Podcast Transcript

Episode 52: Where’s My Roadmap? Parenting a Child with An Eating Disorder with Jane Reagan, RDN, CEDS-C, MEd

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley, and you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Sam: If you have a child who is battling an eating disorder, you know how difficult the road to recovery can be. Many parents wrestle with their own intense feelings of guilt, fear, shame, and constant worry throughout the process. Many parents are desperate to know what caused this horrible disorder and what will it take to fix it. They can feel completely lost in this new world without a map in sight. Parents usually learn early on in the treatment process that eating disorders are highly complex psychiatric disorders, and there isn’t one thing that causes them. The healing process goes far beyond just food or weight. And yes, these are the facts, but they usually aren’t a comfort to parents who just want to know what to do and what to say to help their child recover. The facts also don’t help parents feel less alone.

Our guest today, Jane Reagan, knows firsthand the panic a parent can feel when their child is diagnosed with an eating disorder. We invited her on the show to talk more about an online program she developed for parents titled the Eating Disorder Recovery Roadmap for Parents. She created this program, including an online supportive community, to help connect and empower parents with the knowledge and tools to actively contribute to their child’s healing and recovery. Jane isn’t just a parent, she’s a registered dietitian nutritionist and a certified eating disorder specialist with a master’s in counseling degree. Jane passionately believes in the transformative power of food and that understanding food choices, food quality, and one’s relationship with food can lead to greater awareness and improved health.

She regularly helps individuals navigate inaccurate nutrition information and understand from a non-diet approach, the impact of their food choices on their mental, emotional, and physical health with a food first philosophy that is complimented with evidence-based practices that prioritize optimal nutrition. Jane’s nutrition expertise covers eating disorders, digestive health, food allergies and sensitivities, blood sugar management, metabolic health, and much more with a focus on optimal nutrition. Jane particularly excels in helping kids and parents overcome eating disorders and disordered eating. Keep listening to learn how parents, when given the support and the tools that they need, can play a crucial role in their child’s recovery.

Sam: Welcome back to another episode of All Bodies, All Foods. I’m Sam, your host. I’m here with our other host, Ashley, and we are very fortunate today to have our guest on the show, Jane Reagan, who is a registered dietitian, and she is known for helping parents navigate the journey of helping their child with an eating disorder.  I feel so grateful to have you on the show, Jane. Thank you so much for being here.

Jane: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here with you guys.

Sam: Jane, I would love to learn more about you. I’ve spent a lot of time on your website, just fascinated with this program you created, this roadmap, the Eating Disorder Recovery roadmap for parents. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had parents that are just like,” just tell me what to do. Where’s my roadmap, right?” I was on your website and there was something that stood out to me on there. You said that you understand firsthand the pain, the panic and despair a parent feels when watching their child battle an eating disorder. How has this lived experience helped inform your work?

Jane: Great question. I would say the lived experience has really given me a up close firsthand view of what this is like versus being in a provider’s shoes. It’s given me more empathy, more understanding of what a parent goes through. In addition, being in private practice for 15 years, working at a university, the University of Colorado at Boulder for 10 years, I saw and interacted with so many parents that were distraught, that were so worried, ones that lived close, ones that lived 2,000 miles away. “What do I do?”  Just not having any information, not having the resources. And it’s a different lens to look through, like for me for being a parent versus being a provider. A provider, obviously providers care deeply about their clients, right? But there is a bit of a detachment, right? There’s a bit of a clinical lens that you look through. Whereas as a parent, the lens you’re looking through is one of deep personal connection to your child, right, that you love and that is going through this change and you don’t understand and you’re scared. It’s a worry factor, right, like parents worry. And that’s what I got so much from parents, of their worry and not knowing what to do- what to say. There’s the impact on the family, on other siblings, on finances. There are communication challenges, there’s all these things as a parent. There’s continuous caregiving that goes on, and just the daily involvement with your child, whether your child is living under your roof, or they’re away at school, or they’re living somewhere else, right? The parent is so impacted. And I think years before it was believed that parents don’t really make a difference so much, right? But I think that’s really changing. And yet we know that parents do make a big difference in eating disorder recovery. And I would see this where, you know, one of my clients would have a certain experience with their parent that where it was making such a difference and the child was really responding so well. And then I would see situations where it didn’t go that well, right? And so I started just seeing over and over like, wow, parents really make a difference, but yet parents don’t know what to do, and it’s complicated, right? Like eating disorders are hard, hard, hard, and it’s complex. And so, you know, there’s a lot that parents can learn out there. So I thought, “well, I’m a parent, I’m a parent of four kids, and I’ve been a provider for all these years.” And I wanted to put something together that can really lessen the suffering and help parents and help their kids. So that’s kind of how it all came about.

