it is like an alarm clock for our own selves. When we take the opportunity to look in the mirror and work on our own needs, we are better able to show our daughters what it means to be a fulfilled woman in the world today. And that is exactly what our daughters need from us.

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

When our children develop eating disorders, we tend to jump into action and place all the work on our own shoulders. Helping a child heal from an eating disorder can easily become all-encompassing, especially for high-achieving, perfectionist mothers.

Many of us feel the need to scale back on our career goals and feel we have to sacrifice time with our husbands and other children in order to support our child with an eating disorder. It goes without saying that we sacrifice meaningful time with our friends and other “optional” relationships to focus on our sick child.

But we must realize that this is neither healthy or necessary. Additionally, we can actually impede the healing process if we sacrifice our own mental health for the sake of our child’s.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

If we only focus on our children’s eating disorders and lose sight of our own needs, our children will not heal. Even during the process of eating disorder recovery, we need to pay attention to our own needs as mothers, women, and daughters. We need to avoid isolation more than ever and gain the support we need. Isolation works against us – it leads to mental illness, addiction, and physical illness.

Our children know that if we are suffering emotionally, they will suffer emotionally. If we are unable to get our emotional needs met, they will be unable to get their emotional needs met.

Our children can sense when our career plans stall. They can sense when our marriages become unhappy. They can sense when we feel as if we are failing at parenting our other children. And our children who have eating disorders feel that they are responsible for these breakdowns in our lives.

They feel it, and it puts them in the uncomfortable position of trying to simultaneously get their needs met while trying not to add to our burdens. It means that even as we put our hearts and souls into helping them heal, they are not able to do so fully as long as they are crippling us in the process.

This is why we need to remember that taking care of ourselves as mothers, women, and daughters ourselves, is critical. We are simply unable to meet our children’s needs if we are not healthy ourselves.

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

Our children are suffering from a lack of attention.

We often think we are paying attention to them, and giving them our time, but the fact is that many times we are all on our individual devices. When we are sitting around on separate devices, we are not connected. We are not paying attention.

We parents need to take a deep breath and realize that smartphones, laptops and other electronics have been a wonderful addition to our lives, but, just like many things that bring us joy, they require boundaries.

For example, TV is a great way to zone out sometimes, but we know that it’s not healthy to be watching TV all the time. Cake is great for celebrations, but most of us don’t end every meal with a slice. Alcohol can be nice occasionally, but most of us keep boundaries when it comes to consumption.

Electronic devices also require boundaries. It’s become really, really hard to do this. All of us love our little rectangles of feedback, where we can instantly connect with friends and family members, and even strangers, using text, email and social media.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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We all love hearing the “ping” of our little machine when we get something new. We all love that we can instantly look up information and buy things right in the palm of our hands. And, if we work, we also love how convenient it is to respond to emails from our couch after hours.

But all of these little moments of pleasure take away from the people who are in our house with us. The people who are sitting right across from us, probably on their own phones, who also think they are getting the human connection that they need on their devices.

We do not gain true connection via electronic devices, text messages, emails and social media posts.

No matter how much you love talking to people online, it is simply not the same as connecting face-to-face.

And, no matter what your kids tell you, they desperately need you to connect with them face-to-face. I wish I could say that we can accomplish this goal in the 5 minute segments during which we occasionally put down our phones and converse with each other until the next “ping” comes in. But, sadly, it does not work that way.

This is so hard, but we simply must create hours at a time during which we don’t even touch our devices. Seriously, we have to put them in airplane mode and some of even need to put them in a separate room with the door closed.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

Every household needs “device-free” time

What we do during our “no device time” (which should happen every day) doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we do it. It’s amazing what happens when we don’t get the instant gratification of an electronic device. Suddenly the people you live with a look a lot more interesting, and you will be more likely to speak with them.

Give it a shot. Your kids will absolutely not thank you, and you will probably get twitchy during “no device time,” but it will pay dividends in your family’s level of connection, love, and support.

