LivLuvAndBootlegMusic said:
I'm relieved by your concern b/c a girl in my building has the worst case of anorexia I have ever seen (and I've been into gymnastics since I was 8) and everytime I look at her, I feel like her parents should be charged with negligence and abuse. I pray that when/if I have a daughter of my own, I'll never become so blinded by denial as to let my own child starve.
You can make an anonymous phone call; your state's child protection services may be able to help her before it's too late. Her school should have picked up on this as well but these days you never know.
It's frightening all around.. some parents are in denial and some actually cheer the poor kid on, as others have mentioned happening to them.. some parents have so much badness going on in their own lives they can't see what's happening to their kids...
...or love their kids so much that they believe them when they say "if you take me to the doctor I'll run away and you'll never see me again"...got called to a 911 for a young girl, maybe 15, weighed less than my 5-y/o does now, in cardiac arrest from her eating disorder, while we were busting our asses her mother was shrieking that "she wouldn't let us bring her to the doctor, she wouldn't let us help her". that's been haunting me for
years. that woman was so afraid of losing her child, that she ended up letting her slip through her fingers anyway..
If I ever do think I see the beginnings of an eating disorder in my child, she's going to sit down and have a long talk with my friend's brother Jesse who's been fighting the disease for several years now, who's had to have multiple hospitalizations for his blood chemistry approaching the same as that of the girl we got called to, the anemia and electrolytic imbalances that just suddenly make it impossible for your heart to pump, and in a breath you're gone...
...I hope he is still here, and happier in his own skin, by that time. I hope I never have to arrange this meeting. I hope that somehow society can turn some of this assault on our young people's self-images around...