Sam: Yeah, what a wonderful resource. And I just want to add that, I think for a long time, also, parents were blamed for the eating disorder, and what we’ve learned in the field through the years is just, well, first of all, how damaging that is, but how important it is to empower parents that they can actually make a huge difference in recovery and repair any kind of maybe mistakes they’ve made in the past and actually have a stronger relationship with their kid in the end.

Jane: I tell parents that over and over again because they feel guilt, they feel shame and I tell them it is not your fault. There is no one cause of an eating disorder. It is complicated, it is multifactorial. There’s lots of contributing factors. But the important thing is that you can make such a huge difference. And even if your child is keeping you at arms way and doesn’t want  communicate with you, all the kids I talk to really do want their parent to understand. Even if they’re not giving you that message. They want to be closer to their parent. They want them to understand the suffering that they’re going through, because they’re young, we have to forget. Like a lot of these kids are middle school, high school, college, right? Parents are 20, 30, 40 years older and have had a lifetime of experience. These kids are still young and they need the support from their parents. Sam: Yeah, absolutely.

Ashley: Well, Jane, I’m so excited to speak with you as well. Sam and I were kind of talking about this episode and we love hearing people’s stories. We also love hearing how the professionals in our field are connecting with the clients, the folks in need, and how you’re creating essentially these programs to support them. I’m curious, I heard you say,  you had lived experience, you know, you kind of saw some of this firsthand. Is there anything else that inspired you to kind of create this program?

Jane: Yeah. I think that when I looked out there, I didn’t really see any programs. I mean, there was family-based therapy, right, which I have used. And I feel like it’s helpful when a child is younger, where a parent has complete control over everything the child eats, and when they eat, and from every meal to every snack. But, you know, when you get to high school age or college age, right? Like kids don’t want to be controlled like that. It doesn’t work, it backfires. And so then what are parents to do? Like I didn’t see anything out there that, you know, there were like Facebook groups or a little maybe webinar here or there, but nothing really comprehensive. In fact, one of my parents who is in my program, who’s from Maine, has a daughter who has been through several treatments and she would go to all these little parent groups and she joined my group and she said, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much. All the information is in one place.” She said, “this is the best information I’ve gotten anywhere.”  Then she was able to hop on all the weekly Zoom calls and get support from parents. I just wanted to create a community where parents could be heard, because their perspective, their lens that they’re looking through is very different than their child’s. And these parents, some of them are out in communities where there’s no resources, right? They’re isolated more. When I’m talking to these parents, it’s the first time that they’ve had anyone that understands what they’re going through and to hear another parent say, “my child is doing this and this and this.” And they go,” oh, my gosh, that’s what my child is doing.” The tears start flowing, and they’re just so happy to connect. I just had kind of this vision that I want to create something that parents can learn, learn, learn, because it’s so important to learn what this is all about and then become an ally. Not to tell their child, right? Because the child is old enough, but their child has to learn, because in the end, their child is the one recovering, not the parents so much, but the parent, to teach them how to be an ally to their child, to walk beside them, not in front of them, not behind them, but right beside them, to let them know, “hey, I got you. I’m here with you.”  That’s kind of how it all came about, is just wanting to provide that resource.

Ashley: I love that. Does it stretch the gamut of eating disorder work? Does that make sense? Like, can anybody join?

Jane:  When I first started putting it together, it was a little bit smaller. And as I kind of got into it, I thought, well, no, I really want them to know this. And I want them to know that. And it ended up being nine modules. It was eight modules. And then I said, “oh, I have to do one of a module in college because eating disorders are so big in college.” And it’s everything from the nuts and bolts of eating disorders to the actual anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, even orthorexia, to its impact on brain health, to ways to reframe eating disorder thoughts, cognitive distortions, the way social media impacts us, the role of genetics, , the ways that parents can help their child, the ways that parents unintentionally might teach some disorder behavior, what your child wishes you knew, a whole section on nutrition and how to help your child through all of the pitfalls and, difficulties with feeding. And then even a whole module on body image and sports, which is such a big one, and then like how to create their roadmap. Like it was, I actually had a picture of like the game Candyland or Shoots and Ladders, you know?

