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Parents Told Not To Feed Daughter

January 20, 2005 -- Eating With Your Anorexic - How My Child Recovered Through Family-Based Treatment and Yours Can Too

By Laura Collins



Foreword by James Lock, M.D.

Associate Professor and Director of the Child and Adolescent

Eating Disorder Program at Stanford



A source of hope and information for parents of children with eating disorders. Set to publish just before Eating Disorders Awareness Week,

February 27-March 5, 2005. www.eatingwithyouranorexic.com



Olympia Collins - brilliant, athletic, fun-loving, engaged, informed - went from obsessing about food to fearing food - to barely eating at all. Realizing that her daughter was suffering from anorexia nervosa, Laura Collins went in search of answers as to why this was happening and how to stop it.



Eating with Your Anorexic (February, 2005; Hardcover, $19.95) is a poignant and informative narrative relating how one smart, gutsy, terrified family defied the "experts" and treated the girl's life-threatening anorexia at home, inspired by a controversial technique known as the Maudsley Approach. This home-based, family-centered approach, developed in Great Britain in the 1980s, is the standard of care in that country and is now rapidly gaining acceptance among parents and within the pediatric and child psychiatric communities in the United States.



The Collinses based their approach on growing evidence that eating disorders are brain disorders, not an issue of teenage expression or life dysfunction. They took responsibility for feeding and caring for their ill daughter at home - against the advice of most American eating disorder specialists. During a year of re-feeding their daughter, they were attacked by other parents, left to defend their actions against a hostile treatment community, and abruptly fired by their daughter's therapist (who kept Olympia in treatment for weeks on end, on the assumption that she would eventually reveal a history of abuse). Their daughter, however, thrived and survived, after home treatment.



Beautifully written from a parental point of view, this book is a must-read for parents of anorexic children. It offers clear descriptions of the reality of living with an anorexic, the history and economics of mental illness treatment, the chilling and destructive forces on a family dealing with both illness and an alienating treatment system, and an essential question all parents ask themselves: How can I do better for my children



Eating with Your Anorexic is:

- The first book that covers the controversial Maudsley Approach to treating anorexia

- A source of practical information and guidance for parents of children with eating disorders

- An eloquent narrative that inspires, empowers, and informs



This book is a furious, sometimes funny book of madness, science, and recovery. It should give hope to parents - and pause -- to those who still cling to outdated ways of thinking about eating disorders.



About the Author:

Laura Collins is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in a number of magazines, including iParenting.com Skirt!, Adoptive Families, Potomac Review, and others. She lives in the Washington, DC metro area



"You don't believe me, do you I know what you're thinking.

"You can't make an anorexic eat." When we rejected - and were rejected by - the traditional and available route of anorexia treatment, we had to fall back on a very authoritarian lifestyle - we say it, you do it. Luckily, we were qualified. Neither of us had parents who tried to be our best friend: they were loving parents, they knew best - or at least had the car keys. This is a very unpopular style of parenting now among our peers, and it wasn't our habit, but we sure could do it when needed.



Samuel was Ward and I was June and that was that. Critics of our family's approach called it "force feeding," but I call it "supported nutrition." And remembering the fear that Olympia showed at the beginning of her illness, we operated under the belief that she needed our complete confidence and our absolute authority, to be able to trust us. We promised to feed her, but not everfeed her. Like a girl in the middle of a windstorm, she mostly followed the sound of our voices, trusting, even in her terror, that we would not let her down." (Pg. 85)



Eating with Your Anorexic

Pub Date: February 2005

ISBN 0-07-144558-7

Hardcover, $19.95



For galleys and interview requests, contact:

Ann Pryor, Publicity Manager

McGraw-Hill Companies

2 Penn Plaza, 11th Floor

New York, New York 10121

212.904.4078 tel

212.904.4091 fax



Parent to Parent

What I'd Like to Say to You Over Coffee

(and a Slice of Baklava!)



- Take the time to recognize and accept that an eating disorder is serious and life-threatening. It is not just going to go away.

- For the present, and for a long while to come, life must be structured around the recovery, and not the other way around.

- It's not your fault. It's not your child's fault. What counts is how you react, not how you got there.

- Treat the disease as an alien parasite that can be overcome but is not to be bargained with.

- Food is medicine. The prescription is full nutrition, consumed and digested, every meal of every day.

- It's not negotiable. Similar to insulin levels for a diabetic and chemotherapy dosages for a cancer patient, the amount a healthy body needs to eat is not negotiable. Do not bargain, do not given in.

- Don't wait. Every meal, every day, all your life, starting right now.

- Declare an anger-free, guilt-free, shame-free zone in your lives. Live there.

- Do not give shelter to starvation, malnutrition, purging, self-harm, depressed, thinking, or meanness. Make your home a safe place to be healthy.

- Weigh lightly. Weight is an imperfect and tricky measure of health but up or down trends have meaning. Do it rarely, and randomly, and avoid making a fuss.

- Set boundaries and maintain them. Do not allow the disease to rewrite history, rule the present, or set terms for the future.

- It is not forcing them to eat, it is letting them eat and live.

- Consider the family as a whole in making care decisions.

- Listen, but you don't have to agree.

- There is nothing to argue about. Period.

- Be specific about your needs. "A casserole a week." "Babysitting while we go to the therapist." "Listen to me cry."

- Surround yourself with people who support your family and your decisions. Listen to them.

- Believe in your family, flaws and all. Trust your bravest instincts if the advice you hear does not fit.

- Love your child all you can, with every parental muscle you have. Feel free to hate the disease, however.

- Eat together. Allow your meals to be a celebration, a priority, and not an extra chore. Enjoy shopping, cooking, eating, and cleaning up together. Lose the things that get in the way.

- Eat with your anorexic.

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