DEAR ABBY: After several months of weight loss, our preteen daughter was hospitalized after a trip to the ER. She was diagnosed with ARFID. It’s an eating disorder we had never heard of but one in which the patient is NOT deliberately losing weight or attempting to change their body.
We canceled a vacation and have taken time off work to circle the wagons and care for her. This has caused questions from our friends, acquaintances, co-workers and extended family, which we have been ducking.
As a former sufferer of an eating disorder, my wife is reluctant to let anyone outside our inner circle know what is going on and risk our daughter beginning middle school with the stigma of an eating disorder. But we need to say something to the people in our lives who know something is wrong and ask what’s going on and where we’ve been.
What should we tell people to preserve our daughter’s privacy while acknowledging that not everything is OK? I thought something like, “My daughter is having stomach problems (true) and lost a bunch of weight (true), and the doctors are trying to figure out what’s going on,” but my wife is concerned that even mentioning weight is going to be stigmatizing.
She is advocating telling people our daughter is malnourished (also true), but to me, this will lead people to draw conclusions that are both too close to home and inaccurate. Please advise. — NAVIGATING THIS IN THE MIDWEST