Sam: Yeah, I was just thinking that.

Jane: That’s how I kind of based it off of where like Shoots and Ladders, you take a couple steps up and then you’re falling right back down. And then, and that’s kind of like this path. With these stops along the way, so parents can start to really hone in on what is it that their child, because although there are similarities for sure, as you guys see, lots of similarities, there’s also individual differences and things that really hit home for one child might not work strategies for another child. And so really figuring out what is it for your child that you need to understand to help them move more readily towards recovery.

Sam: Awesome. Yes, individualizing things is so important. So this is an online program that’s self-paced where the parents can sort of do each module as it fits in their schedule and then move on to the next one when they’re ready.

Jane: Yes, in fact, I’ve had some moms tell me they’ve listened to it over and over, like in the car. The reason I did that is as a busy parent, I knew that I can’t have, you know, a class that’s Tuesdays at five o’clock or something like that. Everyone’s schedule is so busy, and I wanted parents to be able to go to it when they could go back rewind, listen again, so they get these forever, so they have this information. Then there’s other information that’s part of the class, which are the handouts and the weekly calls and the Facebook group. So it’s more than just the modules.

Ashley: So there are weekly calls in a Facebook group.

Jane: Yeah, so I think one of the things that’s really beneficial is the person, the parent who signs up for the program gets four months access to weekly live group Q&A calls. And so there’s a Zoom call. So I have parents from Maine, from New York, from Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, California, and their kids are different ages-some are younger, 13, some are high school, some are college, some are even beyond. They have different things that they’re struggling with- Anorexia, bulimia, compulsive over eating, different comorbidity, some autoimmune conditions, some OCD,  some depression. It’s a chance for us to all come together and talk about what they’re going through, to celebrate the wins, to support them with the things that are challenging and it’s a chance for parents to support one another. That’s one of the things I love is if I can just sit back a little bit and they’re all a wealth of knowledge, all those parents, right? Because they have this lived experience. I think that’s one of the most valuable things about the program is just having this live interaction that supports all that they’re learning through the modules. And I also created 50 handouts that go with the modules. And when I first started, I created like three or four, and then as I went through it, I was like, “oh, wait, no, I need to do one on this one.” Because I know when I go to webinars, I’m really interested, and I think, oh, that’s really great, and I’m going to remember this. And then you ask me three days later, and I’ve completely forgotten it. And so I thought, well, I’m going to take the nuggets of information that are taught and just put it in these really kind of beautifully created handouts so they can just reference that. It’s almost like a little book that they’ll have.

Ashley: Can I ask one more follow up question about this? Would it be appropriate for parents to join kind of at any point with their child in the recovery? Like if it’s new that they’re going to treatment? If they’ve come home for treatment? Can they join it?

Jane: Great question. When I thought of creating the program, I thought, do I do a program around prevention or do I do it like once they have an eating disorder? But actually the program can be used for either. I’ve had people who their child has been in treatment multiple times and I have people whose child has never been in treatment. I have one parent who’s child had ARFID, which is a different kind of eating disorder, right? Tasters, textures, smells, all of that. But was wondering if she was possibly leaning towards anorexia. So she took it so she could be informed more of like a prevention. I have parents whose kids were recovered, and now they’ve fallen back in, they’ve relapsed. So people are anywhere along the line, and it’s actually really helpful if you’re a parent that’s just new and struggling, like to see someone who’s further along, you’d be really hopeful, and because that parent is saying like, “hey, I was right where you were six months ago. And it was tough and I didn’t think we were ever going to get out of that. And we just kept doing it and then something shifted. And now this is better, but I remember we were like that.”  It’s really helpful to see people at different stages. I think if everyone was at the same stage, it would be harder. There’d be no insight of like, “yes, it can get better.”

