Highland Park, Ill-

• Ninety percent of eating disorders afflict children under the age of twenty. Children as young as ages four to nine suffer from eating disorders, body image disturbances, disordered eating and obesity.
  
  
• The most lethal of all the mental health disorders, childhood eating disorders are, for the most part, wholly preventable. In addition, 80 percent of eating disorders that are detected early are curable through informed, proactive and empowered parenting.
  
  
• Parents who are available to partner with their child’s health professionals and who engage in family therapy with their recovering child increase their child’s chances for a timely and lasting healing. Research at the Maudsley Hospital in London, England has proven family treatment to be the treatment of choice for young children and teens living at home.
  

Abigail Natenshon’s www.EmpoweredParents.com educates, supports and counsels parents in their effort to prevent and recognize eating disorders in their child, to seek out the best professional help, and to partner most effectively with professionals to support their child’s healing. Visit the website to read self-assessment guides and articles about Eating Disorders, Parent’s Issues, Body Image, and Healthy Eating, to learn more about oneself and one’s child, and to solicit one-on-one professional counsel and support from Ms. Natenshon.


One of the foremost experts on eating disorders in the country, Abigail Natenshon, MA, LCSW is a psychotherapist who for the past three decades has specialized in the treatment of eating with individuals and their families. The author of When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers (Jossey Bass) and founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois: A Clinic Without Walls, Abigail has made guest appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, MSNBC and WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, among others. Ms. Information and articles from Natenshon’s websites (www.empoweredparents.com and www.empoweredkidZ.com are regularly featured on Oxygen.com along with other parenting and child-friendly sites throughout the Internet.

As seen on Oprah, When Your Child Has An Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers, (Abigail Natenshon, Jossey Bass Publishers) has become a best selling “bible” in the eating disorder literature and guide to parents and professionals alike. The workbook’s welcoming and reader-friendly format with its many self-help exercises, activities and useful tips personalizes the book’s message to accommodate the unique and individual needs of every child, family and professional caregiver.


Discussion Points

1. Establishing a healthy eating lifestyle at home evades too many families in our fast paced society. A child’s eating health is determined less by what he or she weighs and more by the family’s attitudes and beliefs about food and weight.
   
   
2. Despite commonly held misconceptions, fat free eating is not healthy eating, and accepted standards for determining healthy eating in adults typically do not pertain to children. Children who diet or become disordered eaters are at significant risk for becoming eating disordered or obese adults.
   
   
3. Though not to blame for their child’s eating disorder, parents are largely responsible for shaping their child’s eating attitudes and behaviors; it falls to parents to prevent or deflect eating problems and body concerns in their early stages. Eating disorders typically show up around kitchen tables, not in doctor’s offices. Health professionals interact with the recovering child for the treatment hour; a parent’s influence is 24/ 7. Positive changes in the family system enhance positive change in the child.
   
   
4. From toddler to teenage, maintaining a healthy parent/child connection is pivotal in raising healthy youngsters. Though the nature and quality of the connection changes through the years to accommodate the growing child’s increased capacity for autonomy, the parental presence in a child’s life must remain a constant. Parents must be prepared to resist the sometimes-misguided advice of health professionals who encourage them to “back off” from their child’s eating problems so as not to jeopardize the child’s budding independence or capacity to separate from family ties. Parents must be part of the solution in order not to become part of the problem.
   
   
5. Hungry for information about how to look good and be socially accepted, kids turn to the Internet for answers to their concerns and questions about healthy eating, weight management and body image. Prior to the creation of www.EmpoweredkidZ.com, fearful and confused kids had nowhere to go but to the highly accessible and dangerous pro-anorexic web sites.

About Abigail H. Natenshon
Abigail H. Natenshon, MA LCSW has been a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in the treatment of eating disordered individuals and their families for the past 28 years. She is co-founder and director of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois; A Clinic without Walls, and the author of When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Parents and Other Caregivers (Jossey Bass, San Francisco, October, 1999). Visit her web sites at www.empoweredparents.com.and www.empoweredkidZ.com