Parents confronting an eating disorder in their child need not feel lost or frightened.

"I know I have done something to cause this." "For the first time in my life, I can't get through to my daughter." "I can't remember anything being more traumatic than what our family is going through now." Always the story is the same. For the past 33 years I have sat in my psychotherapy office listening to you, the parents of children with eating disorders. As parents, you have felt lost and confused. It is probably the first time you have encountered a serious problem of any kind with your child who typically has been the "good kid," the all "A" student who is every parent's pride and every teacher's dream come true. Nobody ever told you about eating disorders, their complexities and implications. Nobody ever explained that what starts out as a benign enough quirk or habit around eating can turn into a dysfunction that impairs a child's capacity to learn, to interact with others, and to mature healthfully. You have been caught in the thick of a traumatic event that takes its toll on the quality of the connection between parent and child as well as between siblings. It may feel as though your child has become "lost" to you, that she is someone you don't know anymore, that her life is no longer her own, having been taken hostage by the dictates of an eating disorder,

Shed your guilt; feel empowered; take action to help your child.

As a parent, it's easy to feel that whatever bad happens to your child is a result of your having done something wrong. "I must have been too controlling, too close, too solicitous," or "Maybe we were too liberal with her; we probably should have provided more limits, made more demands" are common refrains. "I'm a healthy eater and I always tried to teach her to be a healthy eater like me what did I do wrong?" parents want to know. Let's be clear about one thing. Parents are not to blame for their child having an eating disorder. You also may feel guilt that you did not realize sooner that your child's current treatment for her eating disorder might not be working.

Rectify the problem, NOW, and for the future. Cure your child's eating disorder.

If there was ever a time that you needed to step forward and to act "parental," it is now. Your child's perspective, judgment and ability to survive have been compromised. It is up to you to take a stand until your child can regain his or her balance. Your relationship can be the best it has ever been. What is more, it's good to stay that way.

It is time to become knowledgeable, and to transform your knowledge into power, taking charge in an intelligent and appropriate way. Start by letting go of your guilt and relying on your best instincts, on your own sense of power and resourcefulness. Reconnect with your child, and to create the support network you and your child needs in order to heal. Though not the cause of the problem, you as your child's parent DO have an important role to play in eating disorder prevention and cure, through shaping a child's attitudes about food and problem solving.

Learn to trust yourself and your instincts, even if it means questioning the quality and intent of your child's professional care.

In most instances we can trust and respect the work of health professionals. There are, however, some therapists who do not know how to treat eating disorders, who do not have appropriate experience or know-how in this field, or who do not feel comfortable in treating these problems. These professionals may skirt some of the important issues and problems that need to be addressed if your child is to heal. They may want to exclude you from your child's eating disorder recovery, to separate you from a process, which is unfolding every day before your eyes. It is for you to see the writing on the wall and take action.

There are no schools where parents can go to learn how to get through crises and adversity with their child, and till now, there has been no place for them to learn the ropes about understanding and handling eating disorders. However, when your child was an infant, you knew how to care for him/her. When it comes to your own flesh and blood, it's okay to begin to listen to yourself and to respond in a proactive way to your best instincts. When things do not happen in a way that makes sense to you, you may do well to remember the wisdom that "the parent is generally right.

Your child will see you as an ally, not an adversary.

Your child needs you now more than ever. She has been "occupied" by a force that is larger and more powerful than she is. The eating disorder takes control of every thought and every emotion. Some patients say it lives in every cell of their body. It makes a prisoner out of its victims, denying them choices, life opportunities, and emotional maturity. Your child knows she has lost the battle, along with her perceptions, her judgment and ability to care for herself. Despite what appears to be resistance on the part of the disease and the child, some part of her will welcome your participation with a sense of relief.

Your child's therapist must learn to see you as an ally, not an adversary.

In many instances, eating disorder therapists may tell you that as a parent you must not interfere in your child's affairs, no matter what the outcome for the child they may contend that your child's therapy "belongs" to her or to him, that to become involved would hamper your child's growing sense of independence and autonomy and that your only role in your treatment is to foot the bills. You may have been told that you are the cause of the problem and can only make matters worse if you were to become involved with your child in therapy or that the therapist would be behaving in an unethical ways, breaching the child's privacy and confidentiality if he or she were to include you in the child's treatment and recovery or speak with you about how you become a help to your child.

