by Deirdre Reddan

There are many difficult things about being a parent or caregiver to a loved one with an eating disorder. There are many difficult feelings to navigate – terror, anxiety, fear, frustration and sometimes even anger.

And one of the hardest things to do when you’re caring for a loved one is to help your child to eat, a skill that you developed soon after they were born, and performed with aplomb – up until now.

All of a sudden, something that was so easy (most likely) and joyful, something that embodied ‘family life’ is filled with fear, anxiety, worry and, sometimes, anger.

When mealtimes come around, we feel like we’ve lost all our previous confidence in our skills as a parent. We’re walking on eggshells, terrified that we might say the wrong thing, that we’ll increase our loved ones anxiety – and we generally do, on both counts.

This fear and lack of confidence is made even worse by engagement with the professionals who will often tell you ‘just go home and feed your child’, without any instructions or guidance around what to do.

You know what, if it was that easy you’d be doing it already!

So what are the 3 key things that we can do as parents and caregivers to make mealtimes easier?

And what are the pitfalls that we sometimes fall into?

1. Keep any discussion of food, weight and body shape away from the dinner table.

When I was given this advice a number of years ago, I suddenly realised how much and how often we talked about food at the dinner table!

It was an important part of our dinner conversation and, in common with lots of others struggling with an eating disorder, my daughter loved (and still does love) food.

What I came to realise, though, was that all this talk of food – what calories were in the meal, whether it would make her gain weight, whether it was good for her – were not helping.

For her, all of this talk was only making her anxiety even greater. What we thought was helping absolutely was not.

So what do you do instead?

Any talk of food (what’s for dinner etc) should be kept away from mealtimes.

Try and meal plan with your loved one away from the dinner table. It might help them to know what’s coming up for dinner, it might not. Experiment with it – and ask your loved one what helps them most.

Try and keep mealtimes as calm as you possibly can – distract with family jokes, idle chatter about memes you received during the day, listening to music, doing puzzles or board games). They probably won’t listen much to what’s being said but they will know it’s not anxiety provoking.

And if your loved one is neurodiverse and prefers wearing headphones, or using fidget toys, that is absolutely fine.

2. Focus on the blue balloon:

As parents, our initial focus (and panic, understandably) is on the eating disorder illness, the red balloon, (thanks to https://newmaudsleycarers-kent.co.uk/ for the brilliant metaphor!).

We want them to get better, to get help, to start feeling better, to eat.

But we have to also remember that they are still there, they are the ‘blue balloon’.

So how can we help to blow up the blue balloon or enhance their sense of self , which likely is at an all time low?

We can validate and acknowledge their feelings.

We can recognise that this is hard for them, that we know they’re doing their best, and that we’re here with them.

We can help them to focus on their life beyond the eating disorder – their hopes and dreams for the future. We can let them know that we still have the hope that this life will happen for them.

And this can be a motivation for recovery.

In my case, we had photos of my daughter’s university up around the kitchen to help motivate her at mealtimes. Did it work? I hope that it helped, even a little.

3. Check in with yourself:

Zuzanna and I know, from the work that we do (and from personal experience), the toll that supporting a child or loved one with an eating disorder takes on a person.

And the research is increasingly backing this up.

We can (very understandably) become overwhelmed and emotionally dysregulated ourselves. We can be dreading mealtimes, worrying will they eat, what will we do if they don’t.

And, unfortunately, this anxiety can carry across to them, making it even harder for them. (We don’t do this on purpose, there’s a lot of emotion involved when it’s a family member).

So how do we avoid this?

We practice a lot of self-compassion – and self-care.

We check in with ourselves before mealtimes. If we feel that we’re not in the right place to provide support, is there someone else who can?

Can we take it in turns within the family to support mealtimes? (There should only ever be one person providing vocal support at mealtimes).

And if we find that we become very triggered during mealtimes (for whatever reason), it is perfectly ok to call a ‘time out’ and leave the table and take a few minutes to ourselves – to scream into a pillow, to run cold water on our wrists, to ground ourselves through breathing.

Even a few minutes away from the table can allow us to calm down and become more of a swan , calmer on the outside even if all the emotions are still going on inside.

Yes, we know that it can all feel overwhelming and too much.

But don’t be afraid to experiment, to try out a few of these tips.

And if you’d like our guide to ‘Meals that Heal: helping your child to eat, even when they don’t want to’, just click on the button below!

And please do let us know if these tips have helped, or if you have any others that you found helpful, by posting in the comments below!