"An impressive contribution to the field. These two experienced authors have produced a scientifically rigorous, practical guide for achieving recovery from an eating disorder. A must read for parents, patients and professionals dealing with these illnesses."

Craig Johnson, PhD

Director, Eating Disorders Program at Laureate Psychiatric Hospital, past president, National Eating Disorders Association

"Easily accessible, well-researched, practical and common-sense. If your child has an eating disorder- read this book! This much-needed book will show you what to do to assist your child in acting his or her way out of an eating disorder and when to seek professional help."

Angela S. Guarda, MD

Director, Johns Hopkins Eating Disorders Program, Baltimore, MD

"I cried as I read excerpts to my husband remembering how different it was for us when our daughter struggled just seven years ago and I celebrate Marcia and Nancy s respect for parents as an essential resource in successful treatment."

Kitty Westin

Founder and President of the Anna Westin Foundation, a non-profit foundation started by Anna Westin's family after her death from anorexia nervosa in 2000.

An excellent guide to children's eating disorders, chiefly anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder, this book urges parents to be watchful; prevention, after all, starts at home. First, Herrin, founder and former co-director of the Dartmouth College Eating Disorders Prevention, Education and Treatment Program and a former anorexic herself, covers early warning signs of eating disorders and shows how they differ from bad habits. She also addresses how to deal with situations, like school and summer camp, that remove teens from parents' radar. There is also much information on nutrition, with specifics on individualizing a food plan (menus and portions) and normalizing exercise patterns. Finally, parents are shown how to seek professional help. Herrin's sound and empowering advice applies both to girls and to boys, who are often sadly overlooked. Including charts of body-mass index and lists of residential facilities and hospital programs, organizations and web sites, this is highly recommended for public libraries.

Linda Beck, Indian Valley, P.L., Telford, PA.

How can a parent know when picky eating is the sign of an imminent or existing eating disorder in a child? Herrin and Matsumoto bring a nutritionist's expertise and a parent's perspective to this resource to help parents recognize eating disorders and help their children overcome them. Drawing on research, Herrin's own practice, and interviews with parents and children, the authors present clear definitions of various eating disorders, symptoms and possible causes, and methods of treatment. They explore the development of modern eating phobias - of fat and excess calories, obsession with appearance at the expense of nutrition - that have led to increases in eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. They also examine the impact on young women of a culture that glorifies thinness. This helpful book offers guidelines on body weight measurements and other resources, including treatment facilities and programs. A valuable resource for parents and those concerned with adolescent health-care issues.

-Vanessa Bush

American Library Association.

Here's a book I happily recommend for parents of children and teenagers with eating disorders, and to the children and adolescents themselves. After all, they should know what their parents know. The primary author, Marcia Herrin, is a highly qualified nutritionist-clinician, who founded the Dartmouth College eating disorders programs.

This well-organized, easy-to-read, very current and well-referenced book weaves the author's own and several patients' stories in at the beginning, and then looks at risks, early signs and prevention. It describes when disordered eating becomes dangerous; avoiding parent traps; families' reactions and what families can do; risks to boys; medical consequences, including course and impact on growth and bodily organs; what friends, schools, and summer camps can do; nutritional and exercise planning; outcomes; treatment options; and resources. Her sources include the American Psychiatric Association's Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients with Eating Disorders, and it's clear that she's read and considered many of the sources that went into those guidelines.

The sections that give highly specific advice to parents are well done, very practical, and make sense to me. The book's style is chatty and conversational, and the book is broken down into bite-size chunks, headed by clear, declarative statements, such as "Put issues of body size, shape and food in a political context"; "Explain at an early age that different kids have different body types; focus on body function over body shape and size"; "Ban teasing about weight"; and later, "Fight the disorder and not your child," and many, many more. There are lots of tables and inserts: early warning signs, risky dieting behavior; restricting through pseudo-vegetarianism; healthy exercise, and many others. Appendices have DSM criteria for eating disorders and body weight assessment tools, including BMI charts.

Joel Yager, M.D.