It is the wise therapist who realizes that parents are a vital part of their child's recovery. Parents are diagnosticians and they are supporters. They are listeners and reality testers. They are confidants and they are facilitators. It is the wise therapist who realizes that for the child who lives at home, therapy is not complete without bringing up to speed the parents and siblings who live side by side with the problem as well as the recovery Parents need help to learn how best to support their recovering child.

You've heard that eating disorders can't be cured. Don't believe it.

Eating disorders are rampant in our society; they ravage our children's health and take their lives. The irony, of course, is that these diseases need not exist at all. Their prevention rests in your capacity as your child's parent to be fully present for their child, to teach healthy eating and healthy problem solving, and to rectify what may have gone wrong in either or both of these spheres Role model for your child during this time of crisis, and restore your connection to your child. Be optimistic, clear-sighted, and steadfast in your determination to respond to the crisis. Do not leave a life threatening situation up to fate and random happenstance by sitting back and butting out unless your child's outcome is optimal.

Eating disorder recovery relies principally on the health and stability of the parent/child connection. Establish a strong connection with your child.

Eating disorders can be cured. Are you aware that the phrase, "Once anorexic, always anorexic" is a myth for most victims with eating disorders? Eating disorders are not addictions, though at times they behave like them. When parents know how to identify a problem- in- the- making, when they know how to head the problem off before it becomes entrenched, when they become skillful at finding the best and most effective professional assistance and are willing to become part of their child's recovery as a member of the treatment team, recovery happens in 80% of cases.

Be a parent to your child, not a friend. Being the parent your child needs you to be regarding her eating disorder could save her life.
Re-discover and re ignite that instinct that is still in tact within you.
Recognize what they are doing right, and keep doing it; learn what more you need to learn to parent your child most effectively.

When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder is a book that delineates all that you need to know to become the parent your eating disordered child needs in her efforts to recover.

When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers is for everybody who has, or may one day develop an eating disorder. Do any of the following scenarios describe you?

Your child does not have an eating disorder, but she is frightened of eating. She is terrified about becoming fat. She wouldn't miss a day of exercise if her life depended on it. She skips meals whenever possible and sucks hard candies or sips diet drinks to control her hunger. According to her, healthy eating is "eating as little as you can when you are hungry and stopping as soon as you can."
Your child has an eating disorder and you do not know how best to confront her with the need to get help and to recover. She may not know that what she is doing to herself is harmful, she may not be willing to let go of the behaviors, and may be secretive about her behaviors to the point where you've lost faith in your ability to assess whether or not she is in trouble.
Your child has an eating disorder and is convinced she can handle it herself. She believes she is in control of herself and her eating and at will, can affect a change should she decide she is ready. In the meantime, you are frightened by what you see; your child hardly eats; she is dropping pounds before your eyes; she is fiercely angry if and when you say she should stop hurting herself and eat more.
You believe that parents are the cause of a child's eating disorder. You assume that you have made too many mistakes, despite your good intentions. Perhaps you were too controlling with her, resulting in her becoming overly controlled with herself. Perhaps you were not controlling enough, resulting in her feeling overly powerful and needing to assume an iron grip of self-control to feel safely grounded. You think there is nothing you can do right and would do well to back off.
Your child may have an eating disorder and may have been engaged in unproductive treatment for some time, with a therapist whom you do not trust is able to help her. The therapist may not be a specialist and knowledgeable about working with this specialty. To compensate, this person may have chosen to concentrate solely on the "other issues," the emotional underpinnings of the disease, while leaving the dysfunctional behaviors to heal themselves. However, your child's eating disorder is not going away. You wonder if it is wise to allow this treatment to go on.
You have heeded the advise of professionals who have told you that your child's therapy is your CHILD'S therapy, not yours. They have told you they cannot speak to you about any substantive topic for fear of breaching your child's confidentiality. Their message to you is clear; parents should be seen and not heard. In attempting to facilitate your child's growing independence, they want you out of the picture. Does it feel as though you are going through a surgical separation from your child, a "parentectomy?"
You assume your child's eating patterns are a normal "girl thing," that everybody feels and eats the way she does, and that she will outgrow the dysfunctional attitudes as she goes forward with her life.

When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers is for parents and kids, health professionals and adult patients.

