Hi. My daughter is 17 and boarding at a local college doing her A-levels. She has always been weight and excercise conscious but only over the last few months, during the summer holidays and festival months, her weight and eating has noticeably become a concern. Within a week of her going back to school I get a call from the house mistress which wasn't a surprise. To be honest I hoped it was going to get better and she'd snap out of it once back but no change.
We sat down, the 3 of us, I cried, the house mistress has said she will be keeping checks on her weight and eating but my daughter is refusing to acknowledge there is anything wrong. Checks are in place but because, based on her statistics and what an NHS BMI chart states, my daughter who is painfully frail at a 18.5 BMI insists she is fine and within healthy range which I can see she is not. I managed to take her out for dinner but she hardly ate and continually complained of being cold and tired.
Any guidance or advice on what I can/should do would really help as I just want to make her realise before things get worse.
A helpless, worried mum
Written by
Meg2000
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Meg2000, My heart goes out to you as I also feel helpless and am consumed by worry for my daughter. Believe me they will get worse if she doesn't get the help she needs as soon as possible. Anorexia is a monster that just keeps taking and taking until there is nothing left but a shell of what once was my daughter.
Seek professional help for her while she is 17 and under your care. The house mistress may be able to direct you to the proper doctors and therapist who can address this serious issue. If you wait for your daughter to realize she needs help, it may then be too late. I wish your daughter well and I wish you strength. xx
Thank you. I will speak with her house mistress to see what steps I need to take. I am scared because my daughter is going to hate me for doing this and I'm worried I am going to push her into something worse. But yes I can't leave it and just hope it goes away and she realises one day that it is the right action.
contact a GP - get an ED referral for your daughter - also ABC has loads of info and help on their website - also a parent support line you could ring. Don't wait - but please do seek specialist help for your daughter now - my story is long and painful - but if at 17 I had got help things could have been so different - we all refuse to see our problem as anorexia is very powerful - it will be a battle to get help - but perhaps the school could support you in this. Good luck
Sorry to hear of your distress. I have been suffering the same with my daughter all summer. It is not just the BMI that should be considered but also the rate at which your daughter has been losing weight. If weight loss is too fast it can cause the heart rate to slow and reduce blood circulation, hence the feeling cold and tired. It sounds to me that your daughter is in a dangerous condition and you should take her to the doctor and insist on an intervention. A person in this state cannot get better on their own or with the advice of their mother/house mistress.
I'm sure of this as my daughter was hospitalised last Friday. I had tried everything and the more I tried the less she ate. I was terrified of her reaching the point of going to hospital, but now she's there I'm so relieved that she is getting help. If this service is not available to you she at least needs to see a psychiatrist once or twice a week for a few weeks and a nutritionalist.
Yes, you are very right. This disease is a deceiving monster that from the surface looks like a helper that will quickly and easily give young girls and boys self confidence as they become as slim as models, where as the consequences of it are more than you think. As a result of having anorexia only for about 4-6 months, i developed
arrhythmia which I have been having since 2012 till now. As a result of that I get heart pains and my pulse is irregular. I use medication daily but thanks to God, I am still strong and healthy and able to do all kinds of exercise. It's just that if I don't take the medication, the symptoms kick in and start affecting my health. My stomach also became more sensitive to certain foods and I have developed some food allergies I didn't have before. I also have some joint pains that might be as a result of lack of calcium because I can't eat any dairy products. There for I might have osteoporosis. However, this information is not certain as the research on my personal health is still going on. But I know and I believe, that anorexia that I had a few years back is partly reflecting in my life right now and I deeply regret that I starved and tortured myself in such a dangerous and unhealthy way. If my story can be there to warn, help or even save someone's life, please share it. It will make me so happy.
Thank you for your advice and sorry to hear you too have gone through the same. My daughter is seeing a dr this week and I have asked them to do a health check as well as start counselling. Fingers crossed this can get things progressed in the right direction.
The most important thing is to help your daughter acknowledge how serious anorexia/bulimia is and how serious it can get in a very short time. Showing pictures, videos and documentaries of people who are going through eating disorder can help her visualize the reality and the intensity of the disease. What a lot of parents tend to do is just to push their children to "eat eat eat." This only oppresses them more and can create a distance between you and your daughter which might cause her to isolate herself. She will try to avoid seeing you or talking to you. She might try to avoid breakfast, lunch and dinner time at home so you won't even have a chance to talk about food or eating. It's also possible that the pressure of the parents can actually motivate the child to fast and lose weight even more. Once a stubborn teenager makes a decision to lose his/her weight, it's very hard for anyone to stop such person from achieving his/her goal. Most times people with eating disorders are not over weight, they only think they are. You as a mother, together with your husband and with the rest of the family, assisted by a doctor should try your best to convince your daughter that she's perfect just the way she is and she doesn't have to lose weight to change herself. With the right kind of diet and exercise, she can get the shape and the looks she wants. Since her attitude towards food has changed, ask her why? Does she have a new idol she physically wants to imitate? Is she bullied in school? Or is it just the normal insecurity every teen faces at a point in life? When you find the main source of the problem, it's easier to destroy it. Just make sure she is never alone. When you are alone with your thoughts, those bad thoughts will feed the disease only more. With the family's and friends' love and support, she will get through it! <3
Thank you for sharing your past experiences and providing useful guidance. I am going to support as best I can along with professional help so I really hope this makes a difference in changing her mindset on this horrible disease.
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