How parents can supercharge eating disorder recovery by teaching kids emotional regulation skills
Today most eating disorder treatment is all about the child who has an eating disorder. Parental involvement is typically limited to the areas of feeding, possibly attending some family therapy, and getting the child to treatment appointments. These are necessary and helpful.
But I believe we would see much better results if parents were empowered to and learned how to use emotional co-regulation to help their child learn self-regulation. Anxiety and eating disorders often show up together, and the best way to handle both is to increase emotional regulation skills.
When a child has an eating disorder they are having trouble with emotional regulation. Our children are not born with the ability to self-regulate their emotions. They learn how to do it through repeated experiences of co-regulating with us.
This book will help you learn the magic of emotional regulation and give you the knowledge and support you need to start practicing it with your kids. Enjoy!
I wanted to do more than the bare minimum – I just knew something was missing from our daughter’s treatment. Learning emotional regulation has been a game-changer for us. – Margaret G.