over-protective

The comments I have received recently have been very supportive and heartening.  Thank you.  I feel slightly unworthy as I know that I could always be doing better - about once a week I go out for the evening when I could be home supervising supper and I am inclined to be soft on ED.

Another instance is that I did not mention at the last Maudsley meeting that Waif has been back doing sport - well, not Saturday morning training, but over the hols she came on walks, went riding, went cycling and played tennis.  Now she is back at school, she is cycling in (3.5 miles there and the same back).   That's the trouble with having given her a carbon fibre bike last birthday, she wants to use it  :-)   Actually the journey is great with the first 2.5 miles being on traffic free bike paths across the park and heath.  The last mile is a little more hairy as it involves the A20 and then a couple of back roads that are used as cut throughs by commuters trying to dodge the lights on the South Circular.  They drive very fast and weave in and out.  Meanwhile harried mothers are randomly stopping to drop off school children and then pulling back out again also, astonishingly, careless of school children cycling (there are actually only about 10 bikes in the school bike shed in a school of 800, according to Waif and I guess that is why).

This is fine in principle as long as she is not losing weight but somehow Waif is unwilling to eat more to make up for the exercise.  Indeed, she has already asked me if she can start to eat "healthily" again when she reaches 43kg.  She is supposed to get to about 47kg but I checked 43kg on BMI charts and it is about a quarter of the way up the normal range for her age and height, so I said possibly.....I am not trying to make her plump!  Not that I would mind that.  NO, it is that I want her to have autonomy BUT, and this is a big but, the research shows that the higher the target weight set and achieved then the less likely is relapse.  Had she never been below 43kg then I would have been content for her to maintain 43kg, but given how thin she was late last year, I guess I we need to aim higher.  I talked all this through with her and she seems on board.  Luckily OD is now 50kg and looking gorgeous so that makes any number starting with forty seem less frightening to Waif.

Anyway, yesterday Waif cycled to school, had games all afternoon, played in a rounders match, then cycled home.  This makes a total of over 4 hours exercise. She was tearful on the way home.  Ostensibly this was as she had been subbed in the rounders team but really I suspect she was exhausted.  Next week I am going to make her choose between cycling and rounders on Tuesday, but not both.

I suggested that Waif try out for the school tennis team - she has coaching and is quite good at tennis.  She said that only the boys can use the courts at school.    Hmmm... unfortunately I can believe this is true as it used to be a boys only school and I can quite see how when the first girls arrived there was a discussion about how the courts were already fully used.  Obviously, if anyone sat down, ab initio, and looked at a limited number of courts in a fully mixed school and decided how to allocate them, not a single person would suggest that the boys should play tennis and the girls rounders.  Boys even have cricket too in the Summer where the girls have no particular summer sport in most schools (athletics being unisex) other than tennis.  Sigh, I can feel a call to the school coming up to discuss:

a)  whether Waif is likely to be back in the rounders team next week (just for my info);
b)  to check whether it is really correct that only the boys can play tennis and to ask for the thinking behind it; and
c) to ask the school to join with me in lobbying he local council for a small section of cycle lane between the A20 and the school, and asking whether children might have permission to use the back entrance (behind the playing fields) when on their bicycles to cut out a large section of dangerous road.

Perhaps I should just leave well alone.  I am never sure when to back off.

All in all though, it is wonderful to see Waif looking so much healthier and with more energy than for most of last year.  That and the wonderful blossom and sunshine we are having at the moment, makes me joyful and optimistic.