 Hello, welcome back. Today, I'm answering a question that one of you sent me through my YouTube channel I really love it when you send me questions and you give me ideas for videos that you'd like So please do that you can do it by leaving a comment below Or contacting me via Twitter or email or have you may wish? So the question which I got sent was from a parent who said I'm really worried that my child might have an eating disorder And I don't know how to start the conversation and what to do next This is really hard and the first thing I want to say is if you're in this situation Your child is so lucky so blessed that you care the fact that you are looking for support Wondering how to have the conversation is like just amazing and in terms of the Likelihood of good sustainable long-term recovery when a young person has an eating disorder One of the biggest factors is family support. So first of all, just thank you for caring And sorry, this must be really hard But yeah, so how do we start the conversation? So the first thing is that we Don't want to just barrel into this in kind of a big Accusatory way about food. So generally when people are worried that their child might have an eating disorder It's because they've noticed something around there, you know, the child might have lost weight They might not be eating as much as usual. You might suspect they're binging or purging So these kinds of behaviors and it's not great if we go straight in so it's sort of leveling accusations essentially This is likely to be something that your child feels really sensitive about and if they haven't spoken to you about it yet Then that will be because they don't know how to start the conversation. They're not sure what to say They're worried you'll be angry or upset or scared And so we need to kind of respect that and actually have a more general Open supportive kind of conversation Hopefully, you know as parents we try and foster that kind of relationship with our child generally and We look to Provide that kind of supportive listening, but it can be hard and particularly sort of during adolescence Or if our child has become more and more withdrawn, we might not have had these conversations so much So trying to engineer situations where kind of your child feels able to kind of open up and look for your support I'm making it really clear that you're there over a little period of time can be helpful things like car journeys can be Give for this if you've got dog go walking together Just doing things together try and drag your kid into doing the washing up and drying up with you those things But you're kind of doing something rather than this, you know face-to-face So generally thinking about yeah providing a supportive atmosphere for talking is important So yeah, don't start off with accusations about food. Don't jump straight in with I'm really worried You might have an eating disorder. This might or might not be something that has even occurred to your child And the difficulty with eating disorders is that if we're suffering with an eating disorder we can become Either ashamed of that or quite protective of those behaviors or we can be completely blind to it So it's really not unusual at all for people who are very very unwell with anorexia, for example Just to not acknowledge at all The kind of gravity of the situation and the danger that they're in they can absolutely often find ways to justify that behavior So yeah going in with the food thing generally isn't a very good way of doing it It can tend to alienate and can just make the conversations very hard And actually what you want to do is to be kind of working on this as a team and offering sort of support Next thing is yeah thinking about when you might have these kind of conversations So plan for them plan when you might have this chat think about when it will be calm and quiet when you have enough time to listen And when you're having the conversation if you manage to get your your child to open up a little bit Then your key job here is to listen and to let your kid know that there's nothing They can tell you that's going to make you love them less less that you love them Unconditionally you're really really willing to support that you are worried about them And you've noticed that things aren't quite as normal for them lately You might pick up on other things so you might say oh, you've seen you're not spending so much time with your friends lately Or you know you seem a little bit sad and down or whatever it might be those other things that you've picked up on And just kind of giving them you know the chance to begin to open up about that But yeah remembering and reminding them that you love them regardless There's nothing they can tell you and then trying to make sure that you're calm and supportive in your response This can be really hard because if your child does begin to open up to you about something like an eating disorder It can be so distressing to hear and sometimes it can make us angry It can make us sad we can be overwhelmed with a range of different feelings And that's something we need to be prepared for too the best response We can give is a calm and supportive one and so planning for that conversation Preparing for the sorts of things we might hear and then actually just doing our very very best to try and be the listening non-judgmental supportive ear whilst our child is talking and then perhaps Finding another outlet for all those range of feelings that we might be feeling afterwards talking to a friend talking to a partner Drawing writing whatever it might be that works for us. It's really helpful to try to be kind of yeah Just be that supportive listener The other thing is that you might