Until Ruth, I never truly appreciated how heart-wrenching it is for parents to see their child suffer from anorexia. It has made me see through fresh eyes the trauma I put my own family through, and makes me so sorry.
One June afternoon last year, I had been preparing dinner in the kitchen of our home in Worcestershire when the phone rang. I was surprised to hear a teacher from my daughter Ruth's school on the other end of the line.
'Mrs Walker, we have some concerns,' she said. My only thought was that Ruth, 15, was having trouble settling into her new school. But I was wrong. I was totally unprepared for what I heard next.
Members of staff had noticed that Ruth had cuts on her arms; they believed it was evidence of self-harming. They had also noticed she had lost rather a lot of weight recently and wasn't eating her school lunch. Naturally, they were worried.
Her words took my breath away. Had I noticed any marks on my daughter's arms? No, but then I hadn't been looking. To my shame, I hadn't really noticed that she'd lost weight either.
I slumped in a chair, literally reeling with shock and guilt as my mind started a frantic scramble for clues.
Ruth had been wearing baggy clothes lately, but wasn't that the fashion? Celebrity magazines were full of pictures of teenagers with sweatpants hanging from their hips, and oversize T-shirts. But could Ruth have been using clothes to disguise her thin frame?
Then I remembered a conversation a year ago, in which she'd mentioned that she was going on a 'healthy eating' plan. Again, I wasn't concerned. Didn't every parent wish their child would cut out the snacks and eat good, wholesome foods?
Had I somehow missed that my beautiful, bright, vibrant girl could be in the grip of an eating disorder?
Any mother whose child has suffered from this insidious disease will empathise with that stab of guilt, the thought that they had carelessly allowed anorexia to slip into their home and take over their daughter. But my guilt was compounded because, of all people, I should have been able to see what was going on.
For 17 years I had battled my own anorexia demons and, in a twist of irony, I am also a professional clinical psychologist who specialises in eating disorders.
I've sat through countless meetings with distraught parents and their haunted children, and listened to tale after tale of secretive, manipulative and ultimately destructive behaviour.
Yet here I was, with it going on under my own roof, and I'd never noticed a thing.
What hurt me most was my overriding conviction that I was to blame.
I was 13 when anorexia caught me in its grip. What started as an effort to slim spiralled out of control until I was barely existing on a cup of soup and an apple a day.
Until that point I'd had a happy, healthy childhood living in a cottage in Cornwall.
Food played a huge part in our lives. My father, a builder, grew all his own vegetables and my mother, a housewife, would often have 'baking days' when she cooked enough food for a week.
With hindsight, my mum spent much of her time dieting. Although I don't think she had an eating disorder, her weight would yo-yo and her desire to be slim was a frequent topic of conversation.
I didn't think much about my own weight until I was 13, when my grandmother made what she thought was a joke about the spare tyre around my middle.
Everyone laughed, but when a few weeks later my father teased me about how greedily I'd wolfed down my dinner at a family gathering, I felt terribly ashamed. I silently vowed to get slimmer.
Of course, I now know the terrible damage such off-the-cuff remarks can have on vulnerable girls and I have been very careful never to comment on weight with any of my four children - Adelaide, 24, Martha, 22, Joe, 21, and Ruth, 15.
When I started my first diet I was 5ft 3in tall and weighed 8st 12lb. I was hardly fat, but I approached it with keen conviction and within a month could recite the calorific content of any food. At school I stopped eating lunch, then started to skip breakfast, too, dashing away in a hurry.
It was harder to avoid eating at family meals, however, so I developed strategies to get rid of food, slipping it to the dog or throwing it into the kitchen range. This is common among girls with eating disorders - we can be very clever. Could Ruth have hoodwinked me as effectively as I'd tricked my own mother? Obviously she could.
My weight loss was dramatic. Within a week I'd lost 9lb and felt euphoric. At first friends and family complimented me, but before long I looked worryingly skinny and questions started to be asked.
My periods stopped, which my mother noticed because I wasn't using the sanitary towels she bought.
Then came her own 'concerned call' from school after a teacher saw my skeletal frame in PE. My mother took me to see the GP, who gave her tips on encouraging me to eat, which I ignored.
When I was 14 and weighed just 5st 10lb, my terrified mother had no choice but to admit that I was seriously ill, and I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
It was hell. I refused to acknowledge that I was unwell, but was bright enough to see that my only hope of liberty was to eat and appease. Over two months I steadily gained weight until I was 7st 4lb.
I was far from cured and weight remained my obsession, but I made sure I never grew thin enough to attract concern and intervention.
