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Eva Musby
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Anorexia and other Eating Disorders: how to help your child eat well and be well: Practical solutions, compassionate communication tools and emotional support for parents of children and teenagers Kindle Edition

by Eva Musby (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

This is the 2025 updated version.

The most effective treatment for eating disorders is family-based, and parents play an essential role. Yet most struggle to know what to do and how to do it.

With a wealth of practical examples and tips that have helped many tens of thousands of relieved parents, Eva Musby guides you through each stage of your son or daughter's recovery. She provides solace and confidence, while addressing the real-life questions that parents struggle with.

The practical and emotional strategies in every chapter rest on up-to-date knowledge distilled from published research, from families, and from therapists worldwide. These pages will boost your effectiveness with an excellent treatment team, and will also help you succeed when you don't have access to cutting-edge care. With her lived experience and that of the hundreds of parents she has coached, this book will empower you to be effective right away, from the first successful meal all the way through to recovery.

  • Make meals work in spite of your child's resistance
  • Deal with distress, inflexibility, exercise compulsion, bingeing and purging
  • Don’t stop at weight-restoration – skilled support all the way to recovery
  • What to say and what not to say in difficult situations
  • Actively support your child all the way to recovery and prevent relapse
  • Recognise the treatments that work and the ones that don’t
  • Grow your own emotional resources

This book is recommended by experts on family-based treatment (FBT, or 'Maudsley'), the evidence-based approach recommended by all major health institutions. It is used by parents and clinicians alike.

CONTENTS

1. How this book can help you
2. How does an eating disorder affect you and your child?
3. Your part in diagnosis
4. Treatment: the essentials
5. What parents need to know about the causes of eating disorders
6. Practical steps in a first phase of treatment
7. How do you get your child to eat in spite of the eating disorder?
8. See the tools in action: mealtime scenarios
9. Free your child of fears and rules with exposure
10. The work towards full recovery and independence
11. Partners, friends, family and work: help or hindrance?
12. Which treatments work?
13. Powerful tools for well-being and compassionate connection
14. Love, no matter what: how to support your child with compassionate communication
15. How to build up your own resilience and wellbeing

Note: If the eating disorder you are dealing with doesn't involve food restriction, some of the practical tools might not apply to you. Most of the emotional ones will.

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  1. Print length
    440 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Accessibility
    Learn more
  4. Publication date
    November 6, 2014
  5. File size
    7.9 MB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
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  8. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Eva provides families with tools and compassion to confidently and lovingly begin the process of helping their teens recover. This supports the work that we are doing with families in FBT"

Dr Lauren Muhlheim, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Psychologist at Eating Disorder Therapy LA; Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED); core course instructor for the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP); author of 'When your teen has an eating disorder'

"At last, here is a book written for parents, by a parent, which offers priceless insights from those who have gone through this horrible illness with their children and come out the other side. Parents who read this book are arming themselves with practical skills and unique perspectives that only a fellow parent can provide. I strongly recommend this book to all parents who are facing this daunting illness in their child."

Dr Sarah K. Ravin, child and adolescent psychologist specializing in eating disorders

"Parents are starting to understand the WHY and the WHAT they must do when a loved one has a restrictive eating disorder, but Musby does what no one else does: shares the HOW. Parents need solid tools, tips, and problem-solving. Open any page in this book and you'll find a bit of the hard-won advice that parents around the world are teaching one another."

Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, founder of parents' online community F.E.A.S.T., activist writer and author of 'Eating With Your Anorexic'

"I recommend Eva Musby as a valuable source of emotional support and advice. Her personal experience is combined with an expert knowledge of the illness and treatment, as well as the compassion needed to support you to be firm with the illness, but empathic when your child is distressed."

Sam Clark-Stone, Lead Clinician at Gloucestershire Eating Disorders Service, UK; Member of The Clinical Board Of Advisors at BEAT

"I keep 2 copies of this book in my office at all times so I can lend it out and/or highlight certain sections. It is one of the most practical, well written 'how to do this terrible job' books I have seen yet. Parents and care givers will love all the great tips and all the ways they learn to cope. Clinicians will also learn a lot about how anorexia 'acts' which is crucial to being a well informed and effective clinician."

Therese Waterhous, RDN, serving as expert to FEAST-ED and the Academy for Eating Disorders

From the Author

Eva Musby's daughter was struck by anorexia age 10 and she spent almost a year in hospital, simply because she could not eat at home. The expectation was that parents could eventually become effective supports for their child at home, and this is in line with the best evidenced treatment nowadays: a family-based approach.

But nobody would coach the parents how to do it. How do you get someone with anorexia to eat? What do you say when they're upset, terrified, violent even? How do you not make things worse? And how do you get your child to complete recovery?

This is the gap that Eva now fills. With her daughter's setback age 15, followed by recovery, she regularly updates her resources based on personal experience, on current research and on the growing know-how of parents and professionals worldwide.

Eva Musby produces a whole range of resources for parents of children and young people with an eating disorder. There's her website, YouTubes, a vast audio collection of tips, and she runs online workshops. Her book is recommended by therapists and parents all over the world.

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Eva Musby

Eva Musby

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Eva Musby produces resources for parents to support a son or daughter suffering from anorexia and other eating disorders.

She offers information, practical tools and emotional support, through her book, website, videos, trainings and individual parent coaching.

This is based not only on her own experience as a parent, but on scientific evidence, a wealth of knowledge from other parents all over the world, and expertise from treatment providers committed to evidence-based practices, in particular Family-Based Treatment (FBT, Maudsley, FT-AN).

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