 Today I'll be answering a question that I get asked a lot, it's going to be a really short video but hopefully really helpful one to help you understand at what point you should become concerned about a young person in your care. Now the question that people ask me is when should I begin to worry and at what point do things cross over from being healthy to unhealthy behaviors? Now we're thinking in particular here about things like at what point does a diet turn into an eating disorder? At what point does healthy exercise become an exercise obsession? At what point does self-harm go from being part of a kind of a group or trend or copycat type activity to a really unhealthy coping mechanism for a young person? Now I can't answer the question perfectly for you every time and you're always going to need to use your judgment to a certain extent but two rules of thumb that I have are going to hopefully be quite helpful for you here. Now the first one and this sounds like a really funny thing to say but the first one is if you removed that particular behavior that you're concerned about are you otherwise concerned about the young person? Are there other warning signs here that things might not be okay? Are they perhaps more lethargic than usual? Are they not turning up on time? Are they kind of not looking after their appearance as they used to? Are there other warning signs that things with them have changed? Have you otherwise seen change? So that's number one. Number two is this behavior whatever it might be whether it's diet whether it's exercise whether it's self-harming in some way is this something they can pick up and put down or is it the kind of behavior that they absolutely wouldn't be able to manage a single day without? So if for example you're worried about a young person's exercise routine if they were to go on holiday then with the first thing they'd be doing would be thinking how am I going to get my exercise in while I'm on holiday? Does the hotel have a gym? Or taking the food example if a young person is participating in a diet but it's their birthday would they have a slice of cake? Now the point at which things cross over and they become quite obsessional and young people are not able to tall to manage without using those behaviors is a point at which we would begin to be really concerned. Of course if you've got any concerns about a young person it's always better to have the conversation than not and to let them know that you're there to listen if they if they need to talk and that you're not going to be judgmental about anything that they might choose to tell you but hopefully those two rules of thumb will help you to disambiguate a little bit about when you should worry and when perhaps things are not such an issue. I hope it was helpful really short one from me today please take a moment to like or comment below with your suggestions ideas comments feedback and also please subscribe to the channel I'm trying to do a new video every day at the moment so if you subscribe then you'll get alerted as and when the new stuff comes out. I'd love to hear your ideas for other things you'd like videos on questions you like answered um yeah let me know and I will do as many of them as I can I hope you're finding these helpful thank you and goodbye