A clever child, I'd been expected to train as a doctor but missed too much school to achieve my academic potential. Instead, at 16 I became an auxiliary nurse, living in digs at a local hospital. My anorexia came with me, now with bouts of bulimia too, where I'd binge on food then force myself to be sick, and took 100 laxatives a day.
However, I got a job as a support worker in a rehabilitation home, and it was there I met my husband Wesley, a psychiatric nurse.
With his support - he knew about my eating disorder but not the extent of it - I gradually gained more weight. In 1988 we married and moved to Port Talbot, in Wales.
We lived in a four-bedroom house and our children arrived soon afterwards. Behind this veneer of domesticity, though, my eating disorder still lurked. I ate well throughout my pregnancies because I had to, but after giving birth I would starve myself back to my 'safe' weight.
Wesley knew I was dieting but had no idea of the severity of it. Watching my children grow, my determination to finally beat the disease became stronger. I did everything I could to ensure that no focus was put on weight at all.
I made sure we had no scales in the house, that we ate a healthy, balanced diet. I didn't even let health visitors weigh the children at medicals. It paid off. My weight crept up and settled comfortably at 9st. The urge to purge and starve gradually subsided. Anorexia, I thought, had finally left my life.
In 2000, when Ruth was two, I won a place at Cardiff University to study psychology. After years of hard work I finally qualified in 2008 as a clinical psychologist.
It was around this time that Ruth's eating problems started to take root. In early 2010 I landed my dream job, specialising in eating disorders at a clinic in Swansea. It meant long hours and I hardly saw Ruth, who was 12 by then and nearing the age when my problems began.
I brought my work home on many occasions - the house was crammed with books on eating disorders - and I'd been honest with the children for some years about how I used to suffer.
With me working all hours, Wesley was mostly in charge of meals. When I commented once, quite innocently that I hoped Ruth wasn't eating too much junk food, I honestly didn't think she'd heard.
Soon afterwards, however, Ruth made her announcement about wanting to eat a healthier diet. Perhaps alarm bells should have rung, but they didn't.
The following year, however, something happened that may well have tipped Ruth over the edge: Wesley and I split up.
We had been growing apart for some years and, as I pursued my career, he stayed at home to care for the children. Some couples can cope with such a role reversal, but not us. It was an amicable split, yet looking back, it must have affected Ruth more than I realised.
A year later I met my current husband Matt, 53, a doctor, through a dating website. Thankfully, Ruth got on with him incredibly well and we moved to the Midlands to be closer to him. The other children had gone to university. Overnight, Ruth became an only child at home - and a very unhappy and disturbed one.
After I'd received that shocking phone call from her teacher, I still didn't confront her about her eating. I knew from experience that probing too deeply and over-dramatising the situation would only make things worse.
Although I could see her jutting cheekbones and frail wrists, instead I asked only about the self-harming. She knew her teacher had rung and was incredibly upset. She insisted it was a 'one-off' and wouldn't happen again.
Her explanation made me wince: she'd cut herself with a razor blade and scissors, saying it gave her a relief from the anxiety she was suffering. I hoped that during the summer holidays Ruth would settle down, but over the next three months she grew worse.
Pushing food around her plate. Cutting every morsel into tiny pieces. Drinking copious glasses of water. Picking arguments at the table as a distraction. Dashing to her room the minute the table was cleared. Lying. Denying. It was anorexia and bulimia by numbers. It was like watching a re-run of me as a teenager and it broke my heart.
Still, I thought we could beat this as a family. It was at the end of November - after Ruth had fainted at an under-18s disco - that I finally took her to see the GP.
But he confirmed my worst fears. Ruth, whose periods had stopped, was heading for full-blown anorexia and she was finally referred, ironically, to a psychologist.
It was the jolt she needed. Back home, she confessed to me that she had been making herself sick and needed help. I was so glad I'd done the right thing for her at last.
Much later it transpired that she had been comfort-eating when I was at work. Then the trigger for her eating disorder was moving home - contending with my divorce, her new stepdad, a new school and new friends had been too much for her to cope with. Controlling her weight was her way of keeping some control over her life.
I recognised that need for control so keenly. I was heartbroken and racked with guilt, but at least I understood.
As a professional, it has been so hard for me to step back and not interfere in Ruth's treatment, but it seems to be working. She is now settled at school and has lots of friends. She is finishing her counselling and is a healthier weight.
Until Ruth, I never truly appreciated how heart-wrenching it is for parents to see their child suffer from anorexia. It has made me see through fresh eyes the trauma I put my own family through, and makes me so sorry.
What's happened has shaken our family. My husband has written a book inspired by the issues, which we hope will help others. But that doesn't help me - I still berate myself every day that I let my daughter down. I will never allow it to happen again.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
Certain you'd spot it if your daughter was starving herself?
