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Parents’ Guide to Coping with Eating Disorders in Adolescence

Prof. Yael Latzer, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Science, University of Haifa, Research Director, Eating Disorders Center, Rambam Health Care Campus
16 June 2025

The treatment of eating disorders is largely provided by a multidisciplinary staff that simultaneously addresses several aspects: mental, dietary, physical, family, behavioral and rehabilitative. One of the most common phenomena in adolescent girls who are coping with an eating disorder is denial of the disease, refusal to accept treatment and resistance to cooperation. These behaviors make therapy extremely difficult and challenging the therapeutic staff. Research and knowledge that has accumulated over the years  has led to the understanding that family plays a decisive role in preventing the disorder as well as in recovering from various stages of the disease.      

The Parents’ Role 

Parents should compile as much information as possible about the disease, become familiar with the physical, mental and behavioral signs, as well as understanding that this is a disease, much like all diseases, which requires rapid, determined, sensitive and consistent intervention. It is important to remove all blame from yourself and your daughter, and instead assume responsibility, seek treatment, and work together as a team, with full cooperation. In every stage of treatment, it is important to remain alert to all scenarios in order to prevent them.   

Complexity of the treatment of the disease 

The treatment of eating disorders is complex and lengthy, with some periods characterized by withdrawal, and periods in which the disease raises its head, and therefore it requires composure, tolerance and patience. There is no miracle drug and no short circuits - only consistency, feelings and determination will help the recovery process. In addition, simultaneous coping in several channels is critically important: to fight the disease with everything possible on the one hand, and on the other - to emphasize healthy and positive behavior while making an effort to return the adolescent to her normal life.  

Support and education 

It is important to seek support, education and advice in all stages of treatment. As a parent, you play a key role on the road to recovery, hence the need for all possible help.  

Help centers that can be contacted 

The article is written in female form since most individuals with eating disorders are adolescent females, but the information is applicable to adolescent males and females as well as adult men and women of any age.  

If you identified the first signs of the development of an eating disorder in your daughter, the chances are that you have tremendous concern and possibly even anxiety. There is no question that you have a desire to help her but just before you do, it is important that you be familiar with and understand the principles of the main ones facilitating recovery while also allowing you to cope with the difficulties in treatment.  

Many girls suffering from eating disorders express resistance and stubbornness to treatment, making it extremely difficult to bring them to treatment, making it difficult to obtain their cooperation in treatment, challenges the therapeutic staff, and ultimately may cause the condition to worsen. Simultaneous with professional treatment, family plays a decisive role in the girl’s treatment: from diagnosis of the disorder to recovery from it. To help you as parents and the family, we prepared a manual that discusses in detail, step by step, what you need to know and understand in each stage and what must be done to help your daughter.  

You shouldread about the emphases on eating disorders in adolescent and young females. 

Emotional distress, not food, is the problem  

Most parents think that the problem of their daughter who is suffering from an eating disorder is food or is related to her wanting to be thin to comply with social norms and to what is acceptable on social media. This, in fact, is a common misconception. Food, appearance (shape) and body are all not the main problem, although the initial treatment involves restoring eating.  

So, what is it? An eating disorder is a disease that expresses severe emotional distress. In other words, although an eating disorder is entirely centered around a compulsive preoccupation with food, eating, shape, weight, and calories, the trigger for the onset of the disease is related to emotions and feelings, such as poor self-esteem, poor self-worth, a sense of failure, interpersonal problems, and seeing reality "in black and white."   

Read more about eating disorders 

Difficulty in expressing emotions.  

Sometimes the interpersonal difficulties focus on the adolescent girl's feeling that she is disappointing her family, or that she does not believe that she can achieve anything, but most interpersonal difficulties stem from her difficulty expressing her feelings, her desires, and coping with the demands of age. In addition, she may be experiencing feelings of inferiority, emptiness, meaninglessness or emotion that does not provide any benefit. Although all of these are personal feelings, despite them occasionally being far from an objective reality for your daughter this is the real reality she is experiencing. An eating disorder constitutes for her a language and way of coping with her emotions and with the reality that she is experiencing.   

The difficulty in coping with your daughter

It’s only natural that as parents, it is extremely difficult to understand the disorder and the reasons that caused its onset. It is even more difficult to accept that your beloved daughter genuinely sees herself as fat, rejected and feels like a failure. It is excruciatingly difficult, if not impossible, to convince her that this is not true, and that the reality is completely different. This distortion is natural and difficult to contain. It is completely normal that as parents, you feel frustration, helplessness, and possibly even anger and despair. For most, the natural tendency is to become angry, to preach, to argue, to try and persuade and to frighten, threaten, promise gifts, etc. Research and reality actually prove that the opposite is true: these behaviors end in crushing failure that only entrenches the disease. Hence, before we recommend what can be done, it is equally important to emphasize what is not recommended, which is mainly, not trying to convince your daughter that everything depends solely on her and that if she just decides to eat, everything will naturally fall into place. It's a shame to invest energy in these directions because every failure will weaken you, trigger anger and frustration, diminish your faith in the possibility of helping, and will often even cause your daughter to become entrenched in the "solution" - i.e., the eating disorder which she uses to cope with her distress.

An eating disorder is a disease like any other disease. It is not a trendy diet among adolescents. As such, you must act exactly as you would if your daughter was sick with any other disease, such as asthma, diabetes or G-D forbid an even more serious disease. The goal is the same, even in the case of an eating disorder – you must immediately mobilize to do everything possible to give her the correct and fastest treatment to save her.  

