DD has always loved her food, loved cooking etc. She's a healthy, active 9YO, naturally skinny. On the whole very happy but quite highly strung - she gets herself worked up about things very easily so, for example, getting her to swallow a pill is a nightmare - she'll quite often 'choke' and spit it out, almost vomit.
I've noticed in the past few weeks her eating patterns of changed. She's saying she's not hungry more often and there have been a few incidents of her thinking she's choking on something e.g. a stringy bean and then not wanting to eat the rest of her food afterwards. As far as I can tell she has a pretty positive body image, I've never heard her talking about not liking her body (though she's decided she doesn't like her nose because someone as school said something mean about it).
I have experience of eating disorder (anorexic in late teens early 20s) but made a very good recovery and now have a healthy relationship with food. We eat good healthy meals, aren't overly strict with them so they'll have the odd macdonalds, cakes, sweets etc do plenty of exercise (hikes and whatnot as a family). I've always talked positively about my own body in front of her, never make comments about people's physical appearance, talk about their wonderful 'strong healthy bodies' etc and if we do talk about 'diet' it's in the context of making sure we have the right combination of foods to make us strong, help our bodies to grow etc
BUT I have this horrible feeling there's trouble ahead. Her appetite just isn't what it used to be, and her mood seems to have a real impact on her desire to eat. So if she's worked up about anything (which she often is) she's less likely to eat. And I've been reading some stuff about genetic predisposition to eating disorders e.g. in families where there is history of depression, alcoholism, where there is a lot of perfectionism, goal driven stuff - that is us all over. So I kind of feel we are doomed.
Also, you just can't control everything. Increasingly she'll be around people who do talk about diets and thinness etc. We were sitting on a tram the other day and a woman came and tapped her on the shoulder and said 'ooh you're very thin, it's very beautiful' - I just laughed it off with DD but I could have slapped the woman though of course she thought she was just being flattering.
My main concern though, is that I feel I have a battle on my hands with DH too. His view is very much: this is all nonsense she must be made to sit down and eat her dinner and, if she does, she gets rewarded with dessert or whatever. I feel really strongly that forcing her and hectoring her is going to make things worse but he just doesn't believe me. The maddening thing is, I'm sure he feels this is something that comes from me whereas for the past decade or more I've had a really healthy relationship with food and he's the one who has insisted over the years on rewards and punishments related to food, despite the number of times I've told him that it's unhelpful. I don't know what to do to convince him to take a different approach.
So, this is very long, I'm sorry. But I could really do with some MN support on this. What can I do now to stop this getting worse?
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Children's health
Worried about 9YO DD and eating - your best ED prevention steps please
8 replies
wemayhaveaproblem · 27/03/2017 06:34
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Shurleyshummishtake ·
28/03/2017 07:07
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