My dd is nearly seventeen. She is around 5'5" and although I'm unsure of her weight, she is a 6/8 in most stores. She is active in that she walks our dog once or twice a day for about 20 minutes each time but no more than that. She eats well - we eat together most evenings and she will eat a wide variety of foods and enjoys her food. She has started a new college without any of her previous friends and appears to be really enjoying it, talking frequently about it and the other teenagers on her course. So, that's the background.
Going further back, she's had a difficult start to her life - for the first fifteen years we lived with my ex, her dad, who was physically and mentally abusive to us all, but of all the children, she was the worst affected. Since we split, she has suffered a great deal of stress wrt contact (she felt she had to take my place and mother the younger ones to act as a buffer between them and STBXH) with the consequence that she now doesn't go at all and only has infrequent indirect contact with him. She has suffered from anxiety, depression and panic attacks so she now takes sertraline which I would say has had a huge impact on her mental wellbeing. When her anxiety was at it's worst, she lost her appetite and dropped to a size 4 (ish) and was not very impressed by this.
A few weeks ago she was staying at her boyfriend's house and following a week there, his parents have insisted that she is bulimic (she was incredulous). They know this 'for certain' Apparently, they noticed that she was going to the bathroom after meals and could smell the vomit. I am mystified by this. Then on Saturday my parents (who know of this) took her out for dinner. This morning my mum commented to me that she had left the table twice during courses for long periods to go to the bathroom.
I don't get it. I have looked at a couple of websites this morning and nothing seems to really fit. There is no evidence of binging. There is no evidence of purging. There is no evidence of excessive exercise, of trauma to hands or mouth following vomiting. She doesn't go to the toilet after meals. Our one bathroom has no lock on the door and her younger brothers have scant regard for the closed door policy so could interrupt her at any time. There's no attempt to make noise (ie running the taps) to cover the sound of vomiting.
When she is ill with a bug, she is like me - she makes a terrible fuss. She cries for me and is unable to clean up after herself. Would she be able to turn that into silent independent vomiting? She is meticulous about her oral health and has been for years. She often says that she wants to break my record of not having a filling until nearly thirty, so I can't see her risking her teeth with frequent vomiting. No dentist has ever raised questions in a 6m check and she sees her orthodontist every 8 weeks or so.
Her bf's parents think I am unable to accept the truth. The thing is, if she was, I would be devastated, obviously, but as with every other mental health issue she's had, we would deal with it. If she let me we would work on it together, just as we did with CAMHS. My younger dd strayed deep into anorexia territory around three years ago. With her it was less about her perception of her body and more about control and attention seeking from her dad. As soon as we split, within very few weeks, she was back to her normal self and now she eats well and food is a non issue for her. The point being with that is that she got the help she needed. I certainly don't view it as a stigma which I would be unable to accept or anything silly like that.
I'm not even sure what I'm asking but is there anything ringing alarm bells? Any ideas or suggestions welcome.
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Eating disorders
Has anyone ever insisted that your child has an eating disorder?
9 replies
areyoureallysure · 16/09/2014 13:26
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