Done-With-It!
06-27-2008, 04:57 PM
Dangerous territory
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Caroline King
Many specialists say eating disorders develop out of a need to be in control when life is uncertain. iStockphoto.com
A year ago, on a family holiday, I saw my 15-year-old daughter in a bikini for the first time in several months. It was a shock: her hip bones stood proud on her concave stomach and her bust had all but disappeared. I realised that she had an eating disorder.
My suspicions were confirmed three times a day at meals. We were on a luxurious hotel barge touring the Venice lagoon but, while the rest of the family tucked in to delicious feasts, she refused all puddings and pasta and often could only manage a small amount of protein and vegetables.
As her mother, of course, I was engulfed not just by worry, but by guilt. An eating disorder is an advertisement of unhappiness, a cry for help. It’s a very public way for someone to show that they have so little self esteem that they literally want to fade away.
Whenever I see painfully thin young women – and occasionally young men – I assume, as I suspect we all do, that something is horribly wrong with the family dynamics. Often it is obvious. In the case of the 21-year-old Allegra Versace, who battles with anorexia, it is easy to imagine that a murdered uncle (Gianni) and a mother (Donatella) who has admitted to a drug problem – not to mention the pressure of a large fortune – have made her life emotionally complicated. Nearer to home, I have friends whose daughters have suffered: in one case the father disappeared when she was small, leaving the mother in a state of great financial anxiety. In another, the girl’s mother died and she now only eats if her father is with her.
Death, divorce, illness in the family – all these problems can lead teenagers to flee into the strangely all-enveloping cocoon of an eating disorder, women who have escaped the trap tell me. But how come my daughter was in this state? Ours is, apparently, a normal two-parent family with all the usual squabbles and stresses but nothing that I would view as out of the ordinary.
On a straightforward level, I could see how it had happened. Three months beforehand I had embarked on a much-needed diet, cutting out carbs in order to deflate the spare tyres of middle age. Since my daughter had been hitting the Krispy Kreme doughnuts with some vigour in the preceding months, I didn’t discourage her when she said she would join me in cutting back on sugar and starchy foods. Cutting out bread, pasta and rice did me a lot of good. Even with a bit of cheating, I lost a stone and felt much better. She, however, followed the same rules with the rigour of youth and a perfectionist personality and lost three stone from a body that started off within the normal weight range.
I viewed her state as simply the result of “over-dieting” but that wasn’t possible once she went back to school. After the holiday, the change in her was so apparent – and alarming – that several teachers immediately contacted the school nurse, who told me to go straight to the doctor. When I told my daughter she sobbed; she confessed that her periods had stopped and she was frightened because her hair was falling out.
“Eat a bit more,” I suggested.
“I can’t,” she wailed.
Our doctor referred her – and indeed the whole family – to an eating disorders clinic run by our local hospital. There we were interviewed by a psychologist while other clinicians observed from behind a one-way mirror. It was an unnerving experience. Since then, my daughter has been going for counselling sessions once a week.
Is this too dramatic a response? I’m not sure. It’s good for my daughter (indeed, any teenager) to have someone outside the family to whom she can speak about the issues in her life. In her case I think they are: wanting to be attractive and successful in a competitive school, and sibling rivalry. However, I’m not sure that the focus on her food intake is beneficial. When we stay with relatives and food is plonked in front of her, she eats normally, I think because she’s not self-conscious. But I feel that the therapy sessions encourage her to think constantly about food so she has something to say at the next meeting.
Specialists would probably jump in and say that eating disorders have nothing to do with food. It’s true, they are about feeling in control of one aspect of your life when so much else – boyfriends, exam results, future career – is uncertain. But they are also about being slim.
My daughter is by no means the only girl in her school to be conflicted about food. Each lunch time, she has told me that they scrutinise each other minutely to see who is eating what and who is putting on or taking off weight. Several of them have come to parties at our house and, having gorged themselves, gone off to make themselves sick.
Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of B-eat, the eating disorders charity (which provides a helpful leaflet and runs a helpline), opposes the view that anorexia is “catching’’, like flu, but my spies in other schools say that eating disorders occur most frequently in single-sex environments where weight loss is the constant topic of conversation.
Size-zero models are undoubtedly part of the problem too: you have only to look at the creepy pro-Ana(rexia) and pro-(bulim)Mia websites to see how the girls pose like super-thin models. And although gossip magazines justify themselves by running articles about who is too thin as well as stars showing the occasional bulge, they encourage an obsession with weight. So do some mothers, who are always on diets themselves – or even, like myself, go on one briefly.
Whatever role home life may play in causing an eating disorder, parents play a crucial part in making the situation worse or better. From talking to the school nurse, the B-eat helpline and other mothers whose daughters have similar problems, I know that I made certain mistakes.
I should have talked openly about what was happening sooner, when my daughter started preparing separate meals for herself. Once I realised that she had crossed an invisible line into becoming obsessed by food, I should not have become angry, upset and confrontational – though it’s hard not to.
Providing factual information would have been a better response. My daughter didn’t realise she was heading into dangerous territory until she learnt that sleeplessness, feeling cold, constipation and mood swings, many of which she complained of, are symptoms of under-eating. Nor did she know that the long-term consequences include hair loss, infertility, osteoporosis and poor vision.
