to be so tired of trying to help my daughter?

[sophiet882]

hi all.

dd is 15, 16 in march, and has been in a constant battle with anorexia and bed since she was 11. we have been under camhs for about 3 years now, with little to no support, especially during covid. she has had four zoom calls in the last 6 months despite being hospitalised three times (before covid) and underweight currently. she has had a meal plan put back in place due to a drastic drop in weight after a period of recovery about a month ago, and she has not met her target a single day we have been following it. every meal is a constant battle, i am a single parent with a toddler so my hands are full every minute of every day, and watching over her for every meal and comforting her, dealing with the head banging and hair pulling is not something a toddler should have to see, but i can't just shut him in another room every meal time, a single bowl of cereal can take an hour to get through, if she even finishes it all.
i love her with all of me, but this has been a constant battle for almost 5 years, granted i haven't had to sit with her everyday for 5 years but the emotional drain of watching your daughter waste away is far worse than physically managing her.
she suffers from extreme highs and extreme lows (far worse than an average teenager) which camhs has been 'looking into' for over a year now, without getting any further, suspected asd and extreme anxiety, so everything is amplified by about 1000x and i go to bed exhausted every night, only to be woken up at 5:30am by a screaming toddler who will not settle back down.

every meal time is just so emotionally draining because her attitude is usually disgusting, i know it is the anorexia talking but it has been going on on and off for years, having abuse and insults hurled your way is not a pleasant feeling.
i am hardly eating because i try to eat with my toddler and dd to make meal times 'normal'(!), i put on a movie to give her a distraction from the food, and when she starts having a breakdown over every meal, i have to comfort her and end up leaving most of my meal, and after sorting her out, i have usually lost my appetite.
we are trying to have a walk with the dog to get out of house everyday but she is simply not eating enough to sustain this without losing more weight (she has lost 2lbs since last weigh in last friday), but taking away these walks will take away our only time for some breathing space with no sobbing or self harm.
i'm not sure what i want from this, jusr a rant, i am just so drained and i'm not sure what else i can do to help her.

Oh darling, no relevant experience, can’t say anything sensible except I think your daughter is incredibly lucky to have you on her side, you sound remarkable. X

I don’t know, maybe I was just lucky but it took two suicide attempts. At the time I never got any ‘real’ help I just met a lot of athletic people with a much more balanced attitude. They taught me the value of nutrition, for my brain, my skin, my hair. That helped.....the focus was taken away from my weight, away from calories

I think you need more help OP. From the NHS. From professionals who are trained to deal with eating disorders. The stress on you must be enormous.
Here is a support site that say they can support you to get the right help from the NHS: www.anorexiabulimiacare.org.uk/family-and-friends/parents
I feel like they are failing you at the moment, but it can be hard to fight for what your kid needs- especially when you're overwhelmed.

We haven't got an anorexia diagnosis, just a bunch of others and she doesn't eat ! I get how draining it is, I coax my dd to eat, but some days I've had enough, what to eat a meal with dp without her pushing food around the plate. Thankfully unless she's really low mood she will eat calorific junk eg ice cream but she's sick from insufficient nutrition and can only eat a toddler portion. Honestly I'm at a stage I want to send her to my mothers (done it before, she's amazingly patient)

Gosh that sounds so difficult, you and your daughter deserve so much more support.

I am not sure how this is going to come across but it might possibly be helpful so I'll risk it.

My daughter too has mental health issues. For a time she was suicidal and I was very anxiously checking on her, hiding medication and sharps, afraid to go out or do anything really other than focus on keeping her safe. It was very worrying.
Then my therapist suggested I back off, she said Look, if she is determined to kill herself she'll do it anyway, no matter what you do, so you might as well get on with your life. So I did. And OMG the positive change for us both was incredible! Once I released myself from sole responsibility for her well-being, she seemed to realise that she could take on some of the load. Plus in practical terms there was more positive energy in the home (coming from me) which eased some of the tension.

So what I am trying to say is focus on you. Do whatever you can to improve your own well-being, get as much sleep/exercise/good food/social contact for yourself as you possibly can. As you strengthen, you too will strengthen those around you. And your daughter will pick up the message that you value yourself (grey modelling for her). Even if her ED continues at same degree, you are better off in yourself. But it's likely that she will pick up on some of the new vibe.

Do you have your own therapist? Because you could really do with every drop of support possible, it'll help your whole family.

EDs are essentially a mental illness so anything you can do to strengthen the well-being of all in the home, particularly yourself, will be beneficial.

Sending best wishes and don't beat yourself up for struggling, it's bloody hard when our beautiful teens are unwell x

*great

@sophiet882 has she seen a psychiatrist at CAMHS as well as a dietician? You know what scared me as a teen? I saw what I could look like 10, 20, 30 years down the line if I continued to stay severely underweight. I was depressed with no appetite (wasn’t scared of food), but I was a bmi 13. I saw women who were senile in their 40s. I saw the long term damage to their bodies and mind, inside and out. They were walking corpses. They had no life, no friends, no job, no children because avoiding food consumed them. I have had friends who died of heart failure in their 20s.