In many cases, the adolescent denies that there is a problem or refuses to seek treatment, misleading and convincing people that she has everything under control and that everything will be all right. Your role as parents is to be assertive and muster all your mental strength to take decisive steps to bring her to treatment.  Also important is that the treatment be carried out in settings that specialize in treating eating disorders. 

Remember that your daughter is a young woman who needs a parental figure. She cannot alone seek treatment, and it is impossible to expect her to cope with it on her own. You must display patience and tolerance, even when she expresses resistance to any form of treatment. You should firmly and sensitively explain to her the importance of seeking treatment, and if you sense that her health is endangered, you must make a concerted effort to obtain immediate treatment for her and not give up until the danger has passed, such as immediately contacting a family doctor, a hotline, or an emergency room.  

What not to do: Instead of asking your daughter if she is interested in seeking treatment or which treatment she needs, you must be proactive, investigate and decide on  your own which treatment is suitable for her and to do everything you need to do so that she cooperates. This is your responsibility, and your daughter will not do this on her own, and definitely not in her current mental state.  

You are not alone. Many parents are coping with strong, even paralyzing, sense of guilt following onset of their daughter’s disease, and are bothered by questions such as Why did this happen? How did this happen to me? What have I done? Why did she do this to me? They occasionally blame each other: “It’s your fault.”  

Occasionally, your immediate environment, friends, family, educators, etc, will point the finger of blame as well as criticize you. It is important that you know that research has no evidence showing that parents are responsible for the onset of eating disorders, and this burden should be lifted off you. However, it is completely understandable that such accusations undermine your self-confidence, your confidence as a parent, and cause you feelings of guilt, shame, helplessness, anger, and frustration.  

In this situation, it is very difficult to believe in your ability to act, so you should stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and concentrate on the facts and not the accusations. Dealing with feelings of guilt is an unnecessary waste of energy. Time would be better spent on assuming responsibility and investing your energy in steps towards your daughter's recovery and on focusing on what needs to be done now to solve the problem.  

Furthermore: you should stop discussing at home and near the child diets and avoid any occupation with diets, calorie counting, body shape and weight, all of which only exacerbate the situation.  

In most cases, the responsibility and burden are on you the parents. Throughout the entire course of treatment, it is important that you remember that without you it will be very difficult for your daughter to achieve a full recovery. As her parents, you know her better than anyone else, even if it is an experienced and qualified therapist. You must therefore be an integral part in her process, from the identification and diagnosis stage to the treatment itself on the way to recovery. You should approach treatment as you would any serious illness that requires intensive care: find appropriate and professional treatment, support, regulate stress, calm down, and do what the therapists recommend at every stage.  

It is important to be vigilant because anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are extremely serious potentially life-threatening illnesses. Because the course of the disease is cyclical, you must remain on guard and alert at all times. In certain situations, you will have no choice but to hospitalize your daughter to remove the danger and so that she can return to a healthy life.  

Another important aspect: just like your daughter, you too will need assistance. In most cases, your daughter’s therapeutic framework will also offer parent education and therapy as an inseparable part of the overall multidisciplinary treatment.  

 

Eating disorders have no miracle cure or shortcuts - recovery is a long, drawn-out process. Even if you quickly seek treatment and follow the medical team's instructions with determination and sensitivity, the expected change will not immediately happen , and it may take several months before you begin to see a change. 

Your mobilization to fight the disease requires tremendous patience and faith in the path, sensitivity, determination, and presence. Even when your daughter is recovering and showing signs of improvement, you need to remain vigilant and consistent with the treatment for many months. An eating disorder is an elusive and unpredictable illness, and any change or transition in life, even one that sounds routine to most of us, such as the end of the school year, military enlistment, or moving, requires coping, and places your daughter in a vulnerable position and at risk of relapse. Hence, even if the treatment has ended, when faced with changes, it is important to make several phone calls to prevent the situation from deteriorating. You should know that the eating disorder is the most familiar and calming, albeit destructive, coping mechanism for your daughter. 

It is important to lower expectations or at least avoid expecting to quickly revert to your previous routine because such an expectation will make the process difficult and may lead to disappointment for all parties. It's better to prepare for a long journey and be pleasantly surprised. 

When you are in the difficult process of fighting an eating disorder, on the road to recovery, there is an occasional tendency to forget that there are also healthy, normal, and functioning parts of your daughter. It is very important to see and illuminate, strengthen and encourage those parts, in order to enable her return to a normal life for her age as quickly as possible. The faster she integrates into normal activities, re-establishes relationships with friends, returns to classes, and plans for the future, the stronger her self-confidence will be, and she will not feel abnormal, marginalized, and hopeless.  

Since she is in adolescence, it is also worth reinforcing healthy aspects related to her desire for independence. It is important to encourage your daughter to think independently, even if her thinking is different from yours, to develop personal preferences in every area, such as in culture, fashion, hobbies, music, or leisure activities. All this as long as the issues are not related to food, shape, and body. In these cases, it is important to take a stand and do everything possible to stop these behaviors.

In all stages of treatment of the disease, it is important to remember that the disease is external to your daughter’s genuine qualities. It dominates her mind, her thoughts and her feelings and does not allow her to rest. It is therefore important to address it as a common external enemy, one that both you and her want to expel. You should try to relay to your daughtger and the environment the message that this is a girl with unique qualities, strengths and skills, she is not the disease. It is important to pay attention to what you say, for example: Our daughter has anorexia, and not - Our daughter is anorexic.  

Remember

Remember

Everyone has their personal characteristics, and so do you, the parents. Every family has different patterns of interaction, and there can be no template that is right for everyone. The proposals and recommendations introduced here are important. The choice of how and what to implement is yours and it is important that you adhere to education and professional supervision.