Parents

Children under 11 can present a wide range of other food difficulties in addition to the classic eating disorders. These include:

• Food refusal
• Restrictive eating
• Selective eating
• Food phobia
• Food avoidance emotional disorder

These difficulties are not all well understood and are commonly misdiagnosed. It’s important also to remember that many children will experience difficulties that don’t fit neatly into one category or another, but these classifications will help you to gain some understanding of the range of behaviours you could encounter.

Food Refusal

• Food refusal is commonly found in pre-school children, where the refusal of food can be used as a way to get other things.
• However, this can persist in slightly older children, where the main feature is an inconsistent refusal of food.
• These children will tend to eat their favourite foods without any problem at all.
• They may refuse food only when they are with particular people or in a particular situation – for example, refusing to eat at school but eating normally at home.
• Worry or unhappiness underlies the food refusal in many cases.
• These children are usually of normal weight and height, and this problem does not usually pose a threat to the child’s health.

Restrictive eating

• These children eat smaller amounts of food than they should do for their age.
• Their diet will be normal in terms of the range of food eaten and the nutrients that it contains.
• These children are often thin and their height tends to be low, but otherwise they generally seem healthy.
• It almost seems as if restrictive eaters are ‘programmed’ to eat less and to be thin but healthy.
• Often, other members of the family will have a history of the same pattern of food intake.

Selective Eating

• The most obvious feature of this condition is the narrow range of food that is eaten. This can persist for months or even years.
• These children are very unwilling to try new types of food.
• The behaviour of these children is usually normal, unless they feel that they are being forced to eat a wider range of foods than they feel comfortable with.
• Problems may start to occur when the child is about eight years old because the selective eating causes difficulties over going to birthday parties or staying at a friend’s house.
• Children who eat only a restricted sugary diet may also have problems with their teeth.
• The weight of these children does not give much of an indication as to whether there is a problem – they may be of low, normal or high weight.

Food Phobia

• These children are usually very resistant to eating and drinking, which can cause a great deal of concern.
• They may avoid foods that have certain textures because they are frightened of swallowing.
• They are usually frightened of choking, gagging or being sick, and some children say that eating and drinking hurts. This means that meals often turn into a battleground.
• Some children may be fearful and anxious of eating new or disliked foods.
• The majority of these children do, however, seem to grow and develop because the food and drink that they will have provide enough calories and nutrients.

Food Avoidance Emotional Disorder

• These children often wish that they could eat more and are concerned about being thin.
• The loss of appetite is usually associated with depression or anxiety.
• In food avoidance emotional disorder there is a more general disturbance in behaviour that does not centre on food and mealtimes.
• The child may experience a loss of appetite, problems with sleeping, poor concentration, tearfulness and a general sense of hopelessness.
• These children may actually say that they feel sad, and this sadness can be seen in their posture, the way they move, their facial expression and their tone of voice.
• They also may avoid school and contact with their friends, and want to stay at home.

In addition to this, some under 11s will also suffer with one of the three major eating disorders – anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder. These are all very serious conditions which are worth understanding despite their relatively low prevalence with this age group as early intervention is key with these children to ensure they make a full and lasting recovery.

If you’d like further support, I can provide bespoke face to face training to help you sport and support eating difficulties in younger children. I can also provide one to one consultancy via telephone or skype. Email pooky@inourhands.com or call 07590446791 for further information.

There is a whole language around eating disorders that sounds like Greek to a lot of us:

Pro-ana – website that promotes anorexia

Pro-mia – website that promotes bulimia

Thinspiration / Thinspo – images to inspire weight loss

Fitspiration / Fitspo – images to inspire exercise / body building

In this post we’re going to consider pro-ana and pro-mia sites, who uses them, why they’re dangerous and what parents and schools can do to decrease they’re impact on the young people in their care.

What are pro-ana and pro-mia sites?

