Catch It Early
Monday, October 1 2007
The earlier you can spot an eating disorder, the better chance you have of raising a healthy, unaffected child.
When Ivy Silver got a call from her friend Jane telling her something wasn't right with Ivy's 16-year-old daughter, Rachel, the Wyncote, PA mom was frightened. "One of Rachel's friends had approached Jane, an eating disorder specialist," says Ivy, 52, who owns an insurance brokerage and employee benefits consulting firm with her husband, Steven Leshner. "Her friends had noticed Rachel's eating habits were different. She wasn't eating any meals with them and was fixated on losing weight, talking about how little she was eating and how she would try to limit her calories to less than five hundred per day."
Ivy and Steven were surprised they hadn't noticed Rachel's unusual behavior. At five feet five inches, she had always been a "small" girl, but her weight was within normal limits, and she ate dinner with the family every night. Still, at a time when she should have been becoming more curvaceous, she wasn't.