And that is a very, very good thing for all families – especially those who are dealing with eating disorders and other mental health challenges.

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

Our children are developing eating disorders at ever-younger ages. As we face this problem, we have a choice: we can get mad and feel hopeless and helpless, or we can see the disorder as an opportunity to grow and learn, and to help our child, ourselves, and our entire families and communities get stronger and reverse this troubling situation.

A model of eating disorder development

Biological factors of eating disorders

Eating disorders are believed to stem from a combination of biological and environmental factors. For example, your child might have been born with a genetic predisposition to being highly sensitive. Children who are highly sensitive tend to need specialized soothing techniques to maintain emotional homeostasis.

Additionally, your child may have a tendency towards anxiety and depression. All three of these conditions, which are believed to be inborn and hereditary, frequently co-occur with eating disorders.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

Environmental factors of eating disorders

In addition to biological factors, eating disorders are often associated with environmental factors. For example, many people who have eating disorders have experienced some form of bullying or even abuse. Everything from schoolyard taunting to incest and sexual abuse can set the table for eating disorder development.

People who have eating disorders also tend to feel weak emotional connections. For whatever reason, they tend to feel “different” and “separate” from their family members and peer groups. Many people with eating disorders report feeling this “difference” from a very early age.

In addition to these two environmental precursors to eating disorder development, the media environment, which portrays endless slender body images and very little diversity in body shape and size, can deeply impact children and teenagers.

Maladaptive coping behaviors

When confronted with this “soup” of biological and environmental conditions, a child may learn maladaptive coping behaviors that she believes keep her safe. These behaviors may include restricting, bingeing and purging food.

Other maladaptive coping mechanisms include self harm, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity and shopping and other addictions. These maladaptive coping behaviors are frequently observed together. While a child is developing her coping mechanism of choice, she may try many or even all of the available behaviors to seek control over her emotional distress.

In developing maladaptive coping mechanisms like an eating disorder, your child is seeking to control her emotional landscape. The behavior is very distressing, but remember that it is actually her way of attempting to soothe herself.

Four things to do for a child with an eating disorder

In an effort to save our children from the distressing behaviors, we sometimes rush to a quick-fix, and wish her to “just stop” what she is doing.

But if we only attempt to “get rid of” the maladaptive behavior without providing her with adaptive coping strategies, she will likely relapse and even take her behavior to new levels.

Taking away someone’s maladaptive coping behavior before providing her with new coping behaviors is like taking away a life ring from someone who is drowning.

Instead, work with your child on a daily basis to learn new, adaptive coping behaviors. All humans experience challenges. But if your child is using maladaptive coping behaviors, then she needs active training on how to handle her challenges given her unique biology and environment.

1. Self Acceptance

A key adaptive coping behavior for a child who has an eating disorder is to learn self acceptance. The disordered brain sends terrible messages about failure, lack of worthiness, and value. Work with her to build her understanding that she shouldn’t believe everything she thinks, and help her insert new messages of worthiness and success on a constant basis.

2. Assertiveness

Additionally, your child needs to learn to assert her needs clearly and non-passively. While you may find her frequent tantrums or sulking periods deeply upsetting, recognize that they are a maladaptive way for her to ask for what she needs. Work with her to clearly ask for what she needs without yelling, stonewalling, whining or defensiveness. It will take time for her to trust that her family can hear what she really needs. Be patient.

3. Emotional Hygiene

Emotional hygiene is a critical adaptive coping behavior. Just like we brush our teeth twice per day, we should check in with our emotional health at least as often. This can involve a simple 5 minute meditation or journaling session twice per day during which you encourage everyone in your family to observe their emotional health and verbalize (if possible) how they are feeling. This is a practice that every member of the family should engage in, not just something your “sick child” needs to do while she is in eating disorder recovery.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

4. Community Connections

Finally, all human beings thrive in social settings that drive a sense of community and belonging. Since your child has likely been feeling “weird” for most of her life, find ways to build traditions and rituals into your family life to build a safe place where she can feel as if she is part of a unit. Help her find communities and groups (preferably live, face-to-face groups vs. online and on social media) that can help her build her own community of other like-minded people where she can thrive.

