Anorexia: An Early Warning Sign of Eating Disordered Behavior - Part Three

You don't want your child to feel like she has a hawk for a parent.
However, there are things you can watch for if you start having concerns about your child's eating behavior.
When kids begin to eat less; their brain chemistry changes.
For one thing their brains are still developing and they need good nutrition for this development to continue.
Lack of nutrition can impeded normal brain development and this is obviously a concern.
Another way the chemistry can change is you may notice depression and irritability.
Depression can look different in adolescents than in adults.
Adults you will tend to see low mood, lack of energy and motivation, sleeping, etc.
Adolescent depression can actually appear more like anger and irritability than depressed mood.
This is why we can miss depression in teens because it doesn't look like the kind of depression we normally imagine as adults.
You may also see your child start to isolate.
Usually when we think about adolescent withdrawal we imagine her coming home from school and heading straight to her room.
If you're lucky you'll get a "Fine" when you ask her how school went.
Isolation with an eating disorder often has more to do with avoiding temptation of food or conflict around food.
If she is out and about you are more likely to want her to eat something.
If she is locked in her room she has a sense of safety.
Even if you approach her it's still more on her terms.
She can yell at you to leave, slam the door and feel more in control.
The other thing her room can symbolize is she has a place for her secrets.
Often a girl's room is where she will binge, barrage herself for having natural hunger pangs and sometimes even purge.
Once the secret is out that your child is purging in the bathroom she has to find other ways and places in which to purge.
As gross as it is to those of us who do not have an eating disorder; she may throw up into paper bags, Ziploc bags she has hidden away, anywhere she can get rid of the evidence later.
Her isolation from friends is similar.
It isn't that she doesn't want to be with them; but teenage girls tend to eat when they get together.
This is too much temptation and too ripe for guilt and shame if she gives into the temptation to eat.
It is just easier to stay home and avoid the risk.
Here's the good news! When she starts getting more nutrition it is only a matter of weeks to a month that you will start to see depression and isolating behavior decrease.
The brain is an amazing organ and when fed properly it will rebound and emotional regulation will return.