Sam: It can give people hope that things do change in time, and it’s so interesting. I’m thinking about all the parents I’ve worked with through the years, and one of the first questions I ask them, “what support do you have for yourself?” They’re always a little bit surprised by that, “what do you mean?” This is such a great example of how helpful support can be to parents. It makes them better supports to their child, if they have that community and that support. I know there’s parents probably listening right now and they’re thinking, “okay, well, what’s in the program? I want to know more about this.” And I thought maybe we can just maybe touch on some of the highlights of your program. I know in one of the first modules, the first thing you do for parents is you reframe their understanding of eating disorders, and I thought maybe we can start here. What are some of the misconceptions parents frequently have and how do you reframe for them?

Jane: Yes, oh my gosh, there’s a lot of them, but a couple of them that I hear over and over is that, “okay, eating disorders are just about food and weight, right? Like once my child gets to whatever this weight is, they’ll be fine. They’re cured.”  It’s about so much more than that.  I mean, that’s only what we see as the first layer. It’s about everything underneath. It’s like you look at a weed, right? It’s like it’s the bottom there. It’s  what’s going on for their child. It’s their emotions. It’s what they’re thinking. It’s what they’re feeling. It’s how they’re behaving. It’s experiences that they’ve gone through. It’s maybe things they haven’t even talked about. There are a lot of contributing factors for an eating disorder. So really understanding what this is about, because if we just look at what it looks like we don’t see the full picture. Like there are many faces of an eating disorder, and people often think, “well, my child looks fine. I’m sure they’re fine.”

Sam: Well, yeah, so problematic.

Ashley: I was just going to add that there’s also those myths that like, this is just a phase or kiddos are just doing this, you know?

Jane:  Yes, that was one of the other ones I was going to say, “it’s just a phase, they’ll outgrow it.” It’s not uncommon for people to change their diet, try out a little way of eating that’s different. Sometimes people can do that, kids can do that and it’s not a big deal, right? And then they go on and they live their life. But for people that are falling into an eating disorder, it is not a phase and you are not just going get out of it. I think that there’s some denial that goes on there sometimes for the child and the parent, like, is this really happening? right? Or this can’t really be true. And what we know through research is the sooner that we address the issue, the better the treatment outcomes will be.

Ashley: To kind of piggyback on that, Jane, after you reframe it for the parents and kind of help them understand it’s not a phase, it’s not just about food. You mentioned that there are other risk factors that we might need to look at,  like diet culture. You have a section in there that says, “eight ways parents unintentionally teach disordered eating.” Can you give us some examples of that?

Jane: I’m always really careful and respectful when I talk about this because as a parent myself, right? Like we try to do the best to raise our kids, and we have a huge culture out there around food and there’s lots of information and there’s lots of misinformation and you know we try to teach our kids since they’re young how to eat well, how to eat for energy, right? Like “is this food a food you should be eating? Should you not be eating it?” All of that that the parents try to teach but so often I’ll see that parents will label foods “good” and “bad”, and that’s so much of our society right? “This is good, this is bad.” From that strict diet or food rules can exist, like “we never eat this, this is bad. Don’t ever eat sugar, don’t eat, right?” Whatever it is. The child is taking that in and thinking, “okay, that’s bad, if I eat that, I’m going to be bad. I shouldn’t eat that. I should only eat this.” We start to create this whole narrative around the foods that we should and shouldn’t be eating, and that can lend itself to a relationship with food that’s not very healthy or balanced, and a lot of fear can come out of it, right? Like we shouldn’t be eating that or what’s going to happen? There’s a lot of messaging around weight, and there’s a lot of fear. Sometimes parents will say, “this is going make you gain weight if you eat this.” There is no one food that causes weight gain or weight loss. It is a pattern of eating, but then we become scared of certain foods or certain food categories. Even though as a parent, we’re trying to do our best to educate our child, because we want them to lead the best life and be the healthiest they can, sometimes the way that we’re teaching it can cause all sorts of rules around food that aren’t helpful. Sometimes parents are on their own strict eating plans or own strict diets, and they might be used to saying things about food or about calories or about meal timing or that they don’t realize the child is really taking all this in. We just have to be careful about what we’re saying. Sometimes parents can want to control what and when kids eat and, as they’re getting older, kids have more control over that. I see a lot of parents struggle when their child is older and going out with friends and eating nothing but junk food. Then they’re saying, “oh, you shouldn’t do that.”  They start to become this little war, and parents almost become the food police. That isn’t helpful for kids. There’s just some very gentle ways to kind of reframe this and take a little bit of a backseat. If your child is eating in a way that you don’t, as a parent, don’t feel is beneficial for them, you know, you could even ask them how do they feel eating like that? How’s their energy? How’s their focus? Let’s say they’re not having breakfast, and, as a parent, you really want them to eat breakfast. If you keep telling them you “have to eat breakfast, you have to eat breakfast,” they might just completely tune you out and say, “no, I’m not going to.” But if maybe you ask them, “so how do you feel in the morning when you’re in class? Are you able to focus? Do you ever find that you get grumpy or irritable or do you feel full of energy? Is there anything about that you’d want to change? If you’re not feeling like you have as much energy, would you like to talk about ways that you could have more energy by changing your eating a bit?”  

