My Kid is Back!

My Kid is Back!

With my co-author, Professor Daniel Le Grange, I’m delighted to announce the worldwide release of My Kid is Back, Second Edition. We thank families from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand for contributing to this new book’s powerful message about Family-Based Treatment (FBT), the most effective evidence-based approach for children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa.
My Kid is Back Second Edition offers comfort, guidance and hope for families whose child has developed anorexia nervosa. Without pretending recovery is easy, families and young people courageously and candidly share their varied experiences with FBT, while Prof. Le Grange explains how and why this treatment works (or does not work).
The families’ prime message is that early intervention with FBT can significantly reduce the severity of anorexia nervosa in children and adolescents. Their stories illustrate how anorexia nervosa goes deeper than physical appearance and can continue to affect the person, even after weight recovery. The earlier a child receives treatment, the greater the likelihood of fast recovery and freedom to resume everyday living.

The power of parental love

Parents constantly inspire Prof. Le Grange, who says, “No one has as much commitment as the parents to hang in there with their child.” FBT taps into the power of this loving commitment. Most parents are suitable to take on the challenge of overcoming the illness that has overtaken their child. And for the many families who do succeed, their family unit is strengthened in many ways beyond that of overcoming the eating disorder.
Prof. Le Grange’s greatest inspiration occurs when parents, who 12 months earlier presented for assessment with a child ‘looking like a skeleton with their life on hold or pushed back’, return to enter his consulting rooms and say, “I’ve got my kid back!”
In our book, parents and children take us into their homes to describe what living with anorexia nervosa is like. Children who have experienced anorexia nervosa, and in some instances are continuing to recover, bravely describe the power and pain of this insidious illness that develops in the brain and infiltrates one’s sense of self.
Together with their families, the young persons’ wish is that more understanding of anorexia nervosa will enable early recognition and intervention, so others are not impacted as deeply or for as long.

Family-based Treatment (FBT) is the gold-standard approach

FBT is the universal gold-standard treatment for children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa when the young person is medically and psychiatrically fit for outpatient treatment, which is the case for more than 80 per cent of young people with this diagnosis. However, there is more work to be done.
Families in My Kid Is Back describe their frustration at losing critical time accessing help for their child. Despite visits to family doctors, other health providers and multiple hospital admissions, many families continue to learn about FBT only through their own desperate research.
For health professionals, as much as for parents. this book’s message is that unity is essential for FBT to succeed in overcoming anorexia nervosa. Families must be united and empowered, therapy teams must be united in their commitment, and families and therapists must be committed to working together.

Why parents are a therapist’s most powerful ally

Despite years of study and training, some therapists may still have difficulty acknowledging the parents as their most powerful ally in helping a child recover. Egos must be set aside when treating this illness; so, too, any reluctance to question long-held beliefs.
Anorexia nervosa can leave families with lifelong relationship struggles in its wake. However, FBT offers hope by reinstating fundamental family principles—empowering parents and supporting them and their children in their growth and development.
In healing from anorexia nervosa, each member of the FBT team should be on the same page in guiding and empowering the parents to help their child recover. My Kid Is Back Second Edition challenges the eating disorder field at every level to support parents in the delivery of FBT. Families sharing their experiences in this book demonstrate abundantly the value of home-based treatment of child and adolescent anorexia nervosa. The power of family participation cannot be underestimated.

Why early intervention with FBT is vital

Anorexia nervosa can develop in any child, anywhere. It can happen to a child of any social status, culture, or gender. As the families in this book illustrate, recognising the symptoms of anorexia nervosa is a challenge.
In 2025, most parents have heard about the illness through the media, but not until the illness develops in a family member does its impact hit home.
I developed anorexia nervosa shortly after my 11th birthday in 1962. The illness was unknown in the rural district where I was growing up in southeast Australia. Life was a struggle.
I was in my mid-fifties in 2006, when I could eat three meals and three snacks every day without feeling guilty.

Why I empathise with children today

Through my experience and many interviews with children with anorexia nervosa, I have come to view anorexia nervosa as a deceptive illness of the mind. This illness has a universal ‘voice’ and language of its own. This is why I feel a close connection with children today when they describe their illness, thoughts, and feelings—their experience is a replica of mine, in another place, another time, another century.
My parents and a sister, who was several years older than me, had not heard of anorexia nervosa. I had not heard of it either. This was the early 1960s, after all. When I was 12, one doctor told my parents I wanted to be a boy and did ‘not want to grow up’. That was the limit of any explanation, and no support was given.
I was growing up at a time when there was a lack of awareness not only about eating disorders but about mental illness in general.
Years passed. The anorexia ‘voice’ was unrelenting. To my parents and sister, I appeared unsociable, self-centred, stubborn, moody and inflexible. My family didn’t understand I was fighting an illness in my brain. My response to their (unfair but understandable) labelling was to withdraw into myself. My private diary increasingly became my confidant.

Access help promptly–don’t delay

Sometimes, family members might ignore or deny a loved one has a mental illness because acknowledgement of the illness could compel them to address issues within themselves. However, when anorexia nervosa develops, doing nothing allows the illness to worsen. Accessing help as soon as symptoms appear is vital to minimise the suffering of every family member.
On entering my teenage years, my untreated anorexia nervosa see-sawed with bulimia nervosa. In many ways, my life became one of enormous torment. I looked ‘normal’, but within my mind, I was living on a constant rollercoaster juggling two lives: one internally with my eating disorder and the other trying to keep up appearances with the outside world. Feelings of isolation and inner conflict were immense.

Writing was my main coping and survival tool.

