On Empowering Parents—Not Pathologizing Them

I often write about the importance of including parents in the treatment of adolescents and young adults. My work is informed by my training in Family-based Treatment (FBT). A central component of this treatment is empowering parents to help their ailing children with eating disorders return to health.

When asked why families should be the center of treatment, I share several resources. I usually cite the AED guidelines on the role of the family. I also cite The Nine Truths About Eating Disorders. Finally, a vast evidence base underlies FBT and parental inclusion. I often discuss how providers who see families with children with eating disorders get a distorted view of the family. They do not have the benefit of having seen how the family functioned prior to the eating disorder. Parents’ behaviors are often pathologized when they are actually the normal response of healthy parents to a child in distress.

This post is different—here I will share a more personal perspective.

Recently, one of my children (anonymized here because the story is theirs to tell) stumbled. My child was fighting a mental health issue that was not an eating disorder. The experience of watching my child struggle, and struggling to help my child, has further informed my thinking on this issue.

Sadly, it remains common for parents of children, adolescents, and young adults with mental health problems to be judged, labeled, blamed, and excised from the child’s treatment. This has happened to families with whom I have worked. Parents have sometimes been labeled as “enmeshed” or “overprotective.” This is not productive.

I’m writing this blog to share how beneficial it was personally to be included in my young adult child’s treatment. First, let me give you some background.

For Most of My Parenting Years, I Was Balanced

I care for my children deeply and have chosen a career that has allowed me the flexibility to be present in their lives and to be their primary caretaker. At the same time, I have been anything but a coddler. All three of my children were sleep-trained at less than six months, left at a young age with non-family babysitters, and dropped at preschool on the first day. I shed some tears, but I was not a parent who stayed and watched outside of the classroom for months; I went to work.

I also developed a certain toughness to set limits. During my kids’ early years, I worked at Los Angeles County Jail, where I encountered numerous inmates demanding sleeping medications or “more desirable” housing assignments and then threatening suicide when they didn’t get their way. I became adept at placing inmates on suicide watch and walking away despite their sometimes yelling at the top of their lungs that they would tell the entire jail, “It’s because of you, Dr. Muhlheim, that I will kill myself.”

While I am not a perfect mother, I am a highly dedicated, devoted one. I have sought to balance my joy in raising my children with time to pursue my own interests and career.

When My Child Started to Struggle I Became Highly Involved

When I work with parents of teens and young adults with eating disorders, I encourage parents to trust their instincts. “Parents know their kids best,” I tell them. During the transition to college, when my child was supposed to be individuating, I knew something was amiss. So I hovered more than usual.

Fortunately, when my child wobbled, I was prepared. First, I trusted my instincts. I was fully present: watching, standing close, getting my child help. I helped save my child’s life. There are powerful cultural expectations that parents should back off and allow their child to individuate. There is less support for parents who choose to step in at this moment. Observing my behavior at that time, I may have been labeled as overprotective.

Even my child, who recognized the need for parental help, was fighting against it. This was confusing to their therapist, who later wrote in a report, “There is a weird dichotomy between the child and the parents. The child refuses to sign a release of information for the therapist to speak to the parents, but the child appears to reach out to the mother for support.”

Rather than pathologizing hovering parents, we need to recognize that they are doing it for a reason.

Professionals Supporting, Not Blaming Parents

The hardest moments of this whole journey were those times when on top of his worry for our child and whether they could or would actually recover, my husband blamed himself for causing the problems our child was facing. This tendency of parents—to blame themselves for any problem that befalls a child—is typical. This is the case whether or not the problem could be attributed to parenting. I noticed that when my husband started to blame himself, we both became hopeless and lost focus on helping our child. These were dark times—it was hard to have our own faith and be present for our child.

Fortunately, we had the means to seek out high-quality treatment. Our child was treated in a center that specializes in treatment often used for a problem for which parents have historically been blamed. In this program, we as parents were given much-needed support and services as well. Importantly, the clinicians never indicated they believed that we had caused our child’s problems. Instead, we were validated, supported, and given a framework for understanding our child’s problems that did not point the finger at us.

Made/Makes All the Difference

Further, our responses to our struggling child were validated as a reasonable response to experiencing our child’s struggles. We were supported in our child’s recovery, empowered to play a role, included in the treatment, and seen as parents doing our best. This was profound. I think it made all the difference.

Our child worked hard and so did we. With the proper help and our support, our child is now healthy and firmly back on track. My hope for other parents of floundering adolescents and young adults is that they are treated with the same respect that we were.

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