Until Ruth, I never truly appreciated how heart-wrenching it is for parents to see their child suffer from anorexia. It has made me see through fresh eyes the trauma I put my own family through, and makes me so sorry.
One June afternoon last year, I had been preparing dinner in the kitchen of our home in Worcestershire when the phone rang. I was surprised to hear a teacher from my daughter Ruth's school on the other end of the line.
'Mrs Walker, we have some concerns,' she said. My only thought was that Ruth, 15, was having trouble settling into her new school. But I was wrong. I was totally unprepared for what I heard next.
Members of staff had noticed that Ruth had cuts on her arms; they believed it was evidence of self-harming. They had also noticed she had lost rather a lot of weight recently and wasn't eating her school lunch. Naturally, they were worried.
Her words took my breath away. Had I noticed any marks on my daughter's arms? No, but then I hadn't been looking. To my shame, I hadn't really noticed that she'd lost weight either.
I slumped in a chair, literally reeling with shock and guilt as my mind started a frantic scramble for clues.
Ruth had been wearing baggy clothes lately, but wasn't that the fashion? Celebrity magazines were full of pictures of teenagers with sweatpants hanging from their hips, and oversize T-shirts. But could Ruth have been using clothes to disguise her thin frame?
Then I remembered a conversation a year ago, in which she'd mentioned that she was going on a 'healthy eating' plan. Again, I wasn't concerned. Didn't every parent wish their child would cut out the snacks and eat good, wholesome foods?
Had I somehow missed that my beautiful, bright, vibrant girl could be in the grip of an eating disorder?
Any mother whose child has suffered from this insidious disease will empathise with that stab of guilt, the thought that they had carelessly allowed anorexia to slip into their home and take over their daughter. But my guilt was compounded because, of all people, I should have been able to see what was going on.
For 17 years I had battled my own anorexia demons and, in a twist of irony, I am also a professional clinical psychologist who specialises in eating disorders.
I've sat through countless meetings with distraught parents and their haunted children, and listened to tale after tale of secretive, manipulative and ultimately destructive behaviour.
Yet here I was, with it going on under my own roof, and I'd never noticed a thing.
What hurt me most was my overriding conviction that I was to blame.
I was 13 when anorexia caught me in its grip. What started as an effort to slim spiralled out of control until I was barely existing on a cup of soup and an apple a day.
Until that point I'd had a happy, healthy childhood living in a cottage in Cornwall.
Food played a huge part in our lives. My father, a builder, grew all his own vegetables and my mother, a housewife, would often have 'baking days' when she cooked enough food for a week.
With hindsight, my mum spent much of her time dieting. Although I don't think she had an eating disorder, her weight would yo-yo and her desire to be slim was a frequent topic of conversation.
I didn't think much about my own weight until I was 13, when my grandmother made what she thought was a joke about the spare tyre around my middle.
Everyone laughed, but when a few weeks later my father teased me about how greedily I'd wolfed down my dinner at a family gathering, I felt terribly ashamed. I silently vowed to get slimmer.
Of course, I now know the terrible damage such off-the-cuff remarks can have on vulnerable girls and I have been very careful never to comment on weight with any of my four children - Adelaide, 24, Martha, 22, Joe, 21, and Ruth, 15.
When I started my first diet I was 5ft 3in tall and weighed 8st 12lb. I was hardly fat, but I approached it with keen conviction and within a month could recite the calorific content of any food. At school I stopped eating lunch, then started to skip breakfast, too, dashing away in a hurry.
It was harder to avoid eating at family meals, however, so I developed strategies to get rid of food, slipping it to the dog or throwing it into the kitchen range. This is common among girls with eating disorders - we can be very clever. Could Ruth have hoodwinked me as effectively as I'd tricked my own mother? Obviously she could.
My weight loss was dramatic. Within a week I'd lost 9lb and felt euphoric. At first friends and family complimented me, but before long I looked worryingly skinny and questions started to be asked.
My periods stopped, which my mother noticed because I wasn't using the sanitary towels she bought.
Then came her own 'concerned call' from school after a teacher saw my skeletal frame in PE. My mother took me to see the GP, who gave her tips on encouraging me to eat, which I ignored.
When I was 14 and weighed just 5st 10lb, my terrified mother had no choice but to admit that I was seriously ill, and I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
It was hell. I refused to acknowledge that I was unwell, but was bright enough to see that my only hope of liberty was to eat and appease. Over two months I steadily gained weight until I was 7st 4lb.
I was far from cured and weight remained my obsession, but I made sure I never grew thin enough to attract concern and intervention.