see a range of emotions coming from the child as well So it's not just you who's going to go through this gamut of emotions This is going to be a difficult conversation for your kid to so be prepared for the range of emotions They might have and they might be anything from extreme sort of sadness to guilt to shame to anger And this might not be a conversation that happens just once You're likely to need to kind of open it up and come back to it and come back to it and come back to it and through providing That kind of consistent supportive calm listening no matter what is thrown at us by our child Then that's how we begin to kind of gain that trust The other thing we need to be prepared for is that for lots of young people When they are struggling with something like an eating disorder then the person that they choose to confide in might not be a parent So it might be that they're already talking to someone else or it might be that we can help to identify another Trusted adult in their life that they can talk to this is really hard because as a parent We would like to think and hope that our child will talk to us first if there is something that's bothering them And we really want to help them oftentimes However, a child often finds it hard to talk to their parents because it's so emotive They're so worried that their parent will be horrified by what they hear So often they find it easier to talk to someone at school or another trusted adult in their life This is where people like god parents or aunts and uncles can really come into their own So the other thing you can do is either talk to your child and say, oh, you know Would it be helpful to talk to Auntie Jane? Maybe you guys could go bowling or something or something like that Or you can talk directly to Auntie Jane and say, oh, you know, I've been really really worried about Max lately He seems really withdrawn. I'm not sure, you know, there might be something going on with with food They seem to be over exercising or whatever it might be any chance that, you know You guys could go out and just see if he might open up to you a little bit and kind of create Situations so that your child might open up to another adult And if your child does choose a different adult than you then that is Usually not a reflection on you other than that It's that they care too much about how you are likely to respond and feel And they they might worry about worrying you which It feels completely misplaced because usually we're very worried anyway And we feel much better if we were somewhat involved in the situation But we do need to learn to respect that we need to sort of enable and empower our child to have those conversations With an appropriate adult and accept that sometimes it might not be us The other thing that can be really helpful to do as a parent is to Kind of do our research so the best place for that with eating disorders is the beat website So beat is the leading UK eating disorders charity. I probably hazard actually it might be the leading eating disorders charity in the world So they now have a new website, which is fantastic both for sufferers and those who care for them They've got helplines for sufferers and helplines for carers There's lots of information on the website and there are also things like support groups So that you can talk to other parents who are in a similar situation and through their forums and things like that Which is really helpful The final thing I would say is if you are the parent of someone who is struggling with an eating disorder Or you're otherwise worried about their mental health then the very most important thing you can do above all else is to look After yourself. It's really stressful emotionally and physically draining to Be caring for someone who has an eating disorder or another mental health issue And our role in supporting is hugely important and we're completely unable to do that if we ourselves are running on empty So we need to think about where are we turning for our emotional support? How are we looking after ourselves physically and mentally and what do we need to do to enable ourselves to also have a break from this? Because it can sometimes feel a bit relentless. I hope that gives you some useful starting points It's not easy It's not an easy conversation to start and it might take a little while before you find that your child is willing to open up about this As and when they do then the best next steps would be to go and visit your GP together If your child is happy for you to accompany them and your GP will be able to advise What support might be accessed the other thing you can do is to go and have a conversation with someone at school And often they'll be really well aware of the different pathways that you might take And good luck I hope that if you're watching this video you found it helpful and that empowers you a little bit to have some useful conversations with your child And sorry, this is probably a really scary time But something I think it's really worth remembering the kind of silver lining here is I talked to lots and lots of families who've been through this and Lots of them talk about how it was very difficult in the beginning and perhaps in the middle But the other end their relationships are often stronger than they ever were before and the young person who has been through Difficult times like an eating disorder or other mental health issues often as they work through the process of recovery They come out more resilient than they were before and better equipped for things like going off and independent living at university so yeah, hold out hope and Yeah, make sure you look after yourself. 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