Kitty Westin lost her daughter to anorexia, but she won the battle that led to better mental health insurance coverage and treatment options

Anna Westin was a gregarious, outgoing, and cheerful 16-year-old according to her mother Kitty. So when the Chaska teen began to withdraw from friends and family, the change was stark. Anna became secretive, made excuses to escape mealtime, and noticeably restricted her food intake.

“People ask me all the time, ‘When did you first notice? When did she get treatment?’” says Kitty Westin of Anna’s anorexia nervosa. “I think the better thing for people to understand is that people with eating disorders are really good at hiding it.” The Westins got Anna into a nine-month outpatient treatment program in which she excelled, and it seemed the eating disorder was beaten. But four years later, when Anna came home after her sophomore year at the University of Oregon, Kitty saw that the anorexia was back. What she didn’t realize was that it would change her family and the state of Minnesota forever.

“It was a pretty quick bobsled ride into hell from there.”
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Emily Larson describes her childhood as a happy one, at least until the age of 12 — that’s when Larson’s mother pointed out that she was getting fat. “I look back at the pictures and I just don’t see it,” says the now 48-year-old executive from Woodbury. With her mother’s encouragement, Larson (who asked that we not use her real name) began to diet and exercise with a vengeance, and by 14 she was 5'6" and a mere 91 pounds. A deadly combination of bulimia and anorexia had taken over, and Larson was hospitalized for the first of what would become several visits throughout her life. “You get used to doing it, and part of you that realizes you’re good at this,” Larson explains. “You do whatever you can to try to hide it. It’s extremely isolating. Eating disorders take over your life.”

For Larson, who now speaks about her recovery to patients at the Emily Program, the only thing worse than spending a lifetime battling an eating disorder was the idea that her 11- and 13-year-old daughters would do the same. “The last thing I would want is to see them go through the hell I’ve been through,” she says. “I’ve lost all my teeth, I have pins holding my ankle together because of bone injuries from being in such poor health. I wanted them to know how horrible it was.” Recently, the topic of eating disorders came up thanks to a book her older daughter was reading, and Larson decided it was the right time to explain her past. “We got into a discussion, and I felt I owed it to them to be honest with them. I wanted it to come from me, and I wanted to be open about it.”
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We asked readers of our weekly e-newsletter, Minnesota Parent This Week, what their biggest afterschool challenges are and what solutions they’ve found. Here’s what you said:

I work for the school district, so I can be home within 30 minutes of my child getting off the school bus. My biggest challenge is finding somewhere for her to go for that 30 minutes. Paying for afterschool daycare doesn’t make sense since it is only for 30 minutes! Luckily, in St. Paul the rec centers offer free childcare called “Rec Check.” Students in grades 1–6 can check in with program staff, have a snack, and receive help with their homework. They just need to be picked up
by 6 p.m.
— Alicia Garcia, St. Paul

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Funding afterschool programs for middle-schoolers is hard and keeping kids interested is even harder, but Galaxy Youth Center in Bloomington gets it right

The Galaxy Youth Center is booming — literally. It would be loud enough if the only noise were from the 30 or so kids buzzing around the foosball tables and video games. But there’s a stereo blasting hip-hop at a decibel level that, while near-lethal to adults, seems barely audible to the middle-schoolers in the high-ceilinged rooms at the back of Bloomington’s Valley View Middle School.

A big whiteboard at the front door lists the day’s activities. At first glance, none of the clubs, games, and crafts seem edgy enough to interest sixth- to eighth-graders. Look twice, though, and you might find a notable local DJ teaching turntable skills or a spoken-word artist helping kids rap.

Too cool for anything that smacks of “kid stuff” but not old enough to truly take care of themselves, youth this age are notoriously hard to engage. Yet the three Galaxy centers operated jointly by the city of Bloomington and Bloomington Public Schools attract 200 kids a year, mostly by word of mouth.

