You’re worried. Your doctor tells you your child’s reluctance to eat and weight loss is just a phase. That you should just wait and see. But you know something’s wrong. You’re afraid its more serious than that. You’re afraid your child has an eating disorder.
Trust your gut, according to Daniel Le Grange, director of the Eating Disorders Program at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“Too often physicians tell parents that it may be just a phase, that they should wait and see what happens,” Le Grange told US News. “Parents are nine times out of 10 spot on in their thinking that something is amiss. The sooner you recognize and diagnose the disorder the better the chances of recovery.”
So how do you recognize a problem? Here are five signs that Le Grange and other experts say may indicate your child is at risk:
1. Weight loss or lack of expected gain. In growing children who are already at a healthy weight, loss of even 5 to 10 pounds warrants concern. Its far too easy for parents and doctors to ignore the potential problems lingering behind children who are losing weight or just not gaining what a growing kid should be gaining. If your child didn’t gain the weight they should have at their annual check up, insist that your doctor pay attention, rather than simply being pleased that they aren’t a victim of the obesity epidemic.
2. Sudden change in eating habits. Most children change how they eat over time without developing an eating disorder, but Le Grange advises parents to watch for extreme shifts that are out of character. Look for a child who suddenly no longer wants a favorite food, swears off whole food groups without explanation, regularly insists they’re not hungry in order to skip meals, or habitually abandons school lunches at home without evidence that they’re eating cafeteria fare. New ritualistic behaviors, like cutting food up into obsessively tiny pieces or drowning it in ketchup, that slow down normal eating, or mask a lack of consumption, are also red flags.
3. Significantly increased exercise or activity. It’s easy to notice when your kids are sacked out in front of the TV all day, but overactivity is difficult to detect. If you’ve already got an athletic child, focus on making sure they’re exercising for fun, not to burn calories.
4. Distorted body image. Teens and tweens often say things like, “I’m so fat” and “I hate my stomach.” So do their parents. Watch out for obsessive mirror gazing and overly unreasonable body complaints. If a stick thin teenager repeatedly tells you they feel fat, you may have a problem on your hands.
5. Anxiety. According to the American Journal ofPsychiatry, two out of three adults with eating disorders struggled with anxiety when they were children. Given the level of pressure kids can be under with sports and school and part time jobs, it can be hard to figure out what is normal anxiety and what is out of control. Watch out for inexplicable emotional outbursts that go above and beyond teenage mood swings – if it doesn’t feel normal, it might not be.
Most of all, pay attention to your kids. Whether they’ve got a brewing eating disorder or not, a few more minutes of your attention every day will do them good!