Helping your child heal from an eating disorder is difficult, but it is possible!

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

My main advice to any parent who has a child with an eating disorder is to seek help and do so early. Seek help for your daughter, seek help for yourself. Please don’t be ashamed and feel like you’ve done something wrong and most importantly, treat every sign as serious.

Don’t risk your child’s life by trying to wait out the symptoms to see if it will go away by itself or if it’s ‘a phase.’ Your daughter doesn’t have to be underweight, lack confidence or be depressed to have an eating disorder. The majority of eating disorders are invisible. We know that early intervention is key to reducing the severity and duration of an active eating disorder, so if you’re at all concerned about your daughter’s health, please seek help.

In the case of any mental illness, the earlier an individual can access treatment, the less of an uphill battle recovery will be. And every case is deserving of help and support.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

Care for your child

Above all, treat yourself and your daughter with compassion.

It’s okay not to have all the answers and it’s okay not to know how to make everything better for your daughter. What she needs from you is to be there for her and support her- make sure you have professionals who can support her recovery. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and scared, that’s okay too.

Please understand that your child’s eating disorder runs so much deeper than simply wanting to be thinner, and it’s not a fault of your parenting. The important thing right now is ensuring easy access to treatment for your child. Treatment will look different for each patient – it may involve any combination of psychology sessions, dietitian visits, hospitalization or in/outpatient treatment for severe EDs. Please be open and just be there for your child. Let her know that you support and love her, no matter what.

Care for Yourself

Often when a child is in recovery or seeking active treatment (especially if the child is inpatient and out of the family home), parents are left feeling helpless, lost and out of control. Depending on their background, they may start to engage in self-sabotaging behavior as a coping mechanism for any guilt that they feel over their child’s ED being ‘their fault.’ This is an especially large risk when one or both parents come from a background of EDs themselves.

It’s important for parents to know that their mental health is important too and that keeping on top of their own wellness will not only help them deal with the difficult situation at hand but also learn to be more sensitive to their child’s needs.

Empowering parents to play an active role in their child’s recovery is something that we know has wonderful benefits for the child – recovery (and life after) tends to be more balanced and easy to manage when the ED sufferer knows they have a strong support network around them.

The parents that I coach have noted that it feels wonderful to be able to vocalize all the thoughts, fears and concerns that they’re having around their child’s ED/recovery. Too often, parents feel that they have to keep their feelings inside for the benefit of the child. When parents have the space to voice their feelings in a safe and private environment, they can start to let go of that fear of judgment and learn additional parenting skills to benefit their entire family.

Anastasia Amour is a Body Image and Self-Esteem coach. She is the author of Inside Out: Your 14-Day Guide to Transform Your Mind-Body Relationship. She teaches women and girls how to embrace their bodies, find self-acceptance, and make peace with food and exercise.

Mothers are under immense pressure and perform under conditions of extreme isolation.

It is no wonder that we struggle to mother our daughters. It is no wonder that we are often unable to provide the nourishment they need to thrive because we ourselves are starving for affection, attention, support, and love.

We are exhausted and trying so hard to be perfect and strong. But in trying to achieve perfection, we have become brittle, and are sometimes unable to nurture our daughters through their own trials.

We can become better mothers for our daughters. We can guide them through their anxiety and depression and help them recover from eating disorders, but it will require us to face our own needs as mothers, women, and daughters.

We can not, and should not, expect to carry the burden by ourselves. We must not isolate ourselves and try to fix our daughters by ourselves. We must not use perfection as our main parenting tool.

We must seek partners, family members, friends, and professionals who can work with our daughters. We must also seek trusted people who can help us learn to love ourselves as mothers, women, and daughters. We must learn to ask for help and to accept the love and attention that we desperately seek and deserve for ourselves. As we learn to reach out for our own needs as mothers, we will be able to nourish our daughters through eating disorder recovery.

