Book excerpt: The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders shows that effective solutions begin at home and cost little more than a healthy investment of time, effort, and love. Based on exciting new research, it differs from similar books in several key ways. Instead of concentrating on the grim, expensive hospital stays of patients with severe disorders, the authors focus on the family, teaching parents how to examine and understand their family’s approach to food and body-image issues and its effect their child’s behavior. Parents learn to identify an eating disorder early, to establish healthy attitudes toward food at a young age, and to intervene in a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental way. The authors concentrate on teens, the age group most often affected by eating disorders, as well as younger children. Individual chapters cover boys at risk, relapse training, dealing with friends, school, and summer camp, and much more. The book includes an appendix and sections on further reading, organizations and websites, residential and hospital programs, and references.