Preparing Yourself to Become Your Child’s Mentor


By Abigail Natenshon, MA LCSW
Author of When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder

Facing Up to the Task

To achieve some insight into your own attitudes and capacity to be of
assistance as an effective mentor to your child in preventing eating
problems, answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What are the values I have tried to impart to my child?
   
   
2. What messages have I given my child about the importance of food and weight, achievement and appearance?
   
   
3. What messages have I given my child by my comments about other people's bodies and weight?
   
   
4. How do I feel about my relationship with food? Am I critical of my own body?
   
   
5. How would I feel if my child were to regain lost weight during recovery?
   
   
6. Can I readily argue my viewpoints with my child and demonstrate genuine feelings, including anger, toward my child? If not, why not?
   
   
7. Am I afraid of losing my child's love if I defy or displease her? If yes, why?
   
   
8. How would I feel if my child were to express her newly recognized anger toward me?
   
   
9. How well do I listen to her? Do I hear her underlying feelings?
   
   
10. Does my child feel that I am hearing and being responsive to her? If not, why not?
    
    
11. Where and how do I set limits with my child? Are they appropriate limits? Have they changed over time in accordance with circumstances?
    
    
12. In what areas have I relinquished limits as she has matured?
    
    
13. How do I emotionally support my child? Does she feel that I support her? ;
    
    
14. Where do I find my own emotional support?
    
    
15. How has my relationship with my child been affected by her illness?
    
    
16. How do I respond when I feel powerless (as I do in the face of this disease)?
    
    
17. Do I feel that my child's depression or illness is in any way shameful? If yes, why?
    
    
18. Do I see my child as an extension of myself in some ways? If yes, in which ways?
    
    
19. How willing am I to look deeply into myself and my own attitudes? What might be stopping me?
    
    
20. How open am I to making some changes in myself? What might these changes be?
    

Your answers should tell you whether you have attitudes and biases that stand in the way of your recognizing and being responsive to signs of disease and whether you have vulnerabilities in the area of food and eating that might hinder your efforts to mentor your child. Equally important, your answers should reveal your STRENGTHS so that you can make them work for you.

Taking Action - What Parents Can Do

1. Set standards for a balanced eating and exercise lifestyle at home. Everyone in your household should be eating three nutritious meals a day.
   
   
2. Prepare meals and expect your family to enjoy them together as often as possible.
   
   
3. Discuss your thoughts, feelings, and values with your children. Speak until you are heard.
   
   
4. Understand how your own attitudes about food influence your child, and try to keep them separate from your child's issues.
   
   
5. Hear the feeling messages behind your child's statements; respond to your child, not to the food she consumes.
   
   
6. Learn as much as you can before reaching out for help. Knowledge is power.
   
   
7. Keep expectations realistic for yourself, your child, the treatment process, and the professionals. Remember that you are dealing with a highly imperfect science.
   
   
8. Set goals for yourself and meet them. They will keep you focused and productive.
   
   
9. Remember that there are many "right" ways to do things.
   
   
10. Begin your foray into the community of health care providers knowing that your child deserves the very best and that your purpose is to make sure she or he gets it.
    
    

These exercises are reprinted from When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder, by Abigail Natenshon. Pages 31-33, 57