Back To School - 2010

The laziness of summer means I'm always a little blindsided by the return of school stresses. My kids headed back to school this past week.

N is still doing well despite having his wisdom teeth removed and getting high-sticked in a street hockey game a week later (resulted in stitches in three different places and two loose teeth). I was surprised to see the question about past history with eating disorders come up with the wisdom-teeth procedure. I hadn't even thought about it, but he had to come fasting. They asked "would that be a problem for him?" All of a sudden I could see the implications of eating difficulties that would result afterwards too. But it was fine. They scheduled him for their first extraction of the morning. And we provided him with a lot of good soft foods to keep his calories up while his mouth healed. It turned out to be very relevant preparation as he healed from his trip to the emergency room a week later - and had to continue his diet of soft foods.

The old question of participating in a sport has risen again. He feels "so out of shape" and wants to run track. My question is how do we help him balance a desire to be active without it turning into an exercise/weight obsession? We are very encouraging and supporting parents. As we had this discussion I could tell that he wanted us to encourage and support him in his desires to be fit and was baffled why we weren't. There were some tears as I explained why we were so hesitant. There are so many ways to be active without it having to be about an ED's version of self-discipline or rigor - both of which could trigger exercise-binging. I can also see him looking to the exercise to solve some of his social reluctance. We made him aware of our concerns that he was expecting track to solve the problems for him.

So, what to do? I don't know.