At what age might a child start noticing a bad relationship with food?

[bmachine]

Dp's family member with close contact to DC has a dysfunctional relationship with food. Mainly around hardly eating/bare fridge etc. They have a great relationship and lots of fun and I bite my lip as it's not my family. But what age might a child start noticing this sort of thing? I very thankfully dont have a history of any eating disorders in my family or friends (that I know of) so I feel a little out of my depth. I want to open the discussion with DC when appropriate (age?) but not damage their lovely bond.

dc is preschool age so possibly too early to worry?

This is a delicate subject so I hope I havnt caused offense to anyone.

Note:partners family have tried to get help for person in question but it's long standing.

I was regularly looked after by a lovely lady when I was about 10. She had serious battles with food and was anorexic. I noticed that she hardly ever ate anything at lunch time, but I didn’t recognise it as an eating disorder until I was much older and talked about her with my mum. I just thought she didn’t have much appetite.

I might have just been an especially dense child, but I think it will be a while before your child notices. As long as they have plenty of food of their own they will probably not realise that someone else isn’t eating much in their presence. Then once they’re a bit older you can have an age appropriate chat about it.

It's took me until I was 25 to realise my mum has some weirdness around food! It wouldn't even have registered if a family friend or someone closer than just my mum had food stuff going on. My best friend (we spent ALL our time together) was seriously and shockingly anorexic in her teens. Nope. Didn't notice. I think it's because I inherited the food weirdness from my mum and it seemed normal to eat in a disordered way so when the friend would say she hadn't eaten anything today, neither had I half the time so it didn't click that it wasn't normal. Except on the days between I'd eat tonnes, where's she wasn't eating at all. You're right to be guarded about it, but if you're setting good examples with eating I wouldn't worry about it too much. I had plenty of examples outside my home of overeating yet that aspect of disordered eating didn't stick. I think attitudes to food start at home.

It depends on whether or not they force their eating disorder on others. If the child is still fed as normal by the person, then its fine. If the adult starts saying they shouldn't eat such as such, keep them away.

As someone who has family members with eating disorders, it is a mental illness that doesn't really go away. So while we may seem to outsiders as 'accepting' of the disorder, like with most other mental illnesses, there is only so much you can do to help someone until they want to help themselves.

I agree with the PP unless they're pushing their habits of not eating onto the kids I don't think they'd notice until they're much older

i.e when they're round at lunch not giving them a proper lunch

My mum barely eats anything and I didn't notice until I was a teenager and I'd be hungry and asking whats for dinner and she'd say oh I'm just having a yoghurt. She'd given up cooking food for me at that point because I could cook for myself!

Even then I didn't see it as a disorder as such, I was more annoyed that there was never any food to eat.

Thank you this is very reassuring. We set a good example at home and hopefully that's what will stick. I'll keep an eye on whether shes feeding dc properly as maybe thats when I intervene. Thanks for sharing your experiences.