At 18, I began a career in journalism, and when I married a farmer at 20, three of us walked down the aisle—my husband and me, and anorexia.
My mental torment grew. At age 28, experiencing suicidal ideation, I confided in a family doctor about my inner hell for the first time. By now, my illness had been untreated for 17 years. For the next five years, I was misdiagnosed.
I was 33 when I was referred to a Melbourne psychiatrist, Professor Graham Burrows (‘Prof’), who understood and diagnosed my illness. My undiagnosed eating disorder had by then set me on a path of chronic depression and anxiety, self-harm and broken relationships.
Under Prof’s patient guidance, I gradually reconnected with and recovered my healthy self. In 2006, for the first time since age 11, I began to eat three meals and three snacks daily without feeling guilty. So began the best part of my life, being free to be ‘me’.

Recovery of healthy self, but oh, the losses

Sadly, unlike the stories in this book, my family could not understand my struggles.
As a high-functioning person, I somehow managed to maintain a full-time career as a journalist, providing a small but vital sense that ‘part of me must be okay’.
At times, my doctors estimated I was working on five per cent of myself, the eating disorder occupying the other 95 per cent. My sister would say, “How come you are working when you say you are sick?” “You can’t be sick if you are working.”
Today, I know such comments stemmed from a lack of awareness, but at the time, they cut deep and hindered recovery by feeding my illness, compounding my feelings of shame and unworthiness. My self-confidence would crash, my anxiety would soar, and my illness would thrive. Doctors strongly advised me to avoid people who triggered my illness. Sadly, the effects of the decades-long illness forged a permanent rift in my family of origin.

Family support and love is a keystone

Family support is a keystone in FBT. Without that support, I struggled for years to rebuild and strengthen my scant, healthy self. The little girl of 11 remained in my troubled mind and body but needed help to escape the prison of my illness.
Was my struggle to get myself back worthwhile? Yes!
Most importantly, the good news conveyed in this book is that children developing the illness today can avoid decades of debilitating suffering through prompt diagnosis and implementation of FBT. I wish this treatment had been available for my family when I was a child.
Reclaiming and rebuilding one’s healthy self is more arduous without family support and unconditional love.

My greatest inspirers in how to live

Fortunately, families can come in many shapes and forms. On my recovery journey, I developed two families–firstly, my children, grandchildren and friends, and secondly, the eating disorder field. Both remain essential to my well-being. Doctors encouraged me to accept help from others who believed in me and who I knew I could trust. The guidance of my treatment team over many years, together with the understanding and love of my four children and the life-long friendship of their father and my best friends, enabled my recovery.
Since the first edition of My Kid is Back (2009), my support squad has grown to include five grandchildren. These youngest support members don’t understand that I had anorexia nervosa when I was their age; they accept me for who I am without judgment. All they know and care about is that I am ‘Grandma June’. They have been great teachers in ‘how to live’.
The birth of my eldest grandchild, Lachlan, in 2006 instantly inspired my commitment to ongoing healing. Lachlan is my benchmark for years of recovery. Ashton, Olivia, Kayla, and Amelia complete my grandies’ team. They are a constant reminder of how beautiful life can be, how beautiful living in the moment can be, and how beautiful contentment and inner peace can be when the anorexia voice is silenced.
I am ever-grateful that I never gave up.

Meeting Daniel Le Grange

Writing has remained a mainstay, and I continue to keep a diary. Since 2006, I have written books and blogs (www.lifestoriesdiary.com/blog) to give hope to people with eating disorders, inform families about eating disorders, and share stories of experience to educate health professionals.
While researching my memoir, A Girl Called Tim, in 2007, I learned about FBT and immediately thought, ‘This is the answer! This is what I yearned for through my long struggle.’ I wanted to help spread the word about this treatment so that children today would not have their lives sidetracked for decades and their families destroyed.
Tentatively, I emailed Prof. Le Grange in the USA and flew from Melbourne to discuss my proposal for a book about FBT. This is how the first edition of My Kid is Back (2009) was born. I am ever-grateful to Daniel, a scientist, for believing in me, a person with lived experience, and agreeing to meet me in his consulting room at the University of Chicago. A cherished memory is of us walking towards each other along the long corridor and meeting at his door.
So began an enriching collaboration that continues to this day. Certainly, writing stories to help others and disseminate the work of outstanding life-saving researchers like Daniel has assisted my own healing path.
Since 2009, besides writing books about eating disorders, I have researched the usefulness of diary writing as a tool to assist self-healing from an eating disorder in my PhD*. In 2024, the National Library of Australia, Canberra, acquired my diary collection spanning more than six decades.

It is amazing what you can achieve when you do a U-turn with your eating disorder and regain the positive power of 100 per cent healthy self!

I don’t want children to experience the effects of anorexia nervosa, as I did into adulthood. I want them to recover their health and personalities quickly, flourish, and embrace life nestled in their families’ love and understanding.
I don’t want the children’s eating disorders to tag along, as mine did, when they leave home, enter relationships and embark on careers. This is why FBT is vital in helping a child to recover from anorexia nervosa. Besides helping the child get their life back on track, FBT bonds and helps families stay together.

Wide-ranging content in My Kid is Back Second Edition

Excitingly, this book has a greater range of content than our first edition of My Kid is Back, which was released in 2009 when FBT was still pretty much ‘the new treatment on the block’.
In the mid-2020s, the stories in this new edition reflect a recognition of neurodiversity, global influences and trends, including the ground-driven rise of parent coaches and peer mentors that have developed since the first book’s publication.
REFERENCES
*Alexander, J. (2017). Using writing as a therapy for eating disorders: The Diary Healer and the process of using personal diary excerpts to assist people with eating disorders. London: Routledge. CQUniversity. Thesis. https://hdl.handle.net/10018/1211443.