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

@LoudPlumDog ..I'm 😐 sorry about your dd.
My dd has been resuscitated after having a cardiac arrest several times. I honestly thought she'd die but currently she is in really strong recovery.
OP...the biggest advice I can give is be tough. It was my hardest lesson to learn to tolerate my dd distress. As mothers we are conditioned to remove the thing causing our child's distress but with this you have to enforce it..
We did try the " life stops until you eat" thing...it didn't work.
But my dd was in utter denial and yours has opened up to you which is positive.
It's good to remind them of things they may lose or miss but my dd says now that was to vague...she just thought " oh I'll be fine to go on my ski holiday in 3 my months because by then everyone will have stopped fussing"...

My dd says/ advices ... don't keep going on about things they will miss...just keep supervising all meals or snacks, all bathroom visits and don't talk about the future...just keep saying she deserves to eat, you love her, you will never give up on her...my dd was vile, so vile to me at times ...but she says now my unwavering solid support kept her alive.
Inside your dd is crying for you to take control and help her ..

We laugh now...about the yr we spent with no doors on the bathrooms at home !

Never forget Dd hissing at DH and I with real
venom “god you two are obsessed with oats”Something we’ve never been accused of before or since!

I came to love food like flapjacks and bananas and detest cucumbers celery and sodding rice cakes. I still won’t have those in the house. Vile anorexics food.

@JuliettaCaeser ...we have PTSD over baked beans.
It took me five hours to get dd to eat one bean..
We don't have them in the house ever again

I used to make these bloody ‘protein balls’ with nut butter, coconut oil, dates, oats etc. I don’t think I want to see one ever again.

And all your rules go upside down. Good food becomes bad (broccoli cucumber) bad food is good (pizza cake). Screens at table are a great distraction rather than sloppy parenting.

Thanks @Theredjellybean . I definitely won't labour the point about her missing out on stuff.

I can see me and DH putting on weight at this rate. I'm a bit overweight and he's obese (although was losing weight slowly and sensibly) so we could do with not gaining. I was hoping to just add butter and cream to dd's mashed potato and butter to her veg only tonight but she came in the kitchen as I was preparing it and it felt more sensible to make everyone's the same.

It's a small price to pay as long as also puts on weight!

@LoudPlumDog I'm so very sorry to read about the loss of your daughter.

Thank you, she had actually recovered through sheer determination on her part, so proud of her. Then literally dropped dead in the toilet from a brain aneurysm.

How dreadful. What a shock for you and the rest of your family.

That's awful @LoudPlumDog , I'm so very sorry

@Weightlossworriedtheres a long running support thread on mn for parents of teens and young people with an ED that you are more than welcome to join. It helped me through the dark days of DDs illness.

I put on a stone when refeeding dd 🙈 it is a small price to pay, my dd was ill age 14-16yo ish and is now 20yo planning to go travelling in Australia and off to uni in Sept!

Recovery is possible, it takes a lot of love, patience and food to get there though!

I just want to add that not everyone who loses weight and has a problem with eating is trying to control their weight or is lying when they say they want to gain weight. Some people are anxious, feel sick when eating, or do actually eat more in order to try to gain weight but their body is not functioning well and struggles to regain lost weight.

So don't assume your daughter is lying: having all the adults think you are lying is very damaging if you do not have body image/ control issues but has another problem (depression, anxiety, or physical problems with absorption of nutrients). Unfortunately, I speak from experience.

Thanks @Girliefriendlikespuppies I'll be joining that thread shortly I'm sure.

I was actually hyper aware of this @Greenfinch7 as feeling like I trust her is very important to DD. I did tread quite carefully in the beginning. She has now said that she is deliberately restricting food though and I'm glad to a certain extent that I didn't just take her at her word. Me looking in her room meant I found the food she'd decanted into her socks and was able to bring everything out into the open.

You have done the right thing! So many people make assumptions about ED, and they are not always true.

We waited too long as we didn’t actually believe our lovely and otherwise smart emotionally intelligent Dd would lie and lie and behave so irrationally about food. But she did.

I am so sorry Loud I don’t know what to say.

I’m the mother of a DD with anorexia. I have read all your posts, OP, but not all the replies. I’d recommend Childline (the website and the counsellors) for you and your DD. The information on there is positive and helpful.

The biggest thing you have said is that DD acknowledges she has an eating disorder. The denial is more common and hard to break down so that’s a real positive.

I just wanted to say my DD now looks at the where what why of EDs. There is some evidence that there is a genetic element triggered by environmental factors BUT illnesses can happen to anyone and no one really knows why this happens. When you get the referral, ask about support for you. The gold standard is still family involvement and sometimes therapy, and some places will offer therapy for you. Please take it. It’s important to understand that you didn’t cause this, it isn’t your fault, it’s just a thing that happens to some people.

I wish you and your DD the best.

We also struggled for so long wanting to trust our dd...it's not your dd lying to you , it's the illness.
For my dd it wasn't about being thin. It rarely is...it was about controlling her environment when her OCD had become unbearable. We didn't know she had OCD either at that point.
It's like an addiction.
I'm sorry to disagree with the previous poster ..but do not trust a word that comes out of your dd mouth. You literally have to harden yourself and be suspicious when you desperately want to trust them.
We got compliance for the first few weeks and then the behaviors got sneakier.
I'd also say I was fearful of putting on weight and a psychiatrist suggested this phrase " the nutritional requirements of a middle aged woman are not the same as an anorexic teenager"...when my dd challenged what I was eating being different to hers.
But she does say now it helped if we ate something, even if it was one biscuit, with her every time she had to eat.
I used to hide things in her food but a lot of people advise against this ..I used to make 1000 calories smoothie! My dd thought it had 200 calories in it.
She now tells me she kinda knew but could quieten the anorexia by telling it her mum was following the hospital recipe...

@Theoscargoesto I will absolutely take any help offered. I'm feeling quite low and tearful today.

@Theredjellybean that's interesting to know about hiding calories. I added butter and cream in front of my DD yesterday so not hiding but definitely thinking of how I can add calories to her meals. More from a point of view that it might be easier for her than adding volume. I am going to remember that line for if she sees us eating differently.

I'm kind of expecting some kick back at some point. She's very compliant so far but it can't be this easy. I'll remain vigilant.

I'm absolutely in agreement about not being able to believe what she's saying but I think green Finch's perspective is helpful because I can imagine my DD feeling like this. What I'm taking from it is to be sensitive to that/tactful about not believing her rather than taking her at her word.

She went vegetarian recently which I now recognise as another ed red flag. I asked her about it this morning and whether she was motivated by something other than animal welfare. She was adamant she wasn't and I didn't see any value in arguing with her at that moment. If at her next weigh in she's not put weight on I'll over rule her on it

the ED team weigh twice a week, it might be worth you doing that. They’re looking for pretty fast weight gain.

I'd been debating doing just that. The feast website suggests twice weekly too. I would say we have only been properly 'on it' since Sunday evening so possibly too early to weigh yet. From Friday onwards I'll make it twice weekly.

I think that’s a good idea. I think you will know then if the calories are working at why your DD’s reaction to putting on weight is.

You’re doing really well xx

I used to put coconut oil/ coconut cream in loads of things… curries, granola, flapjacks, curries, daal and even smoothies. Also loads of nut butters. I did put on a lot of weight as I pretty much ate everything with her.

Also add olive oil to anything like pasta sauces etc