Eating Disorder Talk

Once again, a Post Secret rant. Last time, it was about how someone’s secret was that they hoped their daughter wouldn’t inherit their eating disorder – the issue I had with it was that it was a secret. Obviously, I don’t have a problem with a parent not wanting their daughter to be the new generation of emaciation or closet-eating. Today, something far more disturbing:

Here’s the thing. Unlike some…protesters in the blogosphere, I don’t actually think it a sin to have an eating disorder and be a parent. Do you really think the generation before mine, who raised my peers, were anorexia or bulimia-free? No, it’s just now more mainstream and spoken about (and publicized) than it ever was before.

But I think that there’s a responsibility that parents with eating disorders have that their non-affected peers don’t – the task of trying to keep it a secret until your kids are old enough to understand what it is, and then to explain it to the best of your ability and in the least positive way possible. Not to put fear into your child, per se, but to make it a reality. An unwanted, unhealthy, mentally-scarring reality. Far from ideal, but as real as dad having a drinking problem or grandma liking the Valium a bit too much.

This mom is one that I turn my nose up at. Because, if you are so obsessively throwing up that you must purge everything you eat and do it in a way that your child can hear the noise and imitate it, you should not be raising that child. I’m not going to push recovery, because really, it’s evident that this mom is in need of some counseling, but that child did not ask to be brought into a world where puking is a normal, everyday thing.

Let me use an extreme example to illustrate my case: if a parent was a regular pot smoker, but didn’t smoke in front of there child, necessarily, would it be right for their child to be able to imitate the exaggerated toking sound that most potheads have? Would you think that were the right thing, for your two year old to walk around going, “whoosh whoosh whoosh” while rounding out their lips and miming a pincer grasp at their lips? Not in a million years, (except for all of you crazy potheads who are reading this and laughing at the mental image, that is. Go get some Doritos, eh?). You would think it was completely irresponsible, wouldn’t you?

Well, just imagine when this little girl is four and hits the age where words coming flying out of her mouth without forethought (or malice).

When she’s 10 and starting to think that boys don’t like her as much as the other girls in her class.

When she’s 12 and a little moody, hell, even depressive, and spends days staring at magazines and the TV while snacking.

When she’s 13 and realizes, because she is so grown up now, that boys will like her if she’s thinner. So she must stop snacking, but if she doesn’t want to or can’t, then maybe she should just do what her mom always has – it’s worked for her.

When she’s 16 and suffering kidney failure and so goes into recovery with a new-found healthy determination.

And what about when she’s 17 and has her first heart attack?

And at her funeral? What would her mother think then of her two year old little girl imitating her purging obsession?

To me, being a parent is not about doing what works for me, and how my child fits into it. It’s about doing what’s right for her, even if it doesn’t feel right for me. And if I couldn’t do those hard things that I have to do, then it would affect her greatly. As that parent, I would never choose myself over ruining her life, willingly.