Sam: Helping kids check in with themselves, emotionally, physically, cognitively, you know, and making that connection on their own of how food is connected to all of these things.

Jane: Right, because if anyone who’s had a teenager knows that if you tell your child what to do, they usually don’t like that very much. It’s much better to kind of come around the back door and ask them questions about what they think, what they feel, help them, as you just said, get connected so they can understand those signals, even just with hunger and fullness, right? It’s giving parents the tools to support their child in the right way.

Ashley: I’m thinking about just one more follow-up question with that. Say a child has something going on with them, maybe not necessarily big medically, but for example, I had a client who, a child client who’s having a lot of acid reflux. And so the parent took them to the doctor and the doctor mentioned perhaps a quote unquote diet change. And when the professional, you know, thinking about this parent that’s wanting to provide the absolute best for their child and then they hear this professional voice that’s like “we need that diet shift. There are good and bad foods,”  things like that. How do you navigate this?

Jane: This is a great question. Can there be a food that doesn’t work well for a person? I mean, that is true, right? Some people, some foods cause reflux. They cause stomach pain, right? And so sometimes in the eating disorder world, there’s kind of this thought that someone should be able to eat all foods all the time, but I think we have to be a little bit more nuanced and be able to hold space for both places. You know, reflux can be related to maybe how fast somebody eats, right? They don’t chew it or a certain type of food, maybe it’s a little bit too acidic for their body, for their digestive system. And so how do we figure out what that is without labeling it as a “bad food?” Food that for at least in this point in time, we don’t have to say for the rest of their life, right? Because that’s this black and white thinking that, “OK, now the food’s bad forever.” For right now and maybe stress is a component of their reflux, right? Maybe their child’s under a lot of stress and so their digestion is not working as well. Maybe there’s some things besides food that will help them with their, in this example, with their reflux, like relaxation strategies, ways of eating, getting more in their parasympathetic mode when they’re eating instead of in their fight or flight mode when they’re eating. And then saying, “okay, let’s see if there is a food, if you’re eating the same food every day and it’s causing you some reflux, well, what could we replace it with that would be a similar kind of food, but different to see if that causes it,” because sometimes, honestly, food is a bit of an issue. I just think it’s important to hold space for both of them without demonizing the food.

Ashley: That’s so helpful.

Jane: Honestly, GI issues are a big thing in eating disorders. Probably the other really big category of people that I see is with GI issues. They can be very real. I want to make sure that the person feels heard and understood, because I think a lot of times in eating disorder care, sometimes people feel like, “oh, it’s just all about your thoughts.” Sometimes it is about what’s going on in the body.

Ashley: And just to add to that, maybe continuing to have open-ended conversations with all providers involved. Communicating with the doctor and communicating with you and the therapist and just kind of having this team approach like you’re saying if the child is experiencing something like that.

Jane: And to let them know that the kind of one of the end goals is for them to have variety and flexibility in their eating and so my goal would be to have someone eat as many foods as they could as far as not amount but it’s meant you know variety wise, because the more someone restricts and they take out foods, you know, the smaller their environment becomes. Pretty soon they get isolated. They’re not going out with friends. They’re not going out to restaurants. They’re not traveling, right, because they can’t eat foods here and there, and so keeping a wide variety of foods to select from is usually a better option for people.

Sam: Such great reminders. I was thinking about some of the other sections in your recovery road map, and there was a really fascinating section titled, “10 Things Your Kids Wish You Knew About Their Eating Disorder.” I was wondering, how did you come up with this list? And what are some of the things on the list that surprise parents the most?

