Son's girlfriend is anorexic

[atalost]

My son has just turned 16 yrs and his girlfriend of the same age has anorexia - as advised by her parents. She's attending therapy and have a meal plan, but when she stays, which is regularly, she eats one mouthful. Her parents do not give me a meal plan to follow nor are questions asked as to whether she eats anything when round ours.
I've asked my son as to what she will eat to give her a fighting chance to like something at ours as she stays for days on end during school hols/weekends, but how can I support her. I've told my son to keep offering her drinks/snacks in case she will have something, but as she doesn't know I know, I'm wanting to support her without being obvious. Any ideas.

Then your son can visit at her home.

In no way should you be taking any responsibility here, which you are by having her stay, or walking on eggshells lest you are unknowingly making it hard for her.

Seriously. Stop hosting her.

I strongly advise you to talk to her parents and find out what their expectations are. If she has been diagnosed with anorexia she will be on a strict meal plan.
You (and definitely not your young son) should be taking on this responsibility w/o very clear guidelines.

You could ask on the thread (in this topic) for people supporting their children with EDs.

My son’s girlfriend didn’t like eating in front of people. So I popped a little tub of goodies in my son’s room. She happily ate out of that until she was feeling more confident.
my son has done a lot for her in terms of her eating. And she now eats way more. She has her own cupboard in the house with the food she likes so when she comes to stay she can just eat her food she enjoys.

You could read Hadley Freeman's 'Good Girls' (obviously don't let her see a copy of it lying around though). I found it eye-opening. Obviously this is only one person's perspective and reading it won't make you an expert but I think you'll have a better understanding of the gravity of the situation.

I would not get involved in any of it.

Everyone is understandably concerned.

But just to give a possible alternative persecutive…. Maybe she doesn’t have very severe disease. Maybe her team(incl parents) have very carefully weighed up the pros and cons. Maybe a very positive part of her plan is that she needs to be able to meet weekly weight targets in order to come to yours for the weekend.
i thoroughly agree that your son should have zero responsibility for encouraging her to eat.

If they are likely to be manipulating your hospitality and your son to avoid treatment for the illness..... then, no, they should not be there.

terrible for their long term future, for the parents and for the son.

Is is not like saying "you can't come into my home because you have cancer" it is more like saying "you cant come into this peanut butter factory because you have a lethal allergy to peanuts"

She might have a very good care plan in place. If she is spending considerable amount of time in another person's home then that person should be informed of the plan.
I can't imagine sending a mentally unwell teenager (undergoing ED therapy and with a meal plan in place) to a friend's house w/o talking to the friend's parents beforehand.

She's only eating a mouthful of dinner?

Anorexia has an extremely high mortality rate (similar to childhood leukaemia). There's no such thing as mild anorexia, it's an extremely dangerous and life threatening condition.

This girl should be at home, she does not sound well enough to be away from home and the op is taking a huge risk having her at her house.

Anorexia thrives in manipulation and secrecy and if the gf knows she can get away with eating very little at the bfs house she will be very keen on staying there!! Op needs to be in close communication with her parents so they are aware of what's happening.

It's hard enough having a child with anorexia there is no way I would have entrusted my dd to someone else's parents to try and feed her!

My daughter had very disorder eating for a few years in her mid teens. She had a low BMI and restricted ++. She fell short of a diagnosis but we still had a strict eating plan and she was supervised with this.
when she had restored weight and had been eating well for about 6 months she was due to go on holidays with her best friend and her mother for 10days in Tenerife. I met the mum for coffee before they left and filled her in. I emphasised that she was in no way responsible for my daughter and that I was happy that my DD was well enough to go. I also said the obviously I would completely understand if she didn’t want to take DD. She was happy to trust my judgment. My DD was fully aware that if she stopped eating or there were any issues she would have to come home early.
it all went well but my DD was doing very well before she went and communication with the other mum was very open.
I would not have left her away for days on end otherwise

It’s difficult to tell from your post what I would recommend. Has she been living with AN for a while and is out of physical danger (not severely underweight) or is she newly diagnosed and should be having 3 meals and 3 snacks at home with her family? My answer would vary depending on that. You need more information from the parents. I agree it’s not your responsibility (or your son’s) to make her eat but equally she shouldn’t be using visits to yours as a way to avoid her prescribed meal plan.

There is also some quite surprising advice upthread. I suspect AN treatment and therapy has changed quite a lot in recent years.

@downtownlights genuinely curious about what advice you think has changed. My DD is 25 now so thankfully it’s 10 years since she was actively restricting.
My other DD had 3 months inpatient treatment for bulimia though so I do have recent experience also and and also very interested in staying up to date with current thinking

I’ll suggest a different perspective. I suffered with anorexia as a teen and it was actually the relationship with my boyfriend (now husband) that brought me out of it. I finally felt that someone liked me for being me. My suggestion would be to just make sure that there is nice fruit in the house if she wants it. She may not touch it, but that is the only thing you need to do. Let the rest be dealt with by her parents and professionals.

