If you seek practical information to help your eating disordered child or loved one heal, this site contains information that will offer you a foundation of knowledge, a detailed plan of action, and insights into your own, and your child’s, personal journey through what may be a difficult though gratifying healing process. The tools and strategies that you will find here WORK…despite the many things you may already have tried to no avail.

Even the most competent parents feel confused, inadequate, and guilt-laden in the face of their child's eating disorder. Parents typically do not know how to determine whether or not their child has an eating disorder, and if so, what, if anything, they should do in response. Misguided by the many myths and misconceptions surrounding eating disorders, diet and nutrition, the needs of adolescents, the psychotherapy process, and the assumptions that they are to blame, parents fear losing their child's love or making things worse by raising and pursuing uncomfortable issues.

Overcome your sense of confusion, fear and helplessness; get beyond the frustration of dealing with your child who may seem so shut down and closed off from you, perhaps for the first time in both of your lives. Recognize that the voice you hear from your eating disordered child may not be his or her voice at all, but the voice of a clinical eating disorder. Through empowered and proactive parenting, you will ultimately create a deeper and more meaningful emotional connection with your child that will support her recovery as well as your relationship with her from this time forth. It may be the greatest investment you have ever made.

Parents' motivations tend to be pure and genuine, their intentions noble. Parents want to do what is best for their child. Intelligent and appropriate parental involvement in the prevention and healing of eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating, is critical in producing timely and sustained outcomes. For parents without coaching and guidance, the task can be an uphill battle.

Parents need to know what they are doing right; they need to learn to become fully responsive to, and supportive of, the changing needs of the recovering child and family.

Empowered Parents have the tools, skills and confidence to promote healthy eating and body image health in their child; they have the know-how and wherewithal to intervene effectively with the disordered child, and to create a working partnership with health professionals to support the child, the treatment team and the healing process.

Welcome to Empowered Parents.  I invite you to explore this site. It is my hope that the resources provided here can help you better understand your eating disordered child and his or her disease, treatment options and protocols, and a very complex recovery dynamic.  Please feel free to contact me.