Jane: Well, a good question. I came up with this because it actually came from lots of interviews I did with my clients. I wanted to actually hear firsthand, even though I had heard it throughout all the years  in sessions with clients- “what are the things that really impact you the most?” I asked them the same five questions. The questions were, “what do you wish your parents better understood about your eating disorder? How, if at all, did your parents impact your eating disorder? What three things could your parents have done to help you move more quickly towards recovery? What three things did your parents do that made a difference? What three things should a parent never say or avoid, that impacts a child with an eating disorder?”

Sam: I feel like this should be a qualitative study published so everyone can read it, because this is really, really good information.

Jane: The interesting thing is, is that I couldn’t get the kids to shut up. They were just wanting to talk so much and tell their side, right? It was really interesting, and so there were lots of stuff that came from that. That’s where I thought, “okay, I really want to do this whole program,” because I could see how excited the kids were because they wanted their parents to know. In fact, I’ve had kids in my own practice who then said to their parents, “hey, can you do this program?” One week, one of my clients came back and said, “I can tell my dad’s doing your program because he’s talking totally differently to me.” I said, well, “is that is that OK? Like, is that working for you?” She said, “no, it’s great. He’s asking me different types of questions and he’s not just beating down on me to do this and that.” It was just making a difference for her. One of the things that whether someone had anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, but they would say, “I hate it when my parents just say, ‘just eat.’ I can’t just eat, the fear is too big. It’s not just so simple.” It’s like if you were standing on the edge of a cliff, and someone said, “just jump off.” You’re going to say, “I’m not jumping off.” “I can’t just eat this, and they just didn’t understand what it felt like to be in that situation.” They wanted the parents to put themselves in their shoes.

Sam: There have been times where I’ve actually asked parents, “do you have any phobias? Like anything you’re afraid of?” Nine times out of 10, they’ll say something like snakes, spiders, heights. And I say, “imagine facing that fear three times a day.” They get it then. They’re like, “oh my gosh, that’s what my kid’s going through?” So yeah, the heart’s racing, sweaty palms, nausea. Yeah, exactly.

Jane: Another thing that kids told me was, “I wish my parent knew that eating disorder does not go away if I’m at normal weight.” For some of them from weight restoring when they needed to because then their parents would be like, “okay, you’re fine.” When the struggle was still there, the pain was still there, the suffering, whatever it was, that had created this eating disorder for them, that hadn’t gone away, and they wanted their parents to know that. That that is such a hard thing because in our world, we look at people and we think, “OK, they must have a really happy life or they must be fine.” The kids really felt that that they wanted their parents to understand the struggle that they were having.

Sam: Absolutely. I hear that so much, too. And, you know, sometimes parents even say, “oh, my gosh, you look so healthy now. You look you look better.” That comes with its own set of challenges for the kid, but always reminding parents that you can’t possibly tell how someone is feeling by just looking at them.

Jane: You know what, another thing is if a parent says something like that, I always encourage parents to say, “hey, I’m sorry. You know what, I just realized that probably didn’t land very well for you. And I’m learning” Kids can understand that, they appreciate that. Like, “let me try that again. What would be a better thing for me to say or maybe not say anything at all.” Kids often will say, “I don’t want parents to talk about my weight, what I eat, how much I eat, when I eat, because it’s just putting too much of focus for them.” It’s hard, it’s a catch-22, because the parents says, “well, if I don’t say anything, they’re not going to eat.” Hopefully, the child has a team, has a nutritionist dietician, a therapist, maybe a medical provider, a psychiatric provider, and the team is going be there to support them, so the parent can just be a parent. Give the love and support rather than be the food controller.

Sam: Finding other ways to sort of express what you’re feeling other than what the kid looks like or what they’re eating. You just say, “I’m so proud of you. I see how hard you’re working. I’m just so happy to be here for you.” Just making that little shift can make such a difference.

