Saturday 11 June 2011

Updating the Contract to achieve new goals

The great thing about the anorexia recovery contract is that it can be updated whenever you need to focus on a particular problem area. I always ensure this is seen as a mutual thing and never seen as me, the parent, inflicting 'my will' on Ben. This is how we've agreed to update the contract  - and why...


Yesterday at CAMHS Ben had lost 1.5kg over a fortnight. OK, he's had a tummy bug, so that could be the reason. However it is vital that he gets back to the agreed minimum permitted weight level - and then continue to work on increasing.

This week he also plans to go back to school full-time - his first full days and, hopefully, full week since spring 2009 (apart from some tricky full days back in September 2009).

This will also mean school dinners - and there's always the danger with school dinners that Ben will cut back. In the Bad Old High-Anorexia Days he'd go for salad and fruit, nothing else.

So we need to achieve 3 things: significant weight gain, maintaining full days at school and managing school dinners.

So, for the short term, we have agreed the following update to the anorexia recovery contract:

  • Re. the Exercise part of the contract: No 'abnormal' exercise is permitted in school (e.g. running round the grounds, running from lesson to lesson, exercising in the toilets, etc).
  • We've doubled the points Ben gets for exceeding his daily calories by 100 or 200.
  • 1 extra point for a satisfactory school dinner.
We also plan to update it over the summer holidays so we don't have similar problems to last year when Ben was avoiding social contact.

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