A clever child, I'd been expected to train as a doctor but missed too much school to achieve my academic potential. Instead, at 16 I became an auxiliary nurse, living in digs at a local hospital. My anorexia came with me, now with bouts of bulimia too, where I'd binge on food then force myself to be sick, and took 100 laxatives a day.
However, I got a job as a support worker in a rehabilitation home, and it was there I met my husband Wesley, a psychiatric nurse.
With his support - he knew about my eating disorder but not the extent of it - I gradually gained more weight. In 1988 we married and moved to Port Talbot, in Wales.
We lived in a four-bedroom house and our children arrived soon afterwards. Behind this veneer of domesticity, though, my eating disorder still lurked. I ate well throughout my pregnancies because I had to, but after giving birth I would starve myself back to my 'safe' weight.
Wesley knew I was dieting but had no idea of the severity of it. Watching my children grow, my determination to finally beat the disease became stronger. I did everything I could to ensure that no focus was put on weight at all.
I made sure we had no scales in the house, that we ate a healthy, balanced diet. I didn't even let health visitors weigh the children at medicals. It paid off. My weight crept up and settled comfortably at 9st. The urge to purge and starve gradually subsided. Anorexia, I thought, had finally left my life.
In 2000, when Ruth was two, I won a place at Cardiff University to study psychology. After years of hard work I finally qualified in 2008 as a clinical psychologist.
It was around this time that Ruth's eating problems started to take root. In early 2010 I landed my dream job, specialising in eating disorders at a clinic in Swansea. It meant long hours and I hardly saw Ruth, who was 12 by then and nearing the age when my problems began.
I brought my work home on many occasions - the house was crammed with books on eating disorders - and I'd been honest with the children for some years about how I used to suffer.
With me working all hours, Wesley was mostly in charge of meals. When I commented once, quite innocently that I hoped Ruth wasn't eating too much junk food, I honestly didn't think she'd heard.
Soon afterwards, however, Ruth made her announcement about wanting to eat a healthier diet. Perhaps alarm bells should have rung, but they didn't.
The following year, however, something happened that may well have tipped Ruth over the edge: Wesley and I split up.
We had been growing apart for some years and, as I pursued my career, he stayed at home to care for the children. Some couples can cope with such a role reversal, but not us. It was an amicable split, yet looking back, it must have affected Ruth more than I realised.
A year later I met my current husband Matt, 53, a doctor, through a dating website. Thankfully, Ruth got on with him incredibly well and we moved to the Midlands to be closer to him. The other children had gone to university. Overnight, Ruth became an only child at home - and a very unhappy and disturbed one.
After I'd received that shocking phone call from her teacher, I still didn't confront her about her eating. I knew from experience that probing too deeply and over-dramatising the situation would only make things worse.
Although I could see her jutting cheekbones and frail wrists, instead I asked only about the self-harming. She knew her teacher had rung and was incredibly upset. She insisted it was a 'one-off' and wouldn't happen again.
Her explanation made me wince: she'd cut herself with a razor blade and scissors, saying it gave her a relief from the anxiety she was suffering. I hoped that during the summer holidays Ruth would settle down, but over the next three months she grew worse.
Pushing food around her plate. Cutting every morsel into tiny pieces. Drinking copious glasses of water. Picking arguments at the table as a distraction. Dashing to her room the minute the table was cleared. Lying. Denying. It was anorexia and bulimia by numbers. It was like watching a re-run of me as a teenager and it broke my heart.
Still, I thought we could beat this as a family. It was at the end of November - after Ruth had fainted at an under-18s disco - that I finally took her to see the GP.
But he confirmed my worst fears. Ruth, whose periods had stopped, was heading for full-blown anorexia and she was finally referred, ironically, to a psychologist.
It was the jolt she needed. Back home, she confessed to me that she had been making herself sick and needed help. I was so glad I'd done the right thing for her at last.
Much later it transpired that she had been comfort-eating when I was at work. Then the trigger for her eating disorder was moving home - contending with my divorce, her new stepdad, a new school and new friends had been too much for her to cope with. Controlling her weight was her way of keeping some control over her life.
I recognised that need for control so keenly. I was heartbroken and racked with guilt, but at least I understood.
As a professional, it has been so hard for me to step back and not interfere in Ruth's treatment, but it seems to be working. She is now settled at school and has lots of friends. She is finishing her counselling and is a healthier weight.
Until Ruth, I never truly appreciated how heart-wrenching it is for parents to see their child suffer from anorexia. It has made me see through fresh eyes the trauma I put my own family through, and makes me so sorry.
What's happened has shaken our family. My husband has written a book inspired by the issues, which we hope will help others. But that doesn't help me - I still berate myself every day that I let my daughter down. I will never allow it to happen again.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
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