We do not have to go it alone. We do not have to make our daughters go it alone. We can pull together and help each other rise up as a community of women, mothers, and daughters.

We can stop the descent we are all headed towards of overwhelm, depression, anxiety and disordered eating.

We can stop the dangerous obsession with our bodies, and focus instead on the beauty of our hearts and minds.

We can, and we will.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

If you are a mom who has a child with an eating disorder, then chances are good that you laugh maniacally when people suggest you care for yourself. How can you possibly care for yourself when there is so much to do?!?!?

But the fact is that if you don’t care for yourself, you will burn out. It may be in small ways, it may be in spectacular ways, but make no doubt about it, you will burn out if all you do is give, give, give.

As important as it is for you to give love to your child who is struggling with an eating disorder, it is equally important for you to learn to accept love to refill your reserves. Love is infinite – but only if you replenish it. Energy, on the other hand, is absolutely not infinite. So you must learn to take in more love so you can give more love, but you must also learn to prioritize the things you need to do so that you can manage your energy.

I know you can’t possibly imagine having any time for any of this, but please consider some of the following self-care activities for yourself:

Ask for emotional care

You may not even realize that you have become spectacularly bad at getting your own emotional needs met. But you need to get better, and it all begins with actively telling your family how they can take care of you. We said this article was about self-care, but a big part of self-care is learning to ask for care from others.

After a long day, ask your partner for a hug. A long, good hug. Not a quick, sort-of hug. Before you take her to her friend’s house, ask your daughter to sit next to you on the couch and tell you one thing about her day, then tell her one thing about your day. Call your mom, best friend, or biggest fan, and tell her that you are in desperate need of hearing what’s good about you. It’s a shameless request for adoration, and you freaking need it!

Ask for your own connection and attention needs clearly, directly, and with no apologies and no excuses. Don’t whine. Don’t nag. Just ask for what you need when you need it. Aside from being good for your soul, it’s great for your family to see what it means to ask for emotional caretaking.

Pay attention to the good stuff

It’s too easy in life to notice only the bad stuff. Our brains are hard-wired to pay attention to the negatives, glossing over the positives. It is critical in learning to care for yourself to actively and consciously pay attention to the good things that are done for you throughout the day.

For example, maybe your partner makes you coffee every morning. Sure – you might do 500 other things, but that one thing – that coffee – is important. Don’t forget that it was a nice thing, and other people do nice things for you. Pay attention!

Maybe your daughter was at the mall and bought you a silly little lip gloss that you will never use, and you can’t figure out why she bought it. Doesn’t she know you have 25 lip glosses already? Plus, you had to drive her both ways, and didn’t she use your money to buy it? Still. At some point in her day, your daughter thought of you. Other people think about you. Pay attention!

Whenever someone thinks of you – no matter how small (or lame) the thought – grab onto it and pay attention. Ignore the nasty voice in your head that wants to tell you how much you do vs. the other person. That voice will not help you feel better. That voice is a bitch. Don’t listen. Instead, pay attention to every little thing that anyone in the world does for you.

The little things will start to get sticky in your mind. You will feel better. Plus, you will start providing pure (not bitter) positive feedback when you receive good things, and the other people in your life will start to do more good things because positive (not bitter) feedback feels really good and motivates them to seek more of it. It’s like magic. Except it’s not. It’s totally something in your power.

Take a timeout

You don’t have to always be on the clock. It’s OK for you to check out sometimes. Just do it intentionally. Don’t slump down on the couch with your phone and mindlessly scroll through Instagram. It’s almost guaranteed that at that very minute someone will come in and ask you to do something for them. Then you’ll be even grumpier than before.

Instead, actively put yourself in a timeout, preferably away from your family in a quiet place where they can’t interrupt you. If you want to mindlessly scroll through Instagram, announce that you are going to your room for 15 minutes to rest. Savor every single minute of mindlessness. Your partner might do this regularly in the bathroom. Don’t be afraid to try this very effective technique!

