Expert: Ryan Hale - 3/17/2010

Question
My question to you is: I have a 13 year old daughter. She currently lives with her Father in a different state (I live in Florida and He lives in North Carolina). She comes her regularly on Holidays,etc. I have observed over the last few years her eating habits. Her Father on a regular basis is constantly monitoring both of my children's food intake. My son is 10. My daughter is around 102 lbs, size 2, 5'3". My son is about 89 lbs and about 4-4'5". Both children are healthy and active in activities. My Daughter is a competitive Cheerleader and has done some track. My Son plays soccer.
My concern is that when they come to my house. Their Father tells them that they are not allowed to eat certain foods and he will weight them when they get home. He says they gain weight when they are with me. He is constantly telling my Daughter that she is fat. We do eat regular 3 meals a day plus I allow them to have some healthy snacks between meals. Their Father doesn't allow snacks during the day. My Son states he is only allowed one snack a week during school hours and if he gets 2 snacks a week he will loose the opportunity to get a snack at school the following week. When they are with me, they do want to eat all the time. I have caught my daughter almost ransacking the house looking for something to eat and when we do eat, especially at home, she will eat until everything is gone and then some. Within an hour or two she is looking for food again. Now I am unsure if she is looking for food in the middle of the night. She does run into the kitchen when we are not around and hides in her room to eat whatever she finds, even though she is not allowed to eat in her room.
My question is, should I be concerned or is this just a teenager thing. Their stepmother is anorexic, but then again I was when I was married to him. Is there something I can do when she is here with me if this is an early sign of an eating disorder.. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
April-  wow, you have cause to be concerned, I would even go as far as to suggest getting legal help with this.  I'm not a nanny-alarmist type, in fact I'm pretty conservative and believe parenting decisions should be made by parents and the government and child-social services should have very very very very limited roles.  With that said, this sounds like a real problem.  

As I was reading through your email, I kept thinking to myself, "I wonder if these kids eat like they are starving when they come to visit you."  Then I got to the part where you said they eat like they are starving!  I'm not sure what sort of nutrition expert your ex is, but as a sports medicine and sport psychology expert, I find it difficult to understand limiting the caloric intake of athletic kids with energy needs for their activities.  I give lectures on this to high school students all the time.  The caloric breakdown looks like this:  600-800 calories just for brain function; 600-800 calories for their activity, and nearly the same for the body to go through maturation and puberty.  Of course those numbers are for teens and young adults, but you get the picture.

It does not surprise me that his new wife is anorexic or that you were too for that matter.  let me ask you this, was your marriage situation based heavily on the appearance of having the perfect family?  Were you all supposed to be like the Brady Bunch or something off the Donna Reed show, all the while I'm predicting that there was chaos behind closed doors.  Was he emotionally unavailable to you and the kids?  Saying the right, fatherly things but with no warmth or emotion?

The implicit messages can contribute to eating disorders as much as the explicit ones and are just as likely to cause a problem.  I would also like to point out that eating disorders have a higher rate of death than depression or all other mental disorders.  Nearly 1/3 of those with eating disorders will die, another 1/3 will relapse again and again with a large number of them dead within 10 years.  You could fight this fight now, or fight the battles of depression, debilitating eating disorders, the treatment revolving door, and long term health consequences later.

If you were my counseling client and told me this story, I'd call social services myself.  You would likely need to have a psychologist do an evaluation that concluded that there was a problem before the court would step in,  But, that might be a road you want to start going down soon.