Sleeping Beauty and the Buddha

Sleeping beauty's parents knew about the curse. They did everything they could to keep sharp objects away from her, but all it took was one.

The Buddha's parents locked him away from the world to protect him from prophesy, but one stroll outside the palace changed history.

Can we prevent eating disorders? Can we, even knowing our child has a genetic predisposition to eating disorders, keep him or her from falling ill?

No one really knows. There is a lot of effort out there to change our culture, teach good values, model healthy behaviors - but little evidence that it works in preventing an eating disorder. (Though we should be doing those things anyway, for ALL of us.) There is also a lot of tight-lipped scolding after the diagnosis for the parents and the society that seemed to fail to protect.

I'm guessing that a sliver of the number of eating disorders could be avoided if society changed, and parents became anti-ED Amazons. But if all it takes is a stray spindle (or diet), or the sight of a leper (or a subscription to Teen Vogue) to undo the work of decades of prevention...

I think if we could get the Beauty and the Gautama families in on a multi-family therapy group meeting they'd probably be more focused on treating the problem in the present than admonishing the rest of us for ending up in the same fix.

Comments

  1. They just found a genetic link for post tramatic stress syndrome (PTSD):

    http://tiny.cc/rF7gL

    It won't be long until we read similar articles about genetics and eds.

    My daughter (10 years old, recovering from ed) asked me last night if she will pass on her ed to her children...we had a long discussion about genetics, what triggers things, etc.

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  2. I'm hoping that long before your daughter is ready to have babies we will truly understand and be able to effectively treat - and maybe even prevent - this illness!

    ReplyDelete

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