Whether because of the therapy or a better understanding on all sides, the situation has calmed down. If my daughter is unhappy about something, she often refuses to eat, or has a boiled egg instead of a meal, but she’s put some weight back on and she looks and feels much better. Providing she’s not starving herself, I’ve allowed her to be relatively independent in her choice of food. She’s learning to take responsibility for herself and I’m learning to back off – but it has been a painful experience.
http://adimg.sv.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=AD&Date=20080622&Category=ART&ArtNo=28483
Caroline King
Many specialists say eating disorders develop out of a need to be in control when life is uncertain. iStockphoto.com
A year ago, on a family holiday, I saw my 15-year-old daughter in a bikini for the first time in several months. It was a shock: her hip bones stood proud on her concave stomach and her bust had all but disappeared. I realised that she had an eating disorder.
My suspicions were confirmed three times a day at meals. We were on a luxurious hotel barge touring the Venice lagoon but, while the rest of the family tucked in to delicious feasts, she refused all puddings and pasta and often could only manage a small amount of protein and vegetables.
As her mother, of course, I was engulfed not just by worry, but by guilt. An eating disorder is an advertisement of unhappiness, a cry for help. It’s a very public way for someone to show that they have so little self esteem that they literally want to fade away.
Whenever I see painfully thin young women – and occasionally young men – I assume, as I suspect we all do, that something is horribly wrong with the family dynamics. Often it is obvious. In the case of the 21-year-old Allegra Versace, who battles with anorexia, it is easy to imagine that a murdered uncle (Gianni) and a mother (Donatella) who has admitted to a drug problem – not to mention the pressure of a large fortune – have made her life emotionally complicated. Nearer to home, I have friends whose daughters have suffered: in one case the father disappeared when she was small, leaving the mother in a state of great financial anxiety. In another, the girl’s mother died and she now only eats if her father is with her.
Death, divorce, illness in the family – all these problems can lead teenagers to flee into the strangely all-enveloping cocoon of an eating disorder, women who have escaped the trap tell me. But how come my daughter was in this state? Ours is, apparently, a normal two-parent family with all the usual squabbles and stresses but nothing that I would view as out of the ordinary.
On a straightforward level, I could see how it had happened. Three months beforehand I had embarked on a much-needed diet, cutting out carbs in order to deflate the spare tyres of middle age. Since my daughter had been hitting the Krispy Kreme doughnuts with some vigour in the preceding months, I didn’t discourage her when she said she would join me in cutting back on sugar and starchy foods. Cutting out bread, pasta and rice did me a lot of good. Even with a bit of cheating, I lost a stone and felt much better. She, however, followed the same rules with the rigour of youth and a perfectionist personality and lost three stone from a body that started off within the normal weight range.
I viewed her state as simply the result of “over-dieting” but that wasn’t possible once she went back to school. After the holiday, the change in her was so apparent – and alarming – that several teachers immediately contacted the school nurse, who told me to go straight to the doctor. When I told my daughter she sobbed; she confessed that her periods had stopped and she was frightened because her hair was falling out.
“Eat a bit more,” I suggested.
“I can’t,” she wailed.
Our doctor referred her – and indeed the whole family – to an eating disorders clinic run by our local hospital. There we were interviewed by a psychologist while other clinicians observed from behind a one-way mirror. It was an unnerving experience. Since then, my daughter has been going for counselling sessions once a week.
Is this too dramatic a response? I’m not sure. It’s good for my daughter (indeed, any teenager) to have someone outside the family to whom she can speak about the issues in her life. In her case I think they are: wanting to be attractive and successful in a competitive school, and sibling rivalry. However, I’m not sure that the focus on her food intake is beneficial. When we stay with relatives and food is plonked in front of her, she eats normally, I think because she’s not self-conscious. But I feel that the therapy sessions encourage her to think constantly about food so she has something to say at the next meeting.
Specialists would probably jump in and say that eating disorders have nothing to do with food. It’s true, they are about feeling in control of one aspect of your life when so much else – boyfriends, exam results, future career – is uncertain. But they are also about being slim.
My daughter is by no means the only girl in her school to be conflicted about food. Each lunch time, she has told me that they scrutinise each other minutely to see who is eating what and who is putting on or taking off weight. Several of them have come to parties at our house and, having gorged themselves, gone off to make themselves sick.
Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of B-eat, the eating disorders charity (which provides a helpful leaflet and runs a helpline), opposes the view that anorexia is “catching’’, like flu, but my spies in other schools say that eating disorders occur most frequently in single-sex environments where weight loss is the constant topic of conversation.
Size-zero models are undoubtedly part of the problem too: you have only to look at the creepy pro-Ana(rexia) and pro-(bulim)Mia websites to see how the girls pose like super-thin models. And although gossip magazines justify themselves by running articles about who is too thin as well as stars showing the occasional bulge, they encourage an obsession with weight. So do some mothers, who are always on diets themselves – or even, like myself, go on one briefly.
Whatever role home life may play in causing an eating disorder, parents play a crucial part in making the situation worse or better. From talking to the school nurse, the B-eat helpline and other mothers whose daughters have similar problems, I know that I made certain mistakes.
I should have talked openly about what was happening sooner, when my daughter started preparing separate meals for herself. Once I realised that she had crossed an invisible line into becoming obsessed by food, I should not have become angry, upset and confrontational – though it’s hard not to.
Providing factual information would have been a better response. My daughter didn’t realise she was heading into dangerous territory until she learnt that sleeplessness, feeling cold, constipation and mood swings, many of which she complained of, are symptoms of under-eating. Nor did she know that the long-term consequences include hair loss, infertility, osteoporosis and poor vision.
Whether because of the therapy or a better understanding on all sides, the situation has calmed down. If my daughter is unhappy about something, she often refuses to eat, or has a boiled egg instead of a meal, but she’s put some weight back on and she looks and feels much better. Providing she’s not starving herself, I’ve allowed her to be relatively independent in her choice of food. She’s learning to take responsibility for herself and I’m learning to back off – but it has been a painful experience.