With so much attention being paid to childhood obesity the opposite end of the spectrum that many foster and adoptive parents deal with receives little, if any, attention.

Some of the children coming into care can have eating disorders. Yes, there are the teen issues of anorexia and bulimia, and there are the overweight kids, but I’m talking more about some of our kids under the age of 10 that have serious eating disorders or issues.

Many of our kids have been neglected and have food hoarding issues. I wrote a blog about this which stirred up quite a controversy, but showed that many parents are dealing with this. For many children, with time and trust, they learn that there will always be food available to them so the hoarding stops. Not necessarily a true eating disorder, more along the lines of survival.

There are children who go quite the opposite and refuse to eat or eat very small amounts. Some of these children have medical conditions that hinder their growth and diminish their appetites. I have several friends that parent medically fragile children who have feeding tubes. These are not angry or defiant children, but rather children whose bodies need nourishment so desperately that they don’t have any other choice.

There are children who choose not to eat. Like the food hoarders, these children use food as a control mechanism. One friend has a young boy who can make himself vomit even after eating only a few bites. He eats only two or three bites and says he is full. They have been through attachment therapy, have sought out specialists and done everything they can to help this child have healthy eating habits, gain weight and grow. This is his control battle.

I will never forget hearing Nancy Thomas giving a seminar and she said

“You can’t control what goes into or comes out of their mouths.”

When I first heard it I laughed, along with the rest of the group, but over the years I have come to realize how accurate, and sometimes scary, that statement is. I know the parents who have children who can’t or won’t eat properly are worried about their child’s health and want their child to “grow up” to become healthy adults. The pain in their voices is real and strong.

Real problems can come when the child is in school and is still picking this control battle. Some teachers feel that the children are being abused or neglected because the children may try to triangulate, telling the teacher that mom does not feed them, or pack a lunch for them. Parents are obligated to provide a meal for their child, but we can’t force them to eat it. I was lucky. Sammy’s teacher picked up on this quickly when she went into his locker to look for some school supplies he claimed he didn’t have but she knew that he did. She found four days of lunches stuck in his locker. Another day Sammy snuck a package of refrigerated cookie dough to school and told his teacher that’s what I gave him for lunch. This teacher could have put me through another abuse investigation. Parents with children who refuse to eat live in this fear if they have a teacher who doesn’t understand the eating disorder that their child has.

I don’t have the magic answers to this problem, but I sure wish I did. As I struggle with losing weight, I joke that I wish I couldn’t gain it, but to these parents it is no joke.


Photo credit - Kelly L. Killian