Oh @Eyelashesoffire - sorry you've had a rotten day. I have lost my patience quite spectacularly on several occasions, it is so so hard, especially when you've started to get some hope back!! I think the early times are so traumatic that if things look like they are taking a turn that way again it can be very triggering, I know Ive reacted strongly to things and only realised later that it's because I've panicked. Be kind to yourself, you're human and doing a fantastic job. Massive hug xxx
@sammyspoon - welcome to this thread, and sorry you have to find yourself here. I saw your other thread. We were in the same position as you late summer last year, realising over a few days just what a bad state my dd was in. At that time she was avoiding breakfast and lunch, and then eating as little dinner as she could get away with. I had been trying to support her to get her eating back on track for at least a couple of months and it was going from bad to worse. I probably did similar things you've been trying, getting foods she would eat, trying to persuade her to eat a bit more. At that point I was also driving her to the gym in the hope exercise would help her mood, which seems madness looking back, she was so frail and freezing all the time. We finally realised one day when she flushed her breakfast down the loo and we found it.
When we all realised, things became really hard and upsetting quite quickly. An eating disorder thrives in secrecy and so when that secrecy is dismantled then it comes out fighting. We went the route of hiding calories in food, and insisting on 3 meals and 3 snacks every day, from the day I took her to the GP for the referral to CAMHS. Eva Musby book was very helpful, if very sobering, and we did a good course through BEAT called 'developing dolphins' which really helped us understand what we were facing. I know some people find the idea of hiding calories and strict 3+3 bad in relation to the trust and relationship. The rationale behind modern treatment is that the brain cannot do therapy or think its way out of anorexia until it has healed from the starvation. So I decided restoring health as fast as possible was the way to go. Other parents in this thread have done different things, and this approach (which is the first phase in FBT - family based treatment) doesn't work for every family. My DD was around 13 kg lower than the average for her age and height, so there was a long way to go. My DD was very sneaky, she avoided food and discarded it in some extremely creative ways, which I would never have imagined, and she would point blank lie even when confronted with the evidence. She still can be sneaky, even though things are a lot less stressful now. This week I have found stashes of her morning snack (which she takes to school to eat) all around the house.
At the start she was very unwell and was off school for around 6 weeks. She was desperately distressed every time she had to eat, and she was suicidal at times. She was like a different person, screaming, shouting and swearing at me mainly. Telling me she hoped I would die, that she hated me.
She was diagnosed with anorexia at the start of September, and has been on the waiting list for the camhs eating disorder service ever since, with regular health checks. They tried to discharge her last time despite being nowhere near recovered. Physically she's a lot better, but mentally she still struggles a lot of the time. I read it can take the brain at least a year to recover, and so I'm rationalising that we are half way there, and maybe in the summer she might be able to be more of an active partner in the work. But until then I will do it for her.
Hope this isn't all too depressing and disheartening. This thread has saved us, I've learned most things from the experience of the others here. So ask anything you want, and let us know how you're doing. X