Editor-in-Chief, Eating Disorders Review

This book offers positive, practical advice for parents coping with helping their child work through and survive an eating disorder. It is well written, well organized, and compassionately rendered by an expert in the field who is herself an anorexia survivor. During a time when parents are likely to be distracted by fear and anxiety and yet must search for ways to help their child, this book offers hope and help, not fear and blame. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

A Great Resource for Parents. Someone has finally produced a practical guide for parents who want to raise children with healthy eating habits! In a society where parents must compete with innumerable messages to eat fast and stay thin, this book is one of very few resources designed to assist them in their efforts to help their kids develop healthy attitudes toward food and nutrition. The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders is remarkably readable and the strategies which it outlines are upbeat and presented in an extremely well-organized format. As a clinical psychologist who works with adolescents who have eating disorders, I will surely be recommending Dr. Herrin's book to my clients. Quite simply, this book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone raising teenage girls.

- Reader

Childhood and adolescent eating disorders are as complex as they are wide spread among the youth of today. Now parents have a practical, comprehensive, effective, and 'user friendly' instruction manual on how they can help their children to overcome (and even avoid) any category of eating disorder through a home-based recovery with "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders: Supporting Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating, & Positive Body Image At Home" by Marcia Herrin (Founder of the Dartmoth College Eating Disorder Prevention, Education and Treatment Programs) and writer/author Nancy Matsumoto. This newly updated and expanded second edition of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" includes four chapters devoted to the Maudsley approach, the highly successful, parent-assisted method for normalizing eating behavior. Of special note is the first-person account by the mother of one anorexic child who describes her daughter's recovery using the techniques developed by Dr. Herrin. Other sections of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" focus on family communications, the medical consequences of eating disorders, advice for siblings, relapse prevention, food plans, and boys who are at risk for an eating disorder. Informed and informative, "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" is a very strongly recommended addition to family and community library Health & Medicine reference collections in general, and Eating Disorder supplemental reading lists in particular.

- Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

When I was struggling with anorexia and bulimia, my family felt lost. They did not know what to do; they did not know what to say. They felt like they were walking on eggshells around me.

I wish that "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders" had been around when I was battling my eating disorder. It would have benefited both my family and me immensely. This easy-to-read book not only gives hope but also provides real guidance for finding a full recovery.

As a recovered individual and a professional working in the eating disorder field today, I highly recommend "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders" to all parents, patients, and professionals dealing with this illness. Unlike other books, the authors give a full spectrum view of eating disorder treatment, including the life-saving Maudsley approach.

With "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders," there is no more walking on eggshells!

- Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too (McGraw-Hill)

The Parents Guide really helped me and my family; reading it was like having an expert in the room. I now feel empowered and like a crucial element in my daughter's recovery process, not just a bystander. The common-sense approach and the first-hand accounts were very helpful. This book definitely helped my family move forward, I highly recommend it!

By annonymous (tallahassee)

"Childhood and adolescent eating disorders are as complex as they are wide spread among the youth of today. Now parents have a practical, comprehensive, effective, and 'user friendly' instruction manual on how they can help their children to overcome (and even avoid) any category of eating disorder through a home-based recovery with "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders: Supporting Self-Esteem, Healthy Eating, & Positive Body Image At Home" by Marcia Herrin (Founder of the Dartmoth College Eating Disorder Prevention, Education and Treatment Programs) and writer/author Nancy Matsumoto.

This newly updated and expanded second edition of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" includes four chapters devoted to the Maudsley approach, the highly successful, parent-assisted method for normalizing eating behavior. Of special note is the first-person account by the mother of one anorexic child who describes her daughter's recovery using the techniques developed by Dr. Herrin. Other sections of "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" focus on family communications, the medical consequences of eating disorders, advice for siblings, relapse prevention, food plans, and boys who are at risk for an eating disorder. Informed and informative, "The Parent's Guide To Eating Disorders" is a very strongly recommended addition to family and community library Health & Medicine reference collections in general, and Eating Disorder supplemental reading lists in particular. "

-Letter from Julie, a reader from Paris, France

Thank you for your book, "The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders." My mom in fact gave me the book to read. She doesn't understand my disordered eating and is struggling with what to do especially since I'm 20 and not living at home any more. It is a relief to have a book to both explain to my mom and to me a lot of what has been going on.

"It seemed, as I read, that you answered the questions that were in my head and in some parts described exactly how my disordered eating had progressed and continued. I saw so much of me in the pages that it scared me. It was also encouraging to read in your Food Plan a lot of strategies that I had already devised on my own."

I would like you to know how much I value your book and how much it has taught me.

So thanks again,
Julie