Your DD needs to see these people. She needs this wake up call. A tip: make her high calorie smoothies between meals. Include easy to digest high calorie things to meals that don’t require eating a huge volume of.

These have a parent helpline OP.

youngminds.org.uk/

I think you need to be careful your toddler doesn't pick up on all this stress. And three meals a day together is ambitious. Can you push for hospital admission. I don't think you should have to cope with this level of stress and frustration on your own.

Sorry that you are getting no support OP Covid is really creating a lot of hidden crisis situations like this.
My friend's daughter had this and they kind of got through her teenage
years with Complan, liquid food drinks. She has recovered in her 20's.

I’m totally unqualified and only have a little personal experience of disordered eating rather than anorexia so please take my comments with that in mind.

What does eating together actually mean? Do you all sit around a table? Might it be less stressful and less of a ‘thing’ to eat together while watching something on tv?

I’ve no doubt you’ve already tried it but does she do better with food on a stick or food in different containers rather than on a plate?
When one of my relatives had difficulties eating it helped her to log everything she ate as she tended to vastly overestimate how much she was eating if she was just guessing. It seemed counter intuitive as it was making her focus on food even more.
Snacks didn’t work for my relative as she just stopped feeling hungry for meals. She ate better having three meals and one snack. It was all very regimented. My relative didn’t have anorexia though

what about asking about protein shakes etc? i wouldn't normally recommend them but that could be a better way for her to get some kind of nutrients into her body without having to eat solid foods?

I have no personal experience but a friend found this site useful when she had this with her dd
www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

So can anyone else help?

I have a friend who is a single parent and I have taken her daughter for a couple of days at a time. Her daughter is younger than yours but has eating disorder.

I have no real insight apart from when I look after my friend's daughter I find it incredibly tough, my entire family do. I have been through some major stress in my life but to have someone in your house not eating and disrupting every meal is so so so tough and so hard to have someone not eating. I am just doing it in snippets to give my friend some sort of break and I love her daughter very much and know she has had to deal with real trauma.
I am going to keep doing it. I hope you can continue with the walks too.

Do you have friends that can help? Someone you can trust to help? Someone non judgemental to you and your daughter?

Sending you hugs. It must be so tough. No real advice ofcourse as I am not in your shoes but I hope you can get help for you too and some kind of break.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through OP💐
I was anorexic in my later teens, at my worst my.bmi was under 15, I sort of wrangled myself out of it by making a segue towards exercise, still weird about food and obsessive about exercise but I am a stable weight and my BMI is 20.9
I think that I wasn't able to just let go of it and and let myself put on weight without trying to control it to some extent, so for me becoming obsessive about exercise was the only route out
That's just how I feel based on my own experience I've no medical qualifications or knowledge about current thinking on eating disorders, feel free to disagree!

Hugs OP. Eating disorders are vicious. The effect that starvation has on brain, behaviour and emotions is entirely overwhelming for everyone involved.

One of my university teaching and research foci is eating disorders and I've been working in the area for about a decade now. It sounds like CAMHS are encouraging a method along the lines of the New Maudsley approach. Here is a decent book on the subject which is likely to give more context to the recommended measures and might provide some new ideas whilst all treatment is so derailed by Covid (sorry, it's an Amazon link):

Skills based learning for caring for a loved one with an eating disorder

@sophiet882

thank you so much for replying so fast. i have definitely considered that but the small bit of advice camhs has actually given me is that we must eat together for every meal, so i've really been trying to stick to that but honestly, i am pretty close to doing what you suggested.

You need your strength.

During Covid it's not the time for you to be ill.

If the volume of food is so large it is making her sick then this plan is monumentally flawed. I am not an expert on anorexia, just a mom of o a similarly aged autistic girl with anxiety prone with slightly disordered eating who thankfully so far still eats enough.

Are they really recommending she eat so much she feels sick? Shouldn’t the focus be on a positive relationship with food. You can always make some items especially calorie dense. Again, I’m not an expert and we’ve never gotten past the GP being concerned about DD’s weight, but instead of focusing on volume on the advice of her doctor we added butter, and sour cream, and Nutella, and basically everything everyone always says not to feed your kids. Snack time could be a smoothie with added nut butters. None of it hidden. She always knows what she is eating.

Anyway, like I said, not an expert. Just my thoughts from reading your post.

