Liz it sounds like you had an exceptionally good counselor. Great insight on that if the household is in an uproar all the time nobody will want to be there. I've backed off the family in a lot of ways because I really don't want people around me unhappy all the time, and I haven't forgotten how it feels to be pressured either. Home should be the place where people accept you as you are - warts, bumps and all - as long as you're not totally disrupting things, that is. MY DH has a brother who is alcoholic and verbally and/or physically abusive on a daily basis; always losing jobs or gambling away his paycheck - that I couldn't deal with. I'm very grateful for the man I do have.

Fortunately Mary, my oldest is out of school now, and the youngest has only this year to go. Jason is very health conscious and controls himself well though he does eat HC stuff. The youngest lives on tiny portions of food - some of it HC junk - and gallons of OJ. Brian has lost about 60lbs in 4 years that way and at 17 thinks he has all the answers. I ask him how he deals with the blood sugar swings from not eating very much and he says, "Oh I just ignore it and it goes away." Makes me cringe! But he's active and healthy and since his doc was more concerned about his former weight and borderline high BP - we decided to not make an issue out of it and make things even worse. He does eat regularly, but on his own schedule and whatever he likes. He does ala carte at school (it's a tech HS and they have a food service department that prepares meals) and usually gets a slice of pizza, a bagel with cream cheese, or fries - and always OJ. Their choices there are much better than the average HS, but there's still a lot of carbs. You can blame Uncle Sam for that because except for vending machines, most of the stuff comes from government guidelines. Got a kick out of the Reagan-era revamping when they tried to squeeze past us that ketchup and mustard were actually veggies.