I’m worried that my teenage daughter may have an eating disorder
Iam worried that my daughter is anorexic. She’s only just turned 15 but has an almost obsessive attitude to food. She never eats breakfast, and while I provide a packed lunch for her every day, I am not sure she eats it. In the afternoons after school, she is usually cold and tired and it’s a struggle to get her to eat an evening meal. And when she does, she complains all the time that I give her too much and that she needs to be on a diet.
She’ll will often pick around the food until it gets cold, or eat and then disappear from the table soon afterwards to the bathroom. I am sure she is doing this to be sick, but she denies this too.
She says she hates how she looks and that her friends in her social media group agree it’s the right thing to lose weight. I keep telling her that she’s already lost some weight and doesn’t need to diet, but she will not listen.
“She says she hates how she looks and that her friends in her social media group agree it’s the right thing to lose weight
When she last let me see what she weighed, she was eight stone and that was last year. Judging by how she looks now, I am sure that she’s under seven stone but she won’t tell me.
I am really scared that she is making herself ill but just don’t know what to do for the best. Supportisoutthere
You are right to be concerned. However, it may be too soon to label her as anorexic.
What concerns me more is the influence of her social media group that seems to be encouraging this behaviour.
Please contact
Beat Eating Disorders (beateatingdisorders.org.uk) for information and guidance on how best to help your daughter. Initially, this may be nothing more than gathering some information and leaving this for her to read. Hopefully, it will persuade her to consider the possibility that she has a problem and let her know where she can get help.
Write to Fiona Caine c/o Hollie Busby, The News, Technopole, Kingston Crescent, North End, Portsmouth, PO2 8FA or hollie.busby@nationalworld.com Fiona regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence, nor pass letters on to other readers.