Dr. Ferrara has worked with children and adult survivors of abuse for over twenty years in CT, NY and FL. She is currently in private practice in Tampa, FL and affiliated with the University of South Florida as adjunct associate professor.
DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA: All right. My name is Dr. Felicia Ferrara. I am a parent coach, and I would like to speak to you today about how to monitor a teen diet. This is very tricky. It's very hard. Because let's face it, a teenager is out there in the social world enjoying many different activities that you're not present in, so you really can't tell what they're eating. First stop is, of course, if you want your teen on a good diet is do not buy the junk food. If the junk food is not in the house then obviously the child is not going to get used to it. The second thing you might want to do if you actually are concerned about the amount a child eats, you want to make sure you watch during dinner what they're doing with their food on their plate. Are they actually swallowing it, eating it or are they slipping it off their plate and feeding it to the family dog? So those are kind of things you want to monitor. The other thing you want to be careful about is if you see a child's clothing changing sizes quite a bit and, of course, this is in extreme cases when a child is moving towards anorexia nervosa. That's a problem when people have a misperception about their size and in fact really try to lose much more weight than you possibly think. Usually they do it by increasing their activity tremendously like exercising excessively, running track when they never did before, running up and down stairs excessively, and overall lifting weights, etcetera. So you want to be careful about that. If for any reason, you suspect that there is a serious problem with their eating intake then by all means you need to consult a professional, a doctor, and have him take a look at the problem and see if there really is a problem. Now, mind you, every parent has this concern especially in this day and age when people are so diet conscious. Most young girls even in middle school or 10, 11, 12 years old are very conscious of being overweight and try to diet. So you do want to be careful about getting the healthy foods for them, and you want to make sure they have the right portions of healthy food and they're taking the right amount of calories for their height and weight. These are things you can get from your pediatrician. You can get all the statistics there. And if you are really concerned about your child, you can always consult a professional nutritionist on the weight. You want to be really concerned now the converse of being anorexic nervosa is somebody who might be obese and have a weight problem because they're overweight. That can lead to a lot of other health problems including childhood diabetes, so it's just as important to watch your healthy eating child and make sure they're monitored correctly with portions as it is to monitor your child who you think is dieting. So again, buy the proper food, observe the diet and food intake that they're taking, and if necessary consult a professional medical practitioner as far as the health issue and consult a professional nutritionist to put them on a healthy diet. With all of those above, you should be able to watch, monitor and take care of your child's or your teenager's healthy diet. So long for now.
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