Does anyone with experience of parenting adopted teens have experience and wisdom to share about eating disorders, drastic weight loss etc.
Our lovely 13yo (Sweetpea for those who remember us of old) is anxious and struggling and has drastically lost weight this summer. We are doing all the right things re intervention - going to GP, taking advice from ED charities, being honest about our concerns but trying not to put too much pressure around food, modelling healthy eating and social eating etc.
I'm just a bit uncertain as she's due to start some one-to-one post adoption therapy it's taken an AGE to arrange that is all around her anxiety, low self-esteem and insecurity, and I'm pretty sure that the eating behaviours have arisen from all of this understandable turmoil that comes with being an adopted adolescent. In short, I want to nip the eating problems in the bud rather than entrench them. I'm not sure I want her to take on the label of having an eating disorder.
For those who do remember us, she's actually doing brilliantly if she could but see it: lovely young person, in mainstream school, teachers only have good to say as she tries so hard, has friends, has hobbies, copes really well with having a younger sibling with more complex needs and behaviours, and ASD, who behaves terribly around food. (I am describing a teenage girl who acts in and is trying so painfully hard to be perfect, I realise, so of course at risk of EDs....)