Entering seventh grade at Oak Grove Middle School, 12-year-old Hannah Sapp is a Galaxy regular. She wasn’t sure she’d like it, but after attending for a year, she can’t imagine going home alone instead. “I just don’t like sitting around at home with nothing to do,” she says. “Galaxy always has good activities to do. You’re not just sitting on the couch.” Her favorite activities: cooking, playing pool, and taking dance lessons.

Devon Olson, 14, was a reluctant convert, too. Three years ago when his mother signed him up, he thought Galaxy “sounded dull.” He’s stayed in the program for three years. Making friends is most important to him, but he also likes Galaxy’s community-service projects, like raking leaves for seniors in the fall or packing food for homeless shelters.

The secret to keeping members of this age group engaged, according to Galaxy Coordinator Suzanne Kpowulu: Make things interesting enough that kids want to come back — and bring their friends. “The need to provide kids a safe space after school — that’s the baseline,” she says. “It’s about providing opportunities for meaningful connections, skill development, and character building.”

And if that weren’t a tall enough order, what kids find cool can change from one moment to another. “We always say we come with two or three tricks in our back pocket,” Kpowulu says. “If it doesn’t work, move on.”

Unlike high-schoolers, who are independent enough to piece together and manage a schedule of organized activities, middle-schoolers are at risk of getting lost. For them in particular, unsupervised time can lead to poor academic performance, drug and alcohol use, pregnancy, and juvenile crime. Unlike elementary-age kids, however, they’re likely to resist getting involved in organized, supervised activities — provided their parents can even find programs for them.

Minnesota has the largest percentage of working parents in the country, yet high-quality, affordable afterschool care for children of all ages is in notoriously short supply. “We’re going to have working families, so what we’re concerned with is making sure they have access to affordable, quality programming,” says Brian Siverson-Hall, executive director of the Minnesota School Age Care Alliance.

With its tradition of strong public education, Minnesota has a head start over other states, he says. Most of the afterschool programs that have sprung up here over the last 30 years were started by school districts’ community education networks. Even so, many families can’t afford afterschool care. Galaxy kids pay just $1 a day, but that’s thanks to an unusual, innovative combination of grants and funding from public agencies aimed at improving opportunities for kids who would otherwise be home alone. In 1996, the city of Bloomington teamed up with Bloomington Public Schools and secured a 20-year grant to open the centers.

The cutting-edge programming that draws in kids is paid for by a grant from a program funded by the federal government and administered by the state. A part of the otherwise controversial No Child Left Behind school reform legislation, funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers is an effort to reach out to families that can’t afford good care. Kids who get afternoon homework help and behavioral support from schools and community organizations fare better in school.
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Students in Angle Inlet get to school by boat, snowmobile, and golf cart and all study together in Minnesota’s last one-room schoolhouse

It was a simple request, but one that would change Linda Kastl’s life: After four years of teaching first grade in Warroad, she approached the school’s principal in 1985 and asked to try a new grade level. “His response was ‘How would you like to experience every grade level?’” she laughs. The principal was suggesting Kastl take over the lone K–6 teaching position at the Angle Inlet School, the last one-room schoolhouse in Minnesota. Located in the remote Northwest Angle, a small resort community of roughly 150 people, the position required Kastl to live in the small teacherage next door and have a right arm strong enough to start the students’ snowmobiles in winter.

Minnesota Parent experienced a day in the life of Angle Inlet School and got some answers to questions about the workings of our last one-room school.
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Fit and active parents of seven kids, ages 8, 6, 6, 5, 3, 2, and 1

We’ve all used the same excuse: No time to exercise since the kids came along! But Sheff and Deirdre Otis have seven kids ages 8 and under and have found ways to keep their busy family moving and stay in shape at the same time. Sheff writes the new Kid Fit column for Minnesota Parent, keeps a fitness blog at Dadiator-workout.com, and blogs about his family at SevenSidekicks.com. We talked right after the family got back from Sheff’s 10-year college reunion.

