Customer Reviews

The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders: Supporting Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating, and Positive Body Image at Home

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When I was struggling with anorexia and bulimia, my family felt lost. They did not know what to do; they did not know what to say. They felt like they were walking on eggshells around me.

I wish that "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders" had been around when I was battling my eating disorder. It would have benefited both my family and me immensely. This easy-to-read book not only gives hope but also provides real guidance for finding a full recovery.

As a recovered individual and a professional working in the eating disorder field today, I highly recommend "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders" to all parents, patients, and professionals dealing with this illness. Unlike other books, the authors give a full spectrum view of eating disorder treatment, including the life-saving Maudsley approach.

With "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders," there is no more walking on eggshells!

- Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too (McGraw-Hill)

This book is a must for all parents with a child with an eating disorder. Only after understanding the disorder and the way it is influencing your child you are able to understand and help your child. In addition it gives insight in the disorder and relieves the stress you feel as parents. Please, don't hesitate and buy this book. It's so helpful for parents and inherently their child with the eating disorder !

Childhood and adolescent eating disorders are as complex as they are wide spread among the youth of today. Now parents have a practical, comprehensive, effective, and 'user friendly' instruction manual on how they can help their children to overcome (and even avoid) any category of eating disorder through a home-based recovery with "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders: Supporting Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating, & Positive Body Image At Home" by Marcia Herrin (Founder of the Dartmoth College Eating Disorder Prevention, Education and Treatment Programs) and writer/author Nancy Matsumoto. This newly updated and expanded second edition of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" includes four chapters devoted to the Maudsley approach, the highly successful, parent-assisted method for normalizing eating behavior. Of special note is the first-person account by the mother of one anorexic child who describes her daughter's recovery using the techniques developed by Dr. Herrin. Other sections of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" focus on family communications, the medical consequences of eating disorders, advice for siblings, relapse prevention, food plans, and boys who are at risk for an eating disorder. Informed and informative, "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" is a very strongly recommended addition to family and community library Health & Medicine reference collections in general, and Eating Disorder supplemental reading lists in particular.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the author's advice on nutrition. Dietetics is her field and I'm willing to accept her expertise there. But most parents are able to feed their recovering child with general guidance from their family-based treatment specialist and a pediatric or adolescent medicine specialist with ED experience. Interestingly, although the authors cite research on family-based treatment, she neglects to mention that those studies did not include nutritionists or dieticians--they were not part of the treatment. If Herrin called her program "Dietician-Centered Weight Restoration" it would more accurately reflect the intervention she describes, with expert information handed down to parents who are meant to act as enforcers.

When we were helping my daughter recover our treatment providers didn't give us a meal plan but rather helped us think of the eating disorder in a different light (as something separate from our daughter, not an expression of her will), they helped us work together to get the job done, they kept us focused and helped us to stay strong and not give up. It was a very difficult period for my daughter but we stayed as positive as we could. Throughout, we emphasized our love and respect for our ill daughter, as did our providers. This set the stage for later treatment when we talked about independence and getting back to normal teenage life. The book gives little attention to these important later aspects, perhaps because they aren't dietary in nature and fall outside the author's area. I was puzzled by the author's suggestion for "concurrent therapy." FBT isn't a rejection of therapy--it's a TYPE of therapy, and weight restoration is just the start. This point seems to have been missed by the authors.

Perhaps I took this too personally, but the presentation of parents using FBT was very much at odds with my experience. The authors write, "Under no circumstance is it acceptable to let their anger boil over into physical aggression." WELL, OF COURSE NOT! At it's heart FBT is a compassionate treatment for anorexia that rests on a foundation of family love and respect. To present parents as stopping just short of violence gives an entirely wrong picture of what it's about.

This is a comprehensive and well-written book that will help parents navigate a vast amount of complex information about eating disorders. It clearly explains the various eating disorders and provides concrete information about treatment, about supporting children at home and in treatment, and about how to foster a positive body image at home.

The risk every parent must be aware of is the propensity of some to reinforce eating disorders under the guise of therapy. The "plan" presented becomes an effective ruse for the patient to ensue secrecy-- a key aspect of EDs.

If you are a parent confronting an ED for the first time, demand to know (from a qualified HCW) what the range of healthy weight is for the patient and do the math yourself. If the "plan" given states calories must equal X, yet the calories expended is greater than X--weight loss is inevitable. The refrain from the patient will be "I am following the plan" and the struggle will continue between parent and child

I found it insulting not to be told the weight range or even given the basis of the "plan" knowing full well what the caloric expenditure was. A common rule of thumb is that one lb of body fat = 3500 calories. If activity is also not limited, it's easy to figure you can stick to the plan while starving yourself

Be an active consumer, avoid those who cannot provide a scientific basis for their treatment or tie physiological output to caloric input.

Look elsewhere-more harm than good will occur.

This is the best book for parents I have seen on the market. Info rings true according to my experience with treating hundreds of patients.

Eating disorders seem to be epidemic, especially among young women, and this book offers sensible advice to those struggling with body image and those who love them. It questions some of our dangerous cultural assumptions, acting as an antidote to the toxic beliefs that are poisoning us. Every parent concerned about a child's eating habits should read this book! Based on years of clinical experience, Ms. Herrin's analysis is profoundly simple and applicable to the world in which we really live. I wish I had read it sooner!

The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders contains an excellent section devoted to PAMS, or Parent-Assisted Meals and Snacks. I cant tell you how valuable and necessary this information is for a parent implementing the Maudsley approach to an eating disordered child. The author discuss the importance of monitoring and "forcing" your child to eat, what you should serve, how to deal with food fears, and what to expect. Nothing is sugar-coated, there is actually an example "Jessie's Story", in the middle of the chapter that provides support and encouragement. They stress the importance of being as loving as possible and give real advice on outlasting the child's resistance and not giving up. This process, sitting with a child, arguing over calories and trying to get them to just eat, can be so frustrating,and the authors help parents provide a united front and find the courage and strength within themselves to bring an end to their kid's ED. Any parent thinking of using the Maudsley method would find this book an invaluable resource

If you're a parent looking for information on family-based treatment (also known as the Maudsley approach), don't buy this book. Herrin has taken some of the principles of Maudsley and adapted them in ways that are contrary to both the letter and spirit of true Maudsley treatment. Much of the advice dispensed here is the same old conventional "wisdom" on treating eating disorders.

Herrin's "adaptations" of the Maudsley approach are often way off the mark. For true Maudsley information, read Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder by Daniel le Grange and James Lock.

--Harriet Brown
Co-chair, Maudsley Parents
www.maudsleyparents.org