Or take yourself for a walk. This is a great solution because if you go for a 15-minute walk, there is no reason for you to take your phone with you. That means nobody can text you, call you, knock on the door, or otherwise hunt you down to ask you where the peanut butter is or whether they can go to a friend’s house. Don’t take your phone, just announce that you are going for a device-free walk, and leave the house.

Find ways big and small to actively remove yourself from the center of the household. Take baby steps at first if you must, but be persistent in taking up your own space in your family’s life. You don’t have to go away for a girl’s weekend or get your nails done to take “me time” – those things happen only once in a while. But you can take several mini-breaks every single day, and viola – you’ll be a self-care queen in no time!

Most important of all, don’t stress out about self-care. It doesn’t need to be a big deal. Most of the time it’s just about noticing, paying attention, speaking up, and taking up your own space. You can do it! Your family will benefit – they may not always like it, but they will definitely benefit!

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Ginny Jones is on a mission to empower parents to help their kids recover from eating disorders, body image issues, and other mental health conditions.  She’s the founder of More-Love.org, an online resource supporting parents who have kids with eating disorders, and a Parent Coach who helps parents who have kids with mental health issues.

Ginny has been researching and writing about eating disorders since 2016. She incorporates the principles of neurobiology and attachment parenting with a non-diet, Health At Every Size® approach to health and recovery.

by Melainie Rogers, MS, RDN, CDN, CEDRD

When you have a child recovering from an eating disorder, the holidays are often layered with uncharted stressors and unpredictable situations. What we envision to be festive, convivial gatherings may evoke tension, anxiety and a myriad of complex emotional reactions. As parents, we struggle to protect our children from emotional triggers while navigating the confusing, often heartbreaking territory that is recovery.

As a dietitian, recovery expert, and owner of BALANCE Eating Disorder Treatment Center in New York City, I’ve compiled a few tips for supporting your child or teen in recovery over the holidays. They won’t guarantee a stress-free holiday season, but they will help you feel more equipped to combat the inevitable challenges the season brings to you and your child.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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1) Set realistic expectations

It’s natural to hope your child will continue on a linear recovery path right through the holidays–after all, it should be easier with the support of family and time off from school pressures, right? Not so. The holidays can be a time laden with emotional triggers: complex family relationships, changes in normal routine, multiple social events many of which center around food & drink, and unsolicited and sometimes harmful comments (albeit generally unintended) by others. Any of these factors can elevate stress and increase anxiety. Our natural response to increased anxiety is to fall back on habitual coping mechanisms and that can sometimes mean engaging in eating disordered behaviors.

It’s important to set realistic expectations for both your child’s experience during the holidays as well as for the level of influence you’ll have over their recovery. If you hold onto unrealistic expectations, you’ll set yourself up for feelings of frustration and disappointment. Remind yourself that backsliding and feeling stuck are natural steps in the process of recovery, and are by no means reflections on your parenting.

Watch perfectionism: The holidays are a time when there can be added pressure for “everything to be perfect” and for “everyone to get along.” Use extra care in managing your expectations. Do not expect things to be magically different or for your child’s eating disorder to suddenly disappear just because it’s holiday time. Some parents may hold the false belief that their son or daughter isn’t “trying hard enough” and feel frustrated and angry by the eating disorder. This is normal but be aware when you are experiencing such reactions and keep your expectations for yourself and for your child reasonable.

2) Make a game plan together

Don’t wait until family arrives before making a holiday recovery plan with your child. Work together to anticipate stressors and see how you can best support your child’s recovery journey remembering that your child is out of routine and presented with unique challenges.

For example, if your daughter states she absolutely cannot have stuffing or dessert, consider coming to a place of compromise where there might be a “safe” stuffing or dessert alternative she’d be willing to try. Revisit recovery goals and see where your child can incorporate challenges when feeling empowered to do so.