Jane: Sometimes parents, the first thing they talk about is, “what did you eat at school? Why aren’t you eating?” It’s all about food. So many kids would say to me, I just want my parent to talk to me about how my life is going. Like, what are the things I’m running into in school? You know, what’s going, what do I see on social media? Right, what’s going on with my friends? And parents will assume that something is happening. I had a dad and his daughter in my office and the dad swore that was social media for his child. That this was really what was impacting her, and he emailed me after and he said, “oh my gosh, that was so interesting”. He goes, “you know, I thought it was social media, but what I realized that it was two things. It was her friendships. And the thing I didn’t expect, he said, was inaccurate nutrition information.” He didn’t know she was getting all this nutrition information and then thinking, this is how I should eat, the way I should cut out. He goes, “I didn’t realize that, right?” Then it’s about how do we educate her what’s a balanced way of eating. I think really what their child is struggling with is one big part of the program.

Sam: Instead of maybe focusing on social media and taking social media away, it’s sort of these missed opportunities where you can really help your child in a different way.

Jane: Even with social media to talk about like, “hey, what did you see today? And is there anything that really kind of made you feel uncomfortable?” Even for parents to share. If we see social media, there’s things that make us uncomfortable. “Oh, I see this and it makes me feel this way.” If you go through that too, instead of just taking it away and being the authoritative, more come beside them and help understand their struggle.

Sam: I’m sensing a theme here. It’s like helping your kid check in with themselves, right? Reflect, check in mindfulness, you know, being more aware of, of what’s happening internally.

Jane: Because our kids are going to go out into the world on their own, and we’re not going to have as much of an influence, and so to teach them, as you say, how to check in with themselves, how to understand their own signals, how to know that they need to make a different choice or their choices they’re making aren’t benefiting them.

Sam: Yeah, so they can take those tools with them throughout their whole lives.

Jane: 100% the tools.

Ashley: In addition to teaching the children how to check in with themselves, I would imagine that they would want to learn how to check in with themselves as well, the parents. In the last section you have, where the parents create their own actionable steps in their own roadmap. I was curious, what are some of those steps that might show up in the roadmaps that these parents are creating?

Jane: So for their kid, they’re trying to understand what they’re going through is, and what I just mentioned, are the contributing factors. Really understanding what it is for their child. They might be surprised that it’s different than what they think. Identifying, let’s say, roadblocks and challenges, really understanding what are the things that sets their child back, and what prevents them from moving forward in recovery. There’s a whole stop along the roadmap around nutrition, of course, right? Nutrition education and structure, and really what’s going on in that piece? Is there a lot of diet culture? Is that in the home? Where is that coming? Is it coming from coaches, right? Some coaches are really helpful and some coaches are not, and I’ve seen situations where that’s the case. So just better understanding their nutrition, where it’s coming from. One of the stops along the way is like understanding their “why” of recovery, because when it gets hard, when you’re at the edge of the cliff, and you have to make a leap of faith, you have to have a good why as to why they’re going to do this. For example, if someone’s just wanting to lose weight, that’s not necessarily the most helpful why. They want to have a why that’s going to make their life more meaningful. They’re going to have more joy, they’re going to be able to do a sport that they want, or there’s maybe something that they want to do in their life that’s really meaningful for them. To sort of find out what is meaningful to your child, that they could start to slowly let go of this eating disorder and start to cling more onto their life that’s waiting for them. They’re so young, they have a whole lifetime, so many great experiences, but they can’t start to live that life if they’re stuck in an eating disorder. We go through all these little stops along the way and goals and strategies and even treatment options, so they know that there are lots of different options. And then even, what do you do for relapse prevention? What is their role in all of this? Everything from reframing thoughts and understanding about cognitive distortions that are very common in eating disorders going on and what their role is, and which stop along the way is the one that is the most meaningful at that time.  That can change over time. You know, the nutrition might be really not in a good place at the beginning, and then it starts to get in a better place, more solidified, then another roadblock comes up, and then what is that about? Just learning what the tools are that you can use and the strategies to help your child continue to move along.

One thing I will say is that a normal part of recovery is always having some backsliding. It’s never a straight line, and so for parents to understand that, so to not become panicked, “like, oh, my gosh, all of a sudden things are happening. My child is doing this and she hasn’t done this for a year.” That there’s a reason for this, and to really dig deep and get back into that communication with your child, understanding what your child is going through and what’s triggering this.

Sam: Yes, I think that’s such an important piece of recovery, helping everyone understand that slips and relapses are part of the territory and they’re all opportunities to learn something.

