in wanting to thrash dd to within an inch of her life?

you could make him suffer the indignity of taking a packed lunch into school for a bit?

Libra - I give dd, 13, £10 a week lunch money, which she spends at school (not allowed out at lunchtime).
It doesn't go far, especially if she wants a snack or a drink at break, too.

Please can I add another problem to this thread?
I came on here this morning ready to start a thread about DS1 (13). Last night I caught him taking a pound from my purse. Am amazed to see that this thread had already started!
Questioning him has revealed that he has been taking a pound or two a week for a couple of months. He says that it is to supplement his lunch money at school.
We give him five pounds a week for lunch money. School canteen charges around 30p for some pasta, 50p for a filled roll, etc. However, he has started going down into the town with mates so is spending more money - hence the stealing.
He denied at first, which to me made it all worse.
I have removed his mobile phone and we have yet to decide how he will pay me back.
He is 13. He is given lunch money and makes his own decisions about how to spend it.
I have read all the advice on this thread. Does anyone have any more for the slightly older child?

Hm - to be honest, I think that would change the point of the exercise. If you want it to demonstrate that she's beginning to grow up, and should be able to begin to manage parts of her life herself, you need to genuinely cede that control to her and not put so many limits on it that everyone realises that it's just a pretence of doing so.

You probably also have to be prepared for it to go wrong at some point - there probably will be a month when she spends it all on something stupid, or even on sweeties. But the important thing is to let her experience the consequences of that herself, and not go on and on about how she shouldn't have made the choices she did - she'll know that fine without you rubbing it in and making a guilty moral lesson out of it.

Might be a good idea to limit it in other ways, like saying it's just for fun clothes rather than school uniform & shoes (which could be much more expensive, and where it'll really matter if she messes things up)?

Just a thought re the clothing allowance idea - perhaps put straight onto a gift card/voucher from her favourite shop so it can't be used on anything else. I think distraction from the junk food and sweets would have worked best for me at that age. Although obviously a period of her not having everything she wants so she realises stealing is unacceptable first (but it sounds like she's had some of that now). Hope it gets better for you

have you tried talking to her about house rules and why you have them and agreeing a set of rules with her? As your children get older they need to have more say in what happens and more control over their lives. If she can control other things she may grow out of her problem with food, because the hiding it away does sound dangerous. It sounds like she steals to buy sweets, if you can work out a way to cope with that the stealing may disappear anyway.

Mine are allowed to buy what they please with their own money - they splurge sometimes ( Christmas and Easter ) but most of the time are pretty responsible. They do have to brush their teeth regularly, if they get slack on that it becomes something they have to do to earn their pocket money. They are also expected to exercise - maybe you could agree to relax your rules on sweets if she cleans her teeth regularly and exercises? Any exercise she likes - dancing, aerobics, swimming, skating, trampolining, tennis? Do you have a dog she can walk or could she earn money walking someone else's pet? Can she walk part of the way home from school?

If you know anyone with bad teeth/ a weight problem pointing that out may be the most helpful way to discourage your children. We have a friend with black teeth and he has been a great help in getting health messages over.

The concept that a child can steal food from their own home is ridiculous. No court in the land would agree with you.

Like Orangekatie's suggestion re the clothing allowance, that worked well for me too at that sort of age (bit older probably).
My mother was pretty strict about sweets when we were young up and it did make them the forbidden fruit, but I do understand your stance on the healthy eating front. But searching your daughter is probably making her feel a bit resentful.
Also it might be that she is stealing to get your attention. Apparently I used to steal small things (I was bit younger than your DD) and this was when my mother was very ill and I was desperate for attention. Just a thought?

I think you are acting like a complete fruit loop tbh. Body searches abd frisking indeed!

I think your DD is showing the same respect to you as you do to her - none whatsoever!

It is, of course, up to you how you raise your child, but she is nearly a teenager and I would not want to risk going into the teenage years with such a fragile relationship with my child. The risks of it going completely off the rails are just too high, which some MNetters are only too aware of. When it goes wrong, it goes badly wrong it seems.

You need to work out a way of learning to trust each other again. That does mean backing off re the sweets. In a few years time it will be alchohol then drugs. You cannot be with her every minute of her life - so you need to show her how to moderate her exposure to less desirable things or you will have the mother of all battles on your hands in the very near future!

EW, are you serious about carrying out body-searches whenever the poor girl comes into the house?! Blimey. You are making sweets into a MASSIVE issue here. Step back, breathe deeply and think about what you are doing.

FWIW I don't think it's stealing for a member of the family to help themselves to something from the fridge. I don't go out to work, so technically all the food in the house belongs to dp. Does that mean that I have just stolen the glass of wine I'm drinking? I would hate my children to think that they can't just come and get a drink from the fridge or a biscuit (home made and very healthy before anyone questions me)without asking first. Children are members of the family too!

D'you know, I think it might be an idea to try and divert the experience of learning to handle money away from issues about eating & control. Would it be possible to work towards giving her a clothing allowance (paid straight into her bank account so it wouldn't be burning a hole in her pocket?) or something like that, so that she's got a decent amount of money to feel responsible for over a longer period, rather than this daily issue of whether to spend the bus fare on chocolate or not. Just a thought, anyway(was trying to figure out what strategies might have worked on me at that stage).

i think if you start trusting her you'll see an attitude change. let her spend her money on what she wants, don't frisk her, let her get on with it and out of her system. only have healthy food in the house. vitally, insist she sits down to a meal with you as a family and eats all the food on her plate.

Elasticwoman, it must have been a big shock for you, especially as you didn't steal yourself as a teenager. I think it is very common for teens and pre-teens to do this, though. I'm not saying you shouldn't act swiftly and firmly so your dd knows it is absolutely unacceptable, but I shouldn't lose too much sleep over it either - it doesn't mean she is set for a life of crime.

As another who suffered eating disorders for twenty years, I do though have to echo others on this thread. I think the binging in secret is very worrying. Your rules around eating sound perfectly sensible - for someone without eating disorders. You do not have to teach your daughter how to have an eating disorder - all you need to do is to allow food to become a control issue in your home, and your daughter's adolescent psyche will do the rest. I think you may need to try to make food less contested within your family, even if that means your daughter eating more junk food than you would like, and focus on building her confidence and self-esteem through the tricky years she is about to go through.

Good luck.

sorry elasticwoman, got so caught up in my own story I wasn't very clear. I don't think you are extreme!! Despite advising you to lighten up (bad choice of phrase) what you do is very similar to me. I just meant if there's a possibility it is too restrictive for your daughter than it may be worth having a rethink and tackling things differently.

FWIW my mum also brought up my 3 sisters on the same regime as me