Parenting and fitness don’t mix for everyone, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

Sheff: Some of the friends I met at reunion, who were very active and some were even great athletes — they had a baby and it displaced the priority of moving. I want to reach those dads on my blog.

How do you keep the whole family active?

Sheff: We have very active children to start. We look for opportunities to use the world as a playground — what I call guerilla exercise. I’ll use the playground as much as the kids will.
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I’m Still Scared By Tomie DePaola
Puffin Books
$13.99, ages 4–8

In the weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Tomie’s world is a mix of the familiar and the frightening: He practices for a dance recital and sees the movie Dumbo; his mother sews blackout curtains and he practices air raid drills at school and at home. He learns he can get the information and assurance he needs from his parents, even if he can’t at school — a lesson all children need in scary times.
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On her blog, local pastry chef Zoë François wrote a post called “Baking bread with four boys.” I have a hard enough time baking bread myself, much less with my kids (and two of their friends). My bread either doesn’t rise or they don’t turn out like the picture-perfect loaves I see on Martha Stewart’s show.

But François says good bread doesn’t have to be difficult or take hours to prepare. She and her colleague Jeff Hertzberg wrote the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, to teach others their secrets.

Of course, I was skeptical. I have tried more than 20 bread recipes and had mixed results with each one. But now that I’ve tried François and Hertzberg’s master recipe, I think I’m a convert. My kids and I followed the authors’ simple and detailed instructions and made tasty and good-looking bread (the crazy shapes my son made weren’t so attractive, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder).

My kids really liked watching the dough rise and loved the last phase — shaping the dough. As François writes, “Let them use their fingers, rolling pins, cookie cutters, and let their imaginations go wild.” They can shape it into everything from snowflakes to Pokemon characters. And, when they’re finished, they will have as much fun eating the bread as they did baking it!”

Find more fun and tasty recipes under the “kids” category on François’s blog, and explore the rest of her work as well. You won’t be disappointed, unless, of course, you are dieting.
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As you read this, you’re probably getting ready to send your kids back to school (or possibly to school for the first time). If gas prices are affecting you the way they are us, that probably means more carpooling. And nothing helps the carpool like good music. (As an aside, the free podcast of the Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd, at DoctorFloyd.com, is an utter hoot for all ages, but only airs about 10 minutes a week. You need more than that, and so the music below will help.)

Me 3 — The Thin King: Indie violinist, violist, and fiddler Jason Kleinberg, the main force behind Me 3, pitches the CD as “‘Yellow Submarine’ for the post-grunge era,” but I’d identify it as more of a combination of Jonathan Richman and Jack Johnson. The breezy CD has catchy melodies and lyrics that kids will relate to (in “Tulip,” he describes the titular flower as being “as pretty as my mom”), and some gentle irony-free humor (most notably in the trilogy of “Short Song,” “Shorter Song,” and “Shortest Song,” and the quirky “Spork”). The performances are just loose enough to feel welcoming but not sloppy, and Kleinberg’s voice is similarly accessible and warm, but it never feels like he’s singing down to the audience. And I haven’t heard better whistling recently than on “I Don’t Know.” Me3Music.com

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Seven monkeys jumping on my bed usually delights me, but sometimes I’d like to ship ’em off to the circus. Fortunately, this is easier than you might think. The Twin Cities teem with youth circus options for kids of every size and ability.

Bona fide big top

Circus Juventas is large and in charge, with over 700 students, from toddlers to age 21. Little ones start with basic tumbling, jump rope, and globe-walking skills, while big kids attempt flying trapezes, Spanish webs, and “bicycles built for 10.”

Higher-level courses can get intense, particularly when it comes to performing in the August show. Executive Director Betty Butler says proudly that “kids work hard here if they want big things.”

This is good, according to teenage student Anna Johnson, who says that circus, the only “sport” she has ever done, has taught her “passion.” “I’ve really learned to go for something, which can only help with college and other important areas in life.”

