Some people shouldn't be parents, honestly. My advice to these two LWs is broadly the same, so let's do that: Your child is not deliberately doing these things at you. Don't you think that first child would rather be able to just casually go out to get food with her friends afterschool without first having to worry about whether or not she could eat the food? That, perhaps, it's even a little embarrassing for her to be the only one at school who can't eat what everybody else eats, even if what everybody else eats is cafeteria food? Don't you think that second child would rather have some other way to feel better that isn't objectively painful? And for crying out loud, how dare that LW get mad at this child for trying to feel better. It's been a decade, and in the past decade it hasn't occurred to the parents that a child shouldn't need to feel better so often, and that this might be a sign of a medical and/or psychological problem?

I haven't checked the comments at slate. I can guess what they're like all too well. For some reason, people are really obsessive about gatekeeping who "really" has an eating disorder or food aversion and who's just "picky like a baby". I don't get it, I really don't.