@sophiet882

hi all. dd is 15, 16 in march, and has been in a constant battle with anorexia and bed since she was 11. we have been under camhs for about 3 years now, with little to no support, especially during covid. she has had four zoom calls in the last 6 months despite being hospitalised three times (before covid) and underweight currently. she has had a meal plan put back in place due to a drastic drop in weight after a period of recovery about a month ago, and she has not met her target a single day we have been following it. every meal is a constant battle, i am a single parent with a toddler so my hands are full every minute of every day, and watching over her for every meal and comforting her, dealing with the head banging and hair pulling is not something a toddler should have to see, but i can't just shut him in another room every meal time, a single bowl of cereal can take an hour to get through, if she even finishes it all. i love her with all of me, but this has been a constant battle for almost 5 years, granted i haven't had to sit with her everyday for 5 years but the emotional drain of watching your daughter waste away is far worse than physically managing her. she suffers from extreme highs and extreme lows (far worse than an average teenager) which camhs has been 'looking into' for over a year now, without getting any further, suspected asd and extreme anxiety, so everything is amplified by about 1000x and i go to bed exhausted every night, only to be woken up at 5:30am by a screaming toddler who will not settle back down.

every meal time is just so emotionally draining because her attitude is usually disgusting, i know it is the anorexia talking but it has been going on on and off for years, having abuse and insults hurled your way is not a pleasant feeling.
i am hardly eating because i try to eat with my toddler and dd to make meal times 'normal'(!), i put on a movie to give her a distraction from the food, and when she starts having a breakdown over every meal, i have to comfort her and end up leaving most of my meal, and after sorting her out, i have usually lost my appetite.
we are trying to have a walk with the dog to get out of house everyday but she is simply not eating enough to sustain this without losing more weight (she has lost 2lbs since last weigh in last friday), but taking away these walks will take away our only time for some breathing space with no sobbing or self harm.
i'm not sure what i want from this, jusr a rant, i am just so drained and i'm not sure what else i can do to help her.

Although i have no experience, I wanted to say, keep doing the best you can op, keep progressing each day as best as possible.

Hi Op with no disrespect to previous posters unless you have first hand experience of living and managing a teen with an ED you have no idea what it is like.

The advice you've been given by Camhs is standard advice as the only proven treatment for recovering from anorexia is weight gain. Anorexia is extremely manipulative and sneaky so mealtimes have to be carefully monitored although distractions are encouraged once they're eating.

I think you'd be better posting on the FB page for parents/carers of children with eating disorders or on the FEAST forum 'around the dinner table.'

Wow OP that sounds really tough. Best wishes to you and your DD.

hi everyone, thank you for all the support and sorry for the late reply.

unfortunately i have no means of help currently as my parents are isolating with covid, and they were previously in my support bubble. one of my brothers kids has tested positive too, so he's not able to be any physical help either. in normal times, my friends would have been a great help but as they are not in my support bubble, i can't leave her with them for a break.
my parents used to take her on once a week, to take her shopping or similar, which was an amazing break to have some one on one time with ds, but since lockdown, this has been stretched thin and i feel horrible that he hasn't had a day without a meltdown at at least one meal time in months.

yes, one time she tried to complete her meal plan and ended up vomiting due to the pure volume of it. since then, i think it has knocked her confidence to even try, as since then she hasn't come close to completing it even once.
it is so difficult as she won't eat a lot of the foods which would help her get a lot of calories for little volume eg avocado, i have been adding double cream and butter to everything i can, but she is eating so little of it that it isn't making a difference.

today has been yet another day of meltdowns. i think someone asked are we sitting at the dinner table to eat? we used to, to try and keep it as normal as possible, one day i was run ragged and just said let's watch a movie on the sofa while we eat and i noticed she was far more relaxed, so we have been doing this ever since.
today, i made pancakes for breakfast, i think my toddler ate more than her
for lunch, she ate 4 mini scotch eggs and 3 small strips of feta cheese, didn't touch her soup, and this was over the course of an hour

time will tell whether this will improve, but the way this is going, i am heavily leaning towards a pp's suggestion of laying down the rules, you can help yourself or you will have to go back into hospital for readmission.
i will admit, i have cried today. many times, i feel pathetic but christ it is difficult.

It sounds really tough.
It is about control and and attention controlling food, controlling you, controlling meal times.
Is she on antidepressants?
If it was me I'd tell her you both can't live like this, tell her you are battling her from place of love, explain you'll stop battling over food you'll leave it ready and you'd be heartbroken if she damages her body permanently or dies.
Give her the chance to take responsibility from memory I enjoyed people in a tissy begging me to eat, it was weird I was in control.
Is there any charities who can offer free counselling.

Having you there surely adds to the pressure on her & to the control issues she's battling . She'll see you as tying to control her intake. Try reverse psychology of backing off at mealtimes & as pp said have your meal with the toddler. It's really bad for them psychologically to be around disordered eating, aggression & tantrums. Get on with something else while she eats. Also have the CAmhs people done the drawing the outline of her body on a wall or sheet? It's a good concrete way of showing them their 'real' shape, not the distorted one they 'see' in their mirror.

It sounds so tough OP.

The only thing I have to add is if her moods are really up and down it might be good to consider medication for that. It just might help lift her mood and get her head above water. Could you talk to your GP?