Everyone is welcome, including kids with disabilities, for whom Juventas has recently developed a rings course. Diversity is key among students and coaches, many of whom come from China, Russia, and Mongolia.

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Much more so than January, September seems the right time for new beginnings. So, to complement your family’s stack of crisp notebooks, clean pink erasers, new school-year schedules, and fresh fall weather, we present the newly redesigned Minnesota Parent. We think it’s updated and modern and allows us a lot more freedom to present information to you in quick grabs, without sacrificing the in-depth stories we’re proud to continue doing. We hope you agree. As always, we look forward to hearing from you, whether you love it or hate it.

September also brings our annual Baby section, with a feature inspired by Ricki Lake’s documentary The Business of Being Born, released in May. I truly admired what Lake and director Abby Epstein were trying to do: bring to light the financial pressures that have medicalized pregnancy and childbirth and driven up the rate of c-sections in the United States to more than a quarter of all births.

But, at the same time, I recognized the limitations of the film’s polemical stance: When you’re trying to make a point, it’s not always expeditious to give the other side equal time. So, rather than make expectant parents take sides, we decided to lay out the most common options for giving birth in a just-the-facts-ma’am format. In “Give birth your way” on page 21, we look at some of the biggest choices you have to make — hospital or homebirth, ob-gyn or midwife, to doula or not to doula — and tell you the risks, benefits, and costs right here in Minnesota.
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Poor support for breastfeeding

Hospitals throughout the nation, including those here in Minnesota, are not quite making the grade in the department of breastfeeding support. In a report done by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Minnesota’s hospitals and birthing centers scored an average of 65 out of 100. The report measured the methods and the degree to which hospitals and birthing centers across the nation are supporting mothers in their efforts to breastfeed. Hospitals were surveyed on their breastfeeding assistance in the hospital, as well as their continued support after mothers and infants have been discharged.

Minnesota’s hospitals scored only slightly above the national average of 63, earning Minnesota and the nation about a grade school D. The highest score in the country, only about a B-, came from New Hampshire and Vermont, both with 81; the lowest score was 48, belonging to Arkansas.

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Q: My kindergartener brought home a permission slip for me to sign allowing him Internet access at school. Is there a reason I should not sign it?

Today, almost every school-age child will use the Internet in school — even in kindergarten. Many districts require that children accessing the Internet have a signed parental permission slip on file before they participate in Internet activities.

While the Internet is generally well filtered, secured, and maintained in most school systems, districts often want to protect themselves against any possibility that a child may stumble onto or participate in something inappropriate, even though the chance of this happening is small. Hundreds of web sites are created every day, and districts must constantly update their security software.
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So, you’re pregnant. Congratulations! Now, let me guess. You headed to the bookstore and grabbed a tower of manuals on everything from baby names to sleep advice. Often missing from the pile of how-tos, however, is the manual most of us really need: How baby will affect our finances.

Trust me, you’ll get plenty of unsolicited advice about raising kids. But on the money front, friends are usually mum. If you get any advice, it’s typically “it will all work out” — diapers will replace dinner out and the budget will magically balance. Two new books help fill in the financial gaps.

Expecting Money: The Essential Financial Plan for New and Growing Families was written by Erica Sandberg, a mom and credit counselor for Consumer Credit Counseling Service of San Francisco. “I was caught off guard by how little I — someone who has been in the personal finance field for over a decade — knew about the monetary aspects of pregnancy and new parenthood,” she wrote in her intro. I had similar feelings with my kids.

In addition to budgeting, securing employee benefits, and deciding whether to switch from two incomes to one, Sandberg devotes chapters to the meaning of money, as well as couples and money. It’s up to us, after all, to pass on good financial values to our kids. Plus, they will copy what they see, so it’s best to deal with major financial battles today.
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I was sitting around a dinner table with some other mothers recently. One, the mother of an only daughter just launched from the nest into her brand new shiny life as a college student, said, “Well, my job is done now. I need to go back to work.” I know the subtext of this remark: “Ohmigod, my entire life just flashed before my eyes. My kids don’t need me anymore. I’m scared. What skills do I bring to the table? Who wants me?”