For parents
Too many parents assume that the children's suffering is largely the result of their own failures. Many harbor their own dysfunctional issues around body image and eating and try to protect their children from their own bad eating habits. They are misguided and stripped of their role with their child. They believe these diseases are incurable and that treatment will turn their child against them.
For patients
You can't tell a book by its cover. Here is a title that speaks out to not only to parents with children, but to the patients themselves, providing understanding, guidance, reassurance and support through the treatment and recovery process.
For health professionals and educators
Health professionals and educators, too have a great deal to learn by what is in these pages. If you are a doctor, psychotherapist, nutritionist, teacher, coach, nurse, patient educator, you may not have learned what it takes to specialize in the treatment of these diseases in your graduate education. You may be the kind of person who refers these patients out to other professionals, assuming you are ill-equipped to deal with their problems. This no longer has to be the case. All it takes to specialize in the treatment of eating disorders is the ability to know the problem, the patient and yourself. This book tells you how to do all three.

In addition, health professionals can use the more than 50 exercises and activities provided in this workbook as a springboard for discussion, personal insights and self-awareness in groups and individual sessions.
For adult patients
Adults with eating disorders are coming out of hiding more and more these days. It is not uncommon for women in their thirties, forties, and fifties to admit that they have struggled with their disorder for decades. These women are bright, accomplished and talented. They are professionals and business people, mothers and wives, and they have lived out their eating disorder existences in secret, dodging their children whom they do not want to influence negatively, and their husbands who they do not want to shock or disgust. They may have lived under the misconception that people eventually grow out of eating disorders. They come to treatment feeling defeated, futile, discouraged and fearful. Here is a book that is full of solutions for them.

Professionals tell of clients coming to sessions clutching the book to their chest, dog-eared, post-it notes sticking out, time worn, used, relied upon for its wisdom and hope.

Here's what makes this book unique and sets it apart

This book is about hope.

Never say "Never." No struggle is too hard when there is an end in sight and a way to meet that end successfully. There is nothing in life that we can't affect positively when we have the right attitudes and belief system. This book provides a way out it offers optimistic solutions and hope, reassurance and wisdom, understanding and the permission we all need to be human and imperfect to prevail.

This book contains a simulated psychotherapy process between its covers.

Psychotherapy is a process that takes time and costs money. It is about education, self-awareness, personal relationships and permission to take action and take charge of one's own life, making choices . wise and effective choices. Psychotherapy is about making changes. Offering the opportunity to learn these lessons of psychotherapy, parents and patients cannot afford not to read this book.
The book augments the process of psychotherapy while a person is going through it. It offers a vantage point from which to assess whether your therapy or your child's therapy is working effectively. It also provides insights and awareness that contribute to the quality and content of your sessions as well as your own personal learning.
Through a recovery process that repairs both child and parent, parents and child ultimately learn how to create their OWN answers as questions crop up throughout life and living.

The book teaches parents what they are doing right.

Parents learn to go from strength to strength with their recovering child. They learn to understand what they have done right and what small changes, or relatively minor tweaks need to occur to bring about the kind of changes that add up to recovery for the child. This book and its philosophy are unique in not framing life or the child in pathology, but in terms of opportunities to learn and to do things differently, better, the next time.

The book is optimistic.

It describes and frames the eating disorder as representing the patient's will and intention to survive, to live life fully and with quality. The patient's intentions are good; it is the goal of the book to help readers seek ways to reach their intentions in more effective, less self-destructive ways.

This book could save your child's life.

Parents cannot afford not to buy a book that will move the child from illness to recovery, from sickness to health, from weakness to strength. It not only could save a child from the most lethal of all the mental health disorders, but it could save the quality of life for the entire family. By addressing and relieving fears and stresses, it protects siblings' health and parent's emotional well being.
Figuratively and literally, when a child recovers from an eating disorder, she will declare that she "has her life back" her "personality back." Parents "get their kids back," as recovery improves parent/child relationships for evermore.

When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers is a workbook

It is filled with over 50 exercises and activities for readers and their families to try in the interest of learning more about themselves, their child and their capacity to rally to the occasion of recovery together. The written exercises personalize the workbook for each parent to relate it directly to each child and set of needs.

When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers advocates for parents, so parents can advocate for their child.

Whatever the stage of disease your child may be at, whatever your current level of activity with your child who is caught up by theses disease, this book is designed to offer complete and comprehensive guidance to you from whatever your point of departure. Inside these pages, you will find information that speaks directly to and about your child, your personal questions, and the requirements for your taking action.

Treat yourself to a second read through after your child's treatment has begun and after you have become more substantively involved in the process. You will find as you go back to the book with your own personal knowledge and experience, it will offer deeper and clearer meaning at deeper and more profound levels of understanding.

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