Pro-ana and pro-mia sites are websites that promote anorexic and bulimic lifestyles. Set up by people with eating disorders looking to validate their illness and seeking suppo

rt to continue with their eating disorder from fellow sufferers these sites vary hugely in their precise content. They are often a forum for people to exchange pictures and weight loss or purging tips and to encourage one another’s weight loss.

Who uses pro-ana and pro-mia sites?

These sites are often a refuge for people suffering from eating disorders. It’s common for sufferers to feel quite isolated having pushed away their family and friends preferring to seek out like-minded individuals online. There are over 500 such sites and the latest studies predict that they attract more than 500,000 unique visitors a year of which the majority are teenage girls and one in five are aged between six and eleven. Read the rest of this entry »

If the school becomes aware of a pupil’s eating disorder before the parents then it’s important to invite parents on board to work with you to support their child’s recovery.

Once you have overcome any objections from the pupil, you should aim to organise a meeting with the parents as quickly as possible.

This post looks at how to organise the meeting and how to ensure it runs effectively

Think about location

With the help of the pupil, decide where the meeting should be held – at school, in their home or on neutral territory. You should do whatever you think will make the pupil, and their parents, feel most comfortable.

Who should attend?

Obviously the pupil and their parents should be present, the pupil may also like to bring a friend along for support and you might decide to have a couple of different members of staff present – for instance the head of pastoral care and the pupil’s form tutor. Again, you should check with the pupil about what they’ll feel comfortable with and try not to set up a scenario which will be too intimidating for the parent.

Read the rest of this entry »

It can be difficult to know what to say when you’re talking to someone with an eating disorder, especially if you’re discussing the eating disorder itself. Many of us fear that using the wrong words will make things worse and it’s common to shy away from saying much at all. But if you put yourself in the shoes of the sufferer you’ll realise that would make for a lonely existence. There are things that you can say that are useful. Here are a few…

“How can I help you?”

It’s really, really hard to know how to help someone with an eating disorder. Maybe you’ve been wracking your brain to no avail. Well here’s a secret… the best way to find out is to ask them. This can be a real conversation starter and you’ll be amazed at some of the suggestions you’ll get back, anything from, “Sit with me when I eat, but please don’t talk” to “Don’t pretend there’s nothing wrong with me” to “Just keep asking, it’s helpful to know you care.” Don’t ask unless you’re genuinely willing to help and support though. Read the rest of this entry »

If a young person chooses to talk to you about their eating disorder, it’s a real sign of trust and it demonstrates that they’re ready to be listened to. The most important thing you can do is provide them with the opportunity to talk. No one expects you to know all the answers, but simply by actively listening you’re doing a really important job.

This post gives you a few ideas to make sure you’re listening as effectively as possible.

Make sure there’s no time pressure

A pupil will have to build up quite a lot of courage to have a conversation with you about their eating disorder, so if you suddenly have to dash off to do lunch duty after five minutes it can really shake their confidence. Although you may legitimately need to be somewhere else, the eating disorder is likely to make the pupil interpret the situation negatively and assume that you aren’t interested in what they have to say or you don’t want to help them or are disgusted by them. Read the rest of this entry »

You wouldn’t ignore a broken leg - please don’t ignore eating disorders either

There are several reasons why it is advantageous to detect, support and treat eating disorders cases as early as possible and to help you understand them I’ll bring you back to my trusty broken leg analogy.

If a pupil had a broken leg and it went unnoticed and untreated, a few things would happen:

• The injury would cause pain and suffering in the short term
• The injury would prevent the pupil from participating in sport and athletics until it was treated
• The pain of the injury would distract the pupil from their academic work and make them less inclined to socialise
• The injury would worsen, perhaps healing incorrectly, meaning that there might be a need for more serious intervention in the long term such as an operation or a long course of physiotherapy
• The pupil may never fully recover from the injury, perhaps being prone to further breaks, or being left with a limp

And it’s almost exactly the same with an eating disorder. Like a broken leg, if it’s picked up right at the start and treated appropriately, the chances are that the pupil will make a fairly quick and full recovery, but left untreated, the impact of an eating disorder both short and long term worsens. Read the rest of this entry »