Reply to therapy or other guidance re: stopping anorexia in its tracks

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[quote=Anonymous]This is OP. Checking in.

Thanks to all who gave me the courage to follow through/push through everyone's objections and... well... force the situation. I haven't updated people because honestly it's taken this long to feel like my world wasn't falling apart. Things got a lot worse before they got better. But anyway, eight weeks later, my step-daughter is in in a therapeutic program at a TERRIFIC place (Potomac Behavioral Solutions in Crystal City), a block and a half from the metro. They have a nutritionist she sees, a private therapist, and mandated family therapy. It has not been easy. The financial commitment. The time commitment. The tears. The anger. The adults in this child's life just don't view the world in remotely the same ways. But slowly everyone is getting re-calibrated in a way that will help support this girl back to health.

She JUST got her period back (after 3 missed months). She's just now starting to weigh a little more than she did the previous week. This therapeutic approach is called the Maudsley Approach and is very family-based. It's a lot of work for everyone. It's exhausting. But it's the only approach that has any significant positive results (statistical recovery rates). I hope to God the improvements I'm seeing continue and that someday I can come back to this thread and tell you all that she's completely out of the woods.

[b]I will say this... if you're a parent (however that is defined) who is reading this thread and wondering whether to err on the side of caution and talk to somebody about this... DO NOT HESITATE. [/b] Disordered eating is like having cockroaches in the house--for every one thing you can see, there are 50 bad things you don't see. Seriously. My poor 12 year old went from seeming "perfectly normal" to so unhealthy that her body stopped giving her a period in a matter of half a summer. And to the outside world, she "looked" fine. She looked "great" in fact, according to our thin obsessed culture. Please don't wait until your kid is so thin they're passing out in class.  Get help early. And besides, it honestly has very little to do with how much someone weighs. Don't convince yourself that because her ribs aren't protruding from her chest that her odd eating habits and bad self-esteem are somehow "just a phrase she'll outgrow" or that it's "no big deal."  Way more than height/weight ration, it's how they're thinking about food, about their relationship to food, and about their body. If you are hearing ANYTHING of concern in those areas, then double the amount of scrutiny you are giving your child's actual conduct. If those "bad" thoughts get combined with "bad" conduct (weighing themselves constantly, feeling driven to constantly be active/being upset if they can't be active--particularly after meals, reading food labels, suddenly cutting out foods they used to love, going to the bathroom of disappearing into their room immediately after eating, taking really small bites of food/taking an excessively long time to finish food, eating significantly less than they're supposed to, etc.), then don't hesitate to take them to a Maudsley trained therapist and ask for help. DO NOT WAIT for the unassailable full onslaught of "proof" of anorexia. You wouldn't treat any other disease like that, would you?
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