Is my 14yo daughter anorexic? I found her diet diary. Should I be concerned?

[SophiaN]

This is sort of very very very long, sorry! I always write a lot when I'm panicked. Warning: painstaking analysis of 14yo D's writing ahead!
As a summary: found daughter's online diet diary, she writes about wanting to feel light and about being thinner, she's already 115lbs, should I be concerned?

My 14-year-old D is 5'4" and weighs 115lbs. Since she grew out of selective eating disorder six years ago, her weight's always been very stable. I never thought she could have any problems with eating behaviour whatsoever; she's very mature and risk-aware for her age, and she once said to me that the "thin-spiration" stuff that her friends have shown her scares her away from losing weight.

Yesterday, though, I was in her room, and she'd left a website diary thing detailing her diet up on her computer. I didn't know she was on a diet.
She has a "manifesto" up, opening with [square brackets: my translations of 14yo-ese - if I get anything wrong, please tell me... I'm a very bad interpreter! )

"nota bennie [sic; I think she's trying to say n.b., maybe I should have a word with her Latin teacher... ]: I don't have any EDs [eating disorders], but, for those who do, ana [anorexia] non carborundum est [shouldn't grind you down] ;)", and going on to detail how she's "easily enraptured by beautiful unknowns" and that "lightness is the one thing [she's] never felt".

I wouldn't be concerned if that was as far as she's gone; I think she's quite slim, even if she isn't very athletic any more (since moving house two years ago, she had to quit her sports and hasn't found another gym she likes), but I can understand if she wants to feel lighter.

However, she then says that "some times [she has] felt, for an instant that approaches perfection, a sweet featherlike ecstasy of lightness - but instants are merely instants, and hunger, sleep dep[rivation], and migraines aren?t worth the uplifting rush of light-headedness. What [she seeks] is permanent, unilateral delicacy and liberation. What [she seeks] is light-bodiedness".

So my daughter enjoys light-headedness because it makes her feel "featherlike". Uh-oh.

She used to have selective eating disorder and would occasionally fall asleep on during the day from hunger when none of the foods she could eat were left in the house, but she grew out of it by 9, but it's still a little disturbing that she remembers the dizziness fondly. I'm not sure what to make of the "sleep deprivation" bit, other than that I've caught her awake for over two days when we're at home in the summer holidays, texting her friends and working on websites and poetry (she's an amateur computer programmer and wannabe Keats), despite my exhortations at her to go to sleep. She used to have horrendous migraine headaches, when she'd develop almost an allergy to light and sound, headache pills wouldn't work, and she'd see "nebulae" and develop "random blind spots" (her words), but say that she felt absolutely elated, if a little light-headed, for around an hour afterwards (my personal suspicion was that that was just the delayed effect of all that paracetamol and codeine... ).

The rest of it is a list of the things she will do - mostly metaphorical, mostly typical 14yo slop - in order to become "ethereal". Fight, toil, strive, sacrifice, battle, declare war on flabby, etc.

I didn't notice any weight change in the five days since she posted that, and all the diet and exercise things she posted seem healthy and safe - one post jokes that she might be addicted to grapes, blueberries, bananas, celery, and cucumber, another extols the virtues of doing crunches before breakfast, one bemoans the fact that it's too dark in December to go running after study club, another complains that our treadmill is broken (I should get it fixed... I didn't know anyone but me used it!), another is a picture from a Nike advert of an American national women's football team (that's soccer) player, with the caption, "like this!". There are two in which she tries to count the day's calories and comes to some alarmingly low numbers (1206?!), but admits that she underate, and one, after the football player one, with Mila Kunis when she was 95lbs, captioned "like this is okay too :)". But those posts are the minority.

So I don't seriously believe that she is anorexic, but I do suspect that she might have those tendencies. I understand that I might be a little paranoid and she might just be exaggerating and angsting and wallowing like 14yos do, but I am a little concerned. What do you think?

On a completely unrelated and possibly a little tasteless note, I didn't realise how good a writer she was! This site needs a [proudmummy] emoticon!