My life at 47 is the result of the choices I’ve made, sometimes blithely, sometimes blindly. I’ve been able to balance work as a mom and sporadic work as a freelance writer because I’m privileged to have a spouse with a decent income and benefits. I’ve invested deeply in my relationships with my children and am reaping the reward of three well-adjusted teenagers. But, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, I’m left holding what’s left of the diaper bag, which contains little now but doubts about self-esteem and existential purpose, and an estimate for 12 years’ worth of college tuition. And I’ve been thinking about the role model I’m providing for my daughters.

We assume we’re doing our kids a favor — especially our daughters — when we assure them from day one they can do anything they want. But as Courtney Martin, a 20-something rising star author and journalist, told me: “We’ve been told we can do anything; we think it means we have to do everything.” That conflict is at the roots of what it means to be a woman in our culture. When it comes to life choices — the question of balance — women remain extremely conflicted about how to handle their various roles in private and public life.
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Last week, I went online to learn that one of my favorite blogs had gone dark. Where I was accustomed to seeing Flickr photos of the blogger’s garden, handicrafts, and two beautiful children was a four-line note explaining that something had happened in her professional life that was wonderful for her, but made it impossible for her to maintain a blog.

I’m delighted for her, but as I scanned past the note and realized that the entire online diary had been taken down, I felt an acute sense of loss. I’ve read this woman’s words online every day for nine years, virtually the entire time I’ve been a parent. There have been stretches where she felt like my very best mom-friend, the only person in the universe who really understood the bittersweet arc of my days.

I wanted to send her an e-mail saying as much, but I have no idea who she is — formally, anyhow. I know her initials but not her name. I know her line of work but not her job title. I know the city where she has painstakingly restored a Victorian row house but not the address. I know she favors roses but not the street where her garden blooms. I know everything about her and yet very little.
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Expectant parents face some daunting choices — and conflicting information — before the baby even appears. Here’s what you need to know about your options in Minnesota

Home births

What are the benefits?

Giving birth at home allows women and their families more control and comfort throughout their birthing experience, with few to none of the medical interventions often routine in a hospital birth. Women may also invite friends and relatives to a home birth. “A mom is much more comfortable and relaxed if she has people around that she’s asked to be at the birth,” says Jeanne Bazille, a certified professional midwife practicing in the Twin Cities area.

What are the risks?

If complications arise, a home won’t have the facilities and staff of a hospital. But, one of the first things a mother and her midwife will discuss is the back-up plan to transfer a mother to the hospital should it be necessary. Not all insurance covers the cost of a midwife, which is usually less than a hospital birth.
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In July 2006, Keri Becker of St. Paul went into premature labor with triplets. At just 24 weeks, babies Jack, Olivia, and Grace were at the minimum age of viability for premature births, and the staff at Children’s Hospital warned Becker that they may not survive.

That’s when a nurse suggested Becker contact Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a nonprofit organization of volunteer photographers who come at a moment’s notice to area hospitals to photograph critically ill or stillborn babies so their families can have lasting images. Becker quickly agreed. “When you’re going through that you don’t have the presence of mind to think of something like photos,” says Becker. “It requires a level of organization you don’t have because you’re experiencing this horrible tragedy, but that service really saved my life.”

Beginnings

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep was founded by Colorado-based mom Cheryl Haggard and photographer Sandy Puc’ in 2005 after Haggard’s son Maddux was born with myotubular myopathy, a condition that kept him from breathing, moving, or swallowing on his own. Knowing their time with Maddux was limited, the Haggards asked Puc’ to come to the hospital to photograph the family together before they removed his life support. The comfort those photographs provided inspired Haggard and Puc’ to found Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.
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Click here for all your birthing needs
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