Worried about teen DD. Will Beat help?

[Weightlossworried]

I'm becoming worried about my 15 yo. She's always been slim with a small appetite but lately she seems to have lost weight and is eating even less.
She denies any issues around food/body image when I've gently raised it. She hates school and for a long time has refused breakfast or to eat much or anything while there saying she feels too sick and anxious. She used to make up for it at home but doesn't really any more. She does always eat dinner and enjoys helping make it too.
I have no idea how much she weighs as we don't have scales and I don't think it would be helpful to weigh her but she is visibly thinner I believe, although she denies it.
I am pretty scared of saying or doing the wrong thing and making it worse. Can Beat offer help with this to parents? Thanks

Yes I would say it in a kindly way. “We need to get you well enough to go to Boardmasters or it just won’t be safe for you to go”.

The ED coach wants my dd to get her food to increase her independence and self reliance. Dd reckons she wants to move out in September. And she’s nowhere near there. With dd it’s the opposite. She’s decided to make her food twice a week for the past 2 weeks and I’ve let it run to see how it goes and it’s decreasing in size. Dd noticed on Sunday she hadn’t cooked enough pasta.

Today I will be stepping in and ensuring she makes enough, otherwise I am going to need to start making it for her. That will be a joy with a nearly 18 yo, who won’t admit she has a problem with eating!

As I say, I absolutely agree with natural consequences. She already has those but I don't think of them as punishments - of course she can't go horse riding until she's at a weight that makes it safe to do it.

She is due to go to leavers assembly at school this week and potentially out with friends after. She won't be going if she doesn't eat her breakfast. Not as a punishment but because it's not safe for her to be out being active with no food.

I'm not comfortable with things like banning screens or taking her phone away. There's actually not much else we can use as consequence because her friends are shit and she hardly sees them.

I mean, honestly I would love a trip to Boardmasters to be on the table but yesterday she reached out to her supposed best friend to tell her about the holiday and the response was 'oh no' and then sending a load of pictures of her with friends at a get together she hasn't been invited to..

This poor kid of mine desperately needs a decent relationship with me and her dad at the moment. She has nobody else to lean on or speak to.

Have you checked her phone @Weightlossworried? Taking her phone away might be in her best interest anyway. My dd was looking up all sorts of pro anorexia content and I thought I was keeping quite a close eye on it.

Im sorry her friends are so useless, that response does sound fairly normal for teen girls though…

The reality is if she doesn’t eat the ultimate consequence is she’ll die (which is what anorexia wants). The other alternative is hospital and ng tubes.

Food is non negotiable but how you get that message through to your dd does very much depend on what you know works for her. You will know how to get her to do stuff she doesn’t want to do as you’ve been doing that since she was a toddler.

It’s a hideous illness and I can remember the feeling of being in a black hole. Hold onto the faith that your dd wants to recover and she has two loving parents fighting for her.

Ugh OP this sounds like my daughter's ex-best friend as well. She used to do this to her all the time, before my daughter eventually blocked her on everything for her own well-being. Some girls are so unbelievably cruel it's just beyond belief.

Yes we do check it and I have debated removing it for her own sake - but I if do that it will be from that place rather than as a result of her not eating a meal. I can't make up my mind on it though. We talk a lot about toxic content and how recovery accounts are often more harmful than good etc.

This is the thing really, an authoritarian approach has never really worked on DD. That probably makes me sound really weak and like I let her get away with murder. I don't and never have. She's always been very well behaved.

I honestly don't know what to do. There are times I wish she would be admitted somewhere because I'm clearly not capable of helping her

Yes this has been a recurring theme unfortunately. Not just leaving her out of stuff but making sure they rub her nose in it. She was really looking forward to leavers assembly this week and potentially spending time with them after but she doesn't know whether to go now

I wonder why this is a recurring theme? Such lack of empathy from friends? It really does make the whole situation so much harder xx

i can only speak for my dd in this regard. She has a friend, who she’s forgiven. And who I have finally forgiven. She was bloody awful. Said the most dreadful things about dd’s ED. Real cyber bullying stuff. This girl is jealous. Jealous of the attention. Jealous of the way my daughter looks. The friend used to be the skinny one growing up. And now my daughter is the skinny one, getting all of the attention from boys.

Often kids don’t see the negative side. They only see the positive. And that is our children are getting a lot of attention when they aren’t. And if they’re being mean, it’s because they’re not mature enough to understand how dangerous the situation really is.

On the flip side, my daughter has a best friend, who dedicated her time to helping her eat when things were dire. She’d announce at leasta couple of times a week she was coming here for dinner.

I think we’ve all felt like that at times, I can remember wishing someone would take dd away and make her eat/ng feed her. It’s really bleak when you’re in the midst of it.

It’s hard as well feeling on your own with it, no one in my family, friends or work colleagues understood EDs (and still don’t understand really) I had lots of unhelpful comments about leaving her to it 🤔 and how she’ll eat when she wants it 🙄

You can be authoritarian but do it with kindness and love, ‘I’m sorry this is so hard for you but you need to take another mouthful’ ‘why don’t we go to the cinema/play a game/watch a film tonight after you’ve finished all of your dinner’ ‘I’m guessing the ED is giving you a hard time today? I’m sorry about that but you need to finish your snack’ etc etc.

Being able to manage and contain their distress and anxiety is really important, if you can’t manage their difficult feelings then they definitely won’t be able to.

You might find having some counselling just for you is helpful.

It is really hard, and relentless at times. I really hear you at keeping the relationship as non combative as possible, which is not the same as being weak or giving in. The ED logic is so warped that rewards and consequences can be backwards to how a well person sees things
You've got this, take all the support you can and take one step at a time

fhat makes a lot of sense about the jealousy - as crazy as it is for us to understand, young girls are jealous of a lot of things.

@Weightlossworried I have said before about wanting to go into or back to hospital. I totally understand it. It’s not that you aren’t capable, it’s that this is often far beyond anything we knew existed never mind something we know what to do with. You are doing all you can and you’re doing it with kindness and empathy. If I wore a hat I would take it off for you, instead I will raise a glass to you xx