Umm... I don't think you should have read her diary, as all it's done is make you panic. You say she looks okay, so stop worrying. Fourteen year olds are full of romantical thoughts, most of which make them blush when they're older. (I can still remember my agonised diaries!)

The first thing I will say is that i have a teenage step daughter and if I ever saw her write like this I would be astounded! You have a very bright girl there.

I've snooped on responsibly monitored the online presence of DSD before and the most articulate thing I've found is "OMG K-lee's BF has fngrd sam in the rekky lst strdy lol wht a sket"

But back to the main point. I can underatand why you are worried but I would try to forget that you ever saw this an focus on what you have witnessed with your own reyes. How close are you to your DD? Does she confide in you? Is she withdrawn from school or her RL friends? If you have drifted maybe try to get close to her again. I don't know the first thing baout how to be a good mum but I imagine that the 14 - 18 stage is fairly hard as you don't exactly need to be 100% authoritarian but she's not quite old enough to just need a friend in you. i.e. she still needs mothering.

I know that when i was a teenager I used to write all kinds of over emotional poetry and stuff. Online you can be whoever you want to be and if she has got in to a particular site she may have let her imagination run away with her and be writing the diary for the enjoyment of others on the site and to fit in. I think a lot of teenagers life their lives like their in a film - it's a fantasy world really.

Keep an eye on her in real life and remeber the 11th commandment "Thou shalt not snoop" it can only lead to bad things.

i used to do this-before online food diarys.
i would be if not worrying then having a calm word.
she sounds very bright and you sound like a very caring mother.you shouldnt have snooped but you did.

Thank you, hatebeingmummy.

She's on okay terms with me. She's severely withdrawn from her classmates, as we moved here just before she started high school; we're Londoners, but we moved to a small town in Scotland because of my son's asthma. She didn't adapt very well. She would constantly complain about London, but she now has a picture of the SW[XX] sign for our district as her phone wallpaper. Waterloo Sunset is her ringtone. She's going through a serious phase of hometown nostalgia.

Even by my admission the local community here is very, very insular. I chose a town that seemed reputable and calm, but didn't factor in that the town was popular as a retirement town and for summer houses, which skews how it appears. Almost everyone under 30 here is... not exactly the sort that I'd like to associate with. It's the mindset of The House with the Green Shutters meets the style of The Only Way is Essex and the ethics of some parody of Glasgow football fans.

She's told me about being asked, upon first meeting someone, about her parents' nationalities and religions, and being walked away from when she answered "wrongly". She's complained that they make fun of her name, her appearance, and her politics, claiming that she's a fascist. (She's a Tory.)

She has only six friends, one of which she falls out with constantly, one who she knew before and who smokes marijuana, one who is almost a model teenage girl but who will be leaving soon (she's only here because her parents ran out of money for boarding, apparently), one who is very nice and considerate but who is two years older, one who's a former self-harmer with serious self-esteem issues, and one who cracks constant off-colour jokes about the Raj, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust - this would be a good time to point out that the ex-boarding girl is a Jew. Because of the discordance, she never gets them all together, and often doesn't let herself get caught speaking to one in front of another. Because this is such a remote area, they all live miles away, and I don't trust her to go that far away to see a friend in an area where no one would see if something happened to her.

To make matters worse, she had a serious anxiety attack in class in her first year here. I don't know whether it's true, but she believes that she's been a pariah ever since, and that playground rumour is that she's psychotic.

Another issue is that she's usually reasonably social, if a little introverted, but she sometimes has periods of being extremely shy and of being brash and thoughtless. I know that it's probably her hormones, but it does seem to give her a lot of difficulty.

So, yes, I would certainly say that she's withdrawn from her school friends.

The diary is on an independent blogging site, so it doesn't have a community.

You're both (you and DD) going through the mill a bit aren't you. I'm sorry.

It sounds to me like if she is anorexic it is a symptom of something more pressing rather than the actual ting to worry about. By that I mean - if she isn't anorexic it wouldn't lead me to tick the "My DD's okay" box if I were you.

I think best to prioritise her above all else for a month or so and then have it out with her. It could be that if you bring it up now she might think you're lecturing her with no right. Best to make sure you have her trust first.