Not the Parents' Fault
Resources for Parenting Teens with Eating Disorders
When I heard her news, it felt like a punch in the gut.
“My daughter has been diagnosed with anorexia,” Britta said. “I didn’t want to tell you over text. It’s gotten really hard.”
Britta is one of the kindest, most supportive people I know. When I was pregnant, she knitted the softest gray blanket for me and baby Ellie to snuggle in. I remember how Britta and her husband longed for children in a season of infertility, and how they cherished their daughters when they finally arrived. Britta dove into parenting with gusto, soaking up countless parenting books and podcasts. I’ve watched Britta invest in her own healing journey so she can be the best possible mom. For the past eighteen years, she has dedicated herself to nurturing and educating her kids.
She’s one of those moms we all look at and wonder how we could become.
She’s the last person I’d expect to have a kid with an eating disorder.
Eating Disorders Can Happen to Anyone
Yet, Britta is a reminder that eating disorders can happen to any family. Eating disorders occur among kids from happy, cohesive families and troubled families. They affect individuals of all genders, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and ages.1 Some folks develop eating disorders in part due to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), while others can’t point to an inciting incident. While certain family characteristics (such as a family history of eating disorders, anxiety, or other mental health conditions) can make an eating disorder more likely, it’s not a clear-cut cause and effect. The National Institute of Mental Health summarizes the difficulty of naming any one cause with this statement: “Researchers are finding that eating disorders are caused by a complex interaction of genetic, biological, behavioral, psychological, and social factors.”2
“No one chooses anorexia, or bulimia, or any other eating disorder. Intelligence is no protection; many of the young women (and increasingly, men) who develop anorexia are bright and curious and tuned in. Families are no protection, either, because anorexia strikes children from happy families and difficult ones, repressed families and families who talk ad nauseam about feelings.” -Harriet Brown, Brave Girl Eating
When my daughter’s eating disorder first came to light, my husband and I collapsed into relentless waves of guilt and anxiety. We blamed ourselves for not being able to prevent it. We had worked so hard to become the best parents we could be! What about our years of therapy, parenting classes, mentors? We couldn’t understand how this could be happening to our daughter.
Eventually, with the help of wise friends and therapists, my husband and I released those unproductive questions to focus on being part of the solution. And thankfully, there are many important ways we can help our child heal.
Here’s some helpful resources that I shared with Britta for navigating the terrifying and daunting world of parenting a teen with an eating disorder.
Favorite How-to Book
Of all the books I encountered, I found When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder by Lauren Muhlheim both accessible and easy to follow. Dr. Muhlheim offers compassionate, clear, wise advice on understanding your teen’s eating disorder, how to assemble a treatment team, and how to support your teen using Family-Based Treatment. Much of her advice mirrors what we learned from Ellie’s treatment center team, which felt validating. She takes parents through both the process of intensive refeeding and gradual steps towards independence. This book is most helpful for families whose teen is recovering from restrictive eating behaviors and purging. (If your teen has binge eating disorder, I’ve heard good things about The Binge Code, at least for building understanding).
Favorite Websites
Sometimes, we don’t just need books - we need quick, helpful information at our fingertips. Here’s two of my favorite websites for parenting eating disorders. I’m sure there are many other great sites.
Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment for Eating Disorders (F.E.A.S.T.) describes itself as “the only global community focused on empowering parents as caregivers and advocates and promoting evidence-based treatment of eating disorders.” They seek to educate and train parents, believing that patients thrive when their families and communities support them. On their website, you can find a wealth of articles, a 30-day program, a caregiver support toolkit, support to implement Family-Based Treatment, a private Facebook group, and more.
National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) is another great organization, which offers numerous resources. Their website is easy to navigate and full of articles to support learning and to find treatment. I wish I had known about their provider directories when I was hunting for a therapist for my daughter!
Favorite Parenting Memoirs
I’ve found incredible comfort in narratives written by other parents who are ahead of me on the recovery journey. I love seeing how family members relate to each other, seeing them scream, cry, and worry through their struggles, eventually coming out the other side.