I don’t want to sound over the top but I would not have the girlfriend to stay until you have had a full conversation with her parents.

l’ll use the diabetes analogy again. Imagine having a teenager to stay with you with type 1 diabetes having had no instructions or understanding of how to manage the condition and leaving it to the young person to determine when to test their glucose levels and when they need insulin etc and you having no idea what to do.

Every meal and snack she doesn’t eat has consequences

Have your son visit her but please don’t have her to to stay if she is not eating.

But OP says the girl will maybe be staying with them for days on end.
Is this the approach you would take if it was your own child?
It's a bit of a gamble.

But as many people have said, it really depends on the severity of this young woman's anorexia. I wouldn't want my own son shouldering any responsibility towards such an unwell girlfriend w/o any guidance or reassurance from her carers.

As otters have said, the level of lying and manipulation cannot be underestimated. Two very close friends at school were inpatients for treatment. Both were life threatening ill and parents had really struggled to support them.

This. It’s really really important that your son does not feel he’s responsible for her wellbeing. My DS fell into a world of pain when he got involved with a person who was very damaged. He was not equipped to deal with it in any way.

you would be advised to impress on your DS that the only thing he can do for her is support her on her own journey to some kind of balance in her life. He can’t fix her himself. You can’t fix her, neither can her parents. All any of you can do is be there.

if shit happens it’s not his fault
if she gets better it’s not his triumph
if he doesn’t stay on the phone with her all night and she does something bad it’s not his fault (this is what my DS tried to do to make it better), nor is it his responsibility to make her eat, ever.

its not for the faint hearted to be with someone going through that, and I’m sorry to be hard hearted all round it it may not even be good for her either to be in such an intense relationship. I wouldn’t want my DS in that situation

This is way too much on a 16 year old shoulders and you should not be expected to deal with it. I think you are going to have to put your foot down on this. OP

Family based treatment (FBT) also known as the maudsley approach is the current evidence based treatment. The parents take full control of all the meals and snacks (3 plus 3). The parents make and prepare the food and support the child to eat or.

The parents are taught distress tolerance as it's expected the child will be very distressed but like with any exposure type therapy the more they are exposed to food the more manageable the anxiety will be.

Allowing low calorie foods such as fruit just enables the ED and prolongs the recovery.

What they need is lots and lots of high calorie and high fat food. Food is their medicine best chance of recovery.

This is what I was thinking as well. OP send her home.

As the parent of an anorexic teen (who is doing well currently), when she was unwell/ in treatment there wasn't a chance I would have let her go and stay anywhere else as we had to have total control over what she was eating - we were following a programme and she HAD to eat 3 proper meals and 3 snacks a day, no deviations, also no sport. This included a month in hospital for my DD. The most stressful period in my life, I cannot believe this girl is being allowed to come and stay with you, there's no way that is going to help her get better I'm afraid, and it's way too much for your son to be dealing with.

My dd has anorexia and is just about to turn 16. There is no way in hell I would allow her to stay at anyone’s house for more than one night. And there are lots of conditions attached to this. Until recently, my dd had been blackmailing me into allowing her to continue dancing otherwise she wouldn’t eat. Dd is no longer dancing and the blackmailing in relation to dancing has now stopped.

Idk if the girl is blackmailing her parents into allowing her to stay at yours by agreeing to following an eating plan when at home. I would be contacting them asap about this and if you don’t have their number, I imagine you would be able to get word to them via a coach… or your ds could get their number if he and his gf are willing but don’t be surprised if they are not as there may be some gatekeeping going on.

As others have said, this really isn’t as simple as offering his gf food. Mine will only eat very very specific foods and a lot of the advice on how to feed anorexics doesn’t work at all with her. It sends her the other way. Idk how far down the line your ds’s gf is with her ED but not eating for 24 to 48 hours (and that includes eating less than 500 calories) could be a medical emergency for her. It definitely would be for my dd.

As for having a boyfriend, my dd isn’t well enough imo and I would do and say anything to discourage a relationship with a boy right now. A boy dd fancied for ages and she went out with very briefly last year asked her to go out with him again a couple of months ago… right before her GCSEs. I said what I needed to say to stop her from saying yes. He’s a really nice lad and very sensitive but he’s only 16 and not equipped to deal with dd, whose eating is so restrictive she’s lost all empathy (the coretex isn’t necessary to keep anyone alive so once starvation hits, only vital functions are sustained). So what I said was not only to protect dd but also to protect him.

In essence, protect your ds in whatever way you can. His gf may be manipulating him. The girl’s parents are possibly tearing their hair out and would welcome contact from you as perhaps they have been left in a position, where they feel they cannot initiate contact. The only other alternative I can imagine is they know their dd is relatively stable and are welcoming the respite.

how did this go op?