Jane: Along this roadmap, parents are being supported all along the way with weekly calls and check-ins for many months because we know this takes a long time, and so I wanted to extend it and have people be able to meet for, at least, four months so they can get a little better footing underneath them and feel more solid and how to do this moving forward.

Sam: The community makes all the difference, I think, in recovery. So that’s wonderful that your program offers that to parents. You know, I had a question about, you have all these wonderful handouts and tools for parents. It’s like they leave with like this whole book. I was just curious, is there a handout that you have really felt like had a really big impact on parents? Or do you have a favorite handout? If we could highlight one.

Jane: It’s like trying to pick your favorite child, right? I think it depends on what the parent is needing in that moment, but I think the one, “what your child wishes you knew” gets parents a lot because they don’t really know. Sometimes their child isn’t even talking to them, right? That along with the road map so they can kind of conceptualize. I mean, it’s so confusing, right? The whole eating disorder world and actually to put it on paper, and kind of see a road map and where they need to go, I think is really helpful. For each week, there are anywhere from two to six or seven, eight handouts for each week, so they can better understand everything from compulsive exercise, to different eating strategies, to how the brain is impacted, to statistics, to recovery. I love the one on colleges, because I worked in a college for so long and it has a special place in my heart for college age students and how difficult it is in college as they’re are by themselves for the first time. We see so often, as you guys know, where eating disorders will really kick up during that age when kids go away to college, some of our kids are doing just fine, and then they just plummet or someone has recovered from an eating disorder and then they go to college and it resurfaces, and it’s just a challenging time. I find that the college kids are typically pretty open on their own for the first time and really are seeing like this isn’t very much fun to be in this situation, and are open to learn what to do, but it is hard. It’s challenging all along the way. I’ve had parents say to me, “I spent two months, how come my child isn’t better?”  I say, “well, let’s buckle down and hold on for the long run because this isn’t something that’s really quick. You don’t take an antibiotic and then you’re better. It takes time and it takes commitment.” That’s why parents are the perfect person to help their child because they are so committed, most of them, to their children. They’re willing to be there for them and to show them the love and support. They’re really, I think, such a critical part of this whole journey. You need a team for sure, but the parent is that really important part.

Ashley: So Jane, for those parents that are listening right now, what would be your big takeaway for them?

Jane: I think I would say, parents matter in eating disorder recovery. What you as a parent do and say, and the way that you are there for your child will make a big difference, it will make all the difference in the world. Learn as much as you can about eating disorders. Understand what they’re about. Learn the contributing factors for your child. Start to discover what is your child’s why for recovery? How could they start to move out of this? Create a team. Be mindful of your own thoughts and behaviors and the way that you’re impacting your child, positively and negatively, as a parent, we all do that, right? Sometimes we say things we don’t mean to, and we might not be saying really what is going to be most helpful for our child. And for parents, find your own support. If it’s not this program, get your own therapist, but find a way to support so you can learn to be kind of authentic with your own feelings with this, because this is really hard. I would say celebrate the process along the way with your child, the ups and the downs and that’s how it will be. Recovery is a lifelong commitment, to being authentic and real with ourselves, listening to our feelings and having a voice. Be there with your child through this because I have seen parents when they get to the other side, and in fact, it was in week eight where I read a letter from a dad who said it was just so grueling, right? It was just the worst thing you’d ever been through. Now it’s so much better. Their communication is better, their understanding is better, their depth of connection is better. When it gets hard, just keep swimming, don’t give up. There is a light, but sometimes it gets a little dark for a while, but there is hope. That’s why I want parents to know, that there is hope, and that your child can get better and they can recover.

Sam: Jane, how can our audience connect with you and learn more about this wonderful program?

Jane: Yeah, they can go to my website. It’s www.janereagannutrition.com, or if you want to go right to the parent page, which is on my website, you’ll find it on the website. You could go www.parentsroadmap.com. It will take you right to that page on my website, and my phone number is there, my address is there, and you can set up a free discovery call if you want or email me. There’s lots of ways to reach out. I’m happy to talk to parents and help them.

Ashley:  Awesome. Thank you. We’ll definitely add that in our information, too, when we cut out this episode. So, Jane, thank you so much for being here with us. We have greatly appreciated this conversation. And thank you to our audience for being here with us for another episode of All Bodies, All Foods.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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