I told Britta that my favorite memoir is Brave Girl Eating: a Family’s Struggle with Anorexia, by journalist Harriet Brown. Even though it was written more than a decade ago, this book is still highly respected and recommended by treatment centers as a way for parents to understand their children’s illness. Brown shares the rollercoaster journey of eating disorder recovery with raw authenticity and desperate hope.
“And so [my daughter] ordered the salad, and pushed it around her plate, while the rest of us, as if to compensate, ate heartily, sopping up sauce with slabs of Italian bread, forcing the conversation away from the drama we couldn’t talk about. It was as if my daughter’s ghost sat at that table, untouchable and alone, watching through an impenetrable scrim. We drove home that night in despairing silence. Another meal or, rather, another no-meal. Another turn of the screw pulling Kitty’s skin tight across her sharpening bones. Another twist of the knife that now sawed away at my heart, night and day.” (Brown, Brave Girl Eating)
Ultimately, Brown successfully partnered with her daughter’s pediatrician and therapist to nourish and heal her daughter using Family-Based Treatment, without the intervention of a treatment center. Brown’s ability to support her daughter with dedication and tough love provides a helpful model for other parents.
I just finished a lesser-known memoir called Emilee: The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia by John, Linda and Emilee Mazur. Trigger warning: while this is a beautiful story, it has a tragic ending when Emilee dies of recalcitrant anorexia. John and Linda have since become dedicated advocates, educating families, doctors and the mental health community through their nonprofit organization. Because Emilee developed anorexia as a legal adult, her parents’ ability to direct her treatment was much more limited. However, their creative and fierce advocacy provides helpful ideas for parents in similar situations. It’s a tender story of the bond between parents and daughter, the failures of a medical system dominated by the insurance company politics, and a bright, sweet young woman whose mental illness destroyed her.
Earlier this year, I enjoyed two books written by a mother-daughter team. In Elena Vanishing, Elena Dunkle shares her journey with anorexia, beginning in her teen years in Germany, through her twenties. I found this book especially valuable because of how Elena described the harsh inner voice of the eating disorder, which gave me so much compassion for my daughter. Her mother, fiction author Clare Dunkle, offers her version of the same story in Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother’s Journey through a Daughter’s Anorexia. This beautifully written book captures the terror and confusion of any parent in this struggle, along with examples of tough love when appropriate. Together, the Dunkles’ books demonstrate the critical role that the right treatment center can play in a healing journey, when the patient is ready.
In all three mom memoirs, I was touched by the parenting skills demonstrated by Brown, Mazur and Dunkle. I kept thinking, “These women are amazing mothers! I am learning from them about how to nurture a sick teen, how to hold boundaries, how to advocate for my child in medical settings, and how to love my teen when her behavior makes her unloveable. They also demonstrate when to let go, when to stop enabling, and when to pull close again for safety.”
It may seem ironic to find parenting models among mothers whose children have touched the bowels of death. Yet, maybe that is the perfect place to find them. Maybe those of us who know the helplessness and terror of watching an illness take over our kids have pressed into parenting with a special kind of determination. Maybe the process of choosing to love our children at their most unloveable moments teaches us what love truly is.
These resources, among others, have provided companionship for me in supporting my daughter’s recovery. They have offered hope, encouragement, and guidance. They have helped me feel less alone and inspired me to keep going when I felt hopeless.
If you’ve walked this journey or a similar one, what books, websites, podcasts, or online communities have supported you? Perhaps you have a favorite resource I didn’t mention. I’d love to hear. We are in this together.
Grateful for your presence on the journey,
P.S. Before you go, please tap the little ♡. It offers “social proof” and lets others know there’s something useful here. Thanks!
For some fascinating in-depth statistics, see this research from the National Eating Disorders Association - https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/statistics/#general-eating-disorder-statistics
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders#:~:text=Researchers%20are%20finding%20that%20eating,the%20study%20of%20human%20genes.
This right here! As parents, we have to learn the hard truth that our children are not always a reflection of us. They are their own person with their own unique view of the world, personalities, insecurities etc. We have to work on releasing any guilt and shame and hold space for our children as a safe haven when they're struggling.
Thanks so much for posting this. I had one child almost get lost in this issue that I myself struggled with as a teen and young adult (it took YEARS for the triggers to go away) as well as one child her self-harmed in another way. We can be great parents and still have kids, especially sensitive ones, stuggle.