Anticipate triggers together that might cause anxiety for your child. For example, does Uncle Bill like to comment on weight? Does cousin Jennifer always talk about her latest diet? Will overwhelming subjects such as college applications or SATs be brought up? If you are able to anticipate these situations beforehand and prepare accordingly you will be navigating less of a minefield and will be on steadier footing.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

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Additionally, discuss self-care: this could mean removing oneself from the environment when it all becomes too much, inviting a friend to events, or permitting a reliance on safe foods during this tenuous, vulnerable time. If your child is working with a therapist or dietitian, consider meeting with the treatment team to come up with a plan together. That way you can ensure your child is still striving toward her recovery goals, while feeling safe and supported within your relationship.

3) Communicate and Listen

Did the plan you and your daughter made to have some pumpkin pie turn into an argument that ended in tears? Did Aunt Jessie comment about how “everyone will need to go on a diet” after the holiday? Inevitably, everything will not go according to plan and you will not be able to control others’ behavior. Make sure that communication stays open and encourage your child to come to you when feeling vulnerable. Emphasizing to your son or daughter that you’re an ally in their recovery process and are asking for nothing other than openness will not only leave them feeling supported, it will help mitigate your own feelings of anxiety and helplessness.

Just listening without reacting to your own internal fears and anxieties is one of the most difficult things a parent can do. Fight the tendency to become reactive and engage in a power struggle with your child. Keep the door open and don’t build walls that block communication. Breathe, think things through and speak to others who can support you before responding at the moment.

4) Plan non-food oriented activities as an alternative to traditional holiday events

It’s evident that social & family events based on food are numerous during the holiday season. For those who are engaged in the process of recovery some of the most stressful occasions can be a meal or an event centered on food. To counter this, take the emphasis off of eating and drinking and plan a variety of different activities.

For example, make ornaments and create homemade crafts that can be given as gifts, volunteer for a local charitable organization which provides an opportunity to help others, go to the movies (there are many during the holiday season), enjoy a music concert, play board games, or plan activities with younger children such as playing in the snow or reading stories together.

Keeping the focus on pleasurable and stimulating activities and sharing time with loved ones is a reliable antidote to the power the eating disorder can reap during this period.

Emotional Regulation Worksheets

Give these printable worksheets to grow more confident, calm and resilient and feel better, fast!

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

Learn More

5) Seek your own support and practice personal self-care

Supporting a child in recovery can be a heartbreakingly depleting experience. Don’t let your own wellbeing go by the wayside while tending to your child. Speak to a therapist for professional guidance and talk regularly with your partner, a friend or loved one in whom you can confide. Attend a support group or seek online support and connect with other parents who are coping with a child with an eating disorder. It’s so important to know that you are not alone and to feel supported. Remember you won’t be able to support your child if you’re emotionally burned-out, so take time for yourself and do what recharges you.

Get plenty of rest, keep your own routines going whether that be a morning walk, a cup of coffee and some quiet time reading the paper at a local café, or practicing yoga or meditation. Carving out time for yourself is tremendously restorative and provides good role modeling for your child. Self-compassion is another vital element of self-care so think about extending the love and compassion to yourself that you normally direct to your child and to other loved ones in your life.

Finally, bask in moments of connection with your child when the eating disorder isn’t putting a wedge between you. Depending on where your child is in his or her recovery, those moments may be few and far between; so take them as the gifts that they are, and trust that with the right support 2017 will be filled with deepened connection and continued healing.

Melainie Rogers, MS, RDN, CDN, CEDRD is a Certified Eating Disorder Registered Dietitian and accredited supervisor in the treatment of eating disorders. She is the Founder and Executive Director of BALANCE eating disorder treatment center™ and Melainie Rogers Nutrition, LLC in Manhattan. Among her many affiliations Melainie is the founder and recent past President of the New York City Chapter of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IAEDP) and currently an Advisory Board Member at the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia (CSAB). Website