children dieting/anorexia

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I know she is restricting water intake as well. I dont know if she is blacking out. Im seeing the psychologist at camhs on friday and I will bring it up with her and Im seeing some specialist psychologists on tuesday and will bring it up wiht them also.

I shall try getting some pictures and films about big women. I have a whole fridge of different nuts but the kids are not tempted by them.

I understand that eating disorders are psychologically based disorders, and need to be treated psychologically. The problem is, they have very serious medical complications. If the people you are seeing this week do not seem to recognize that there is a potentially urgent, or even emergent medical issue involved, in addition to the psychological underlying issues, I urge you to have your daughter seen by a medical doctor, in order to check on her medical condition. Her electrolytes could be off, as well as other things. If her medical condition is poor, she could be telling you that she understands what you are discussing, but she may not be able to process properly what you are saying.

if she needs to see a pediatrition, the camhs worker can make a referal, she will get help quicker going through them than the GP as the waiting lists are so long but the CAMHS psych can bypass that as they have pediatritions on their team. If the camhs wont do anything this time I will go to the GP.

I agree with jat completely in stressing the urgency of it from a medical point of view.

It sounds like you are taking on board whats being said, I know it must be very worrying for you. Until she sees the doctor is their any little thing she could not resist? From a dehydration point of view, ice pops made of fruit juice perhaps? Ice cream? I'm sure you've thought along the lines of tempting food. I wish you all the best, and just take heart in the fact that you've recognized it, she is so young so chances of a full recovery good, and you're acting on it now.

(with respect to the suggestion I am about to make) I'm not sure if this would help or make things worse, but once there is a diary, you can also look up calorie values and compare that to what someone of her age and size needs to eat. Basically using math to show her that she isn't overeating.

I'm really wondering if a certain amount of the worry is also genetic. It could be in part just how the women in the family have portrayed it over the years, but somehow my kids don't worry about weight at all, even though they do know that I am overweight and not thrilled about it. My kids naturally practically live on air, and we've talked a lot about instinctive eating, and how my pattern when I was born was to eat very little, but it freaked my parents out (I have memories of sitting at the table trying to eat cold food after being totally full; I eventually lost my "full" instinct and now am constantly hungry). We've talked about how volume isn't as important as content, how the body will self-regulate if you are eating the right foods, and so on.

Perhaps your daughter needs to understand that if she does not eat at this age, she may actually increase the chances of having weight issues as an adult. A body that had been deprived during key developmental stages will turn on a famine defense, which makes it use the food it does get more efficiently, making it easier to overeat.

But, ultimately, eating disorders are thought to have little to do with food at all. It is, instead, about control. An anorexic is not proud of their skinny body as much as they are proud of their ability to control their desire for food, control what the scale says, and so on. The more out of control the rest of their lives seem, the more important it is to them to have control over food and their bodies, with goals like eating only 200 calories a day, or finally dipping the scale below 85 pounds. They are setting goals and conquering the forces that pull against accomplishing those goals; they are proud of themselves for having the control to achieve these goals. That need for a sense of control must be addressed to resolve the problem.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 16 Nov 2010, 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am just now reading Tony Atwood's book on Aspergers, and noted that anorexia is not uncommon for girls with AS; if you google the two words together you'll get a huge number of hits. Here's an article I found interesting: http://www.suite101.com/content/asperge ... ia-a110610

I would do your food diary, and take it with you to the doctor. Good for you for seeing it, and catching it so young - scary stuff.

i would have to say this is not a dietary or education issue. if shes had some upheavals recently, losing a father figure for instance, that could certainly trigger it. it doesnt matter how much she knows about nutrition, its unlikely that she can "just eat more" at this point just by someone telling or asking her to. its definitely a good idea to keep a log of her food intake and make this a priority at her ped visit.

when i said about the food diary, DW, i meant without her seeing it, i agree it would be counterproductive if she knew about it.

My "help or make things worse" note was about my comment following the disclaimer, not about your suggestion. Sorry I didn't write that very well.

As an aspie woman who had an eating disorder for 12 years, starting at about age 13 I'll just relate how my mind worked at the time in relation to what you have said.
I'm wondering what is on the television and what types of magazines might be around - I was very influenced by what was portrayed by the media as "beautiful and acceptable" and this was thin then and still seems to be, it also seems that popular media seem to gloat in catching the "beautiful people" looking less than perfect and focusing on these imperfections in their articles. I think, due to my AS, that I took things more literally and so I truly believed that if I wasn't thin I wasn't acceptable - period.
I also didn't like the idea of growing up - I wasn't comfortable with being able to handle increased attention from males, I think I may have tried to delay growing up by restricting my food intake for this reason also.
Due to your relationship breakup she may think all sorts of things - if you focused on the weight as being a possible reason then she may be scared of losing relationships if she is considered heavy.
Food/drink was something that was within my ability to control when lots of other things were seeming to be out of control in my life at the time, so I chose to control what I could. Could this also be a possibility for her, are there a lot of things going on in her life right now that she feels she has no control over?
Could someone at school have made a remark to her that caused her to focus on weight and getting fat?
I agree with Jat that this needs to be taken seriously and I hope that your appointment tomorrow goes well. Is there any possibility that you could phone and speak to the therapist ahead of time about your concerns and what you are observing?

she isnt coming to the psychologist, they just see me so as to be less stress for her, so I dont need to phone first.

Ive asked the school to help write a food diary, so hopefully they will.

Ive started putting her food in tupperware pots and she is prefering that and eating a bit more, she already had a devided plate but I thought extra pots might help as she often fusses about the food 'touching the air' too long.

Hopefully the camhs will have some helpful suggestions tomorrow.

I was put on medication to get me to eat again at one point and I still have very restricted eating. How much of this is related to an eating disorder or just sensory issues, I don't know, but it's probably both.

I do know eating disorders are more common in autistic girls, apparently, because of the routine and obsession aspect of it and often low self-esteem. If I knew of some cure for it I'd tell you. I like the feeling of hunger sometimes, because I can't feel it a lot of the time under normal circumstances.

We have the opposite problem, but it's kind of the same...

DS won't eat the healthy stuff and is getting fatter and fatter. If I just say no, he refuses to eat and then has big meltdowns as his blood sugar drops. anyway, what is helping us is some pretty yummy protien shake stuff blended with frozen berries and orange juice.

For us, this is a way to sneak those nutrients in. For you, it could help with calories too. At only eight, it seems like you could require some sort of drink a couple of times per day.

I agree with everyone that this is a big problem (and I just read that bit in the Tony Attwood book too), so i don't mean to say that a shake will solve anything, but it may help a little.

I saw the psychologist and she has suggested giving her smaller meals but more often so for example the evening meal split into two and offered 2 hours apart. The psych thinks its a combination of the stressful events and worrying about growing up. The psych says I should start doing preperation for puberty activities so she doesnt think growing up is so threatening.

school have said they wont do a food diary as they dont have time but will insist she eats something before they let her out. Im very pissed off at this as it is the opposite of what I want them to do, I bet she starts throwing up her dinner next!

I will ask the other pyschologists Im seeing on tuesday as well.

Tell her that healthy people come in all shapes and sizes. Show her pictures of the three body types: Ectomorph, Mesomorph and Endomorph. Tell her that as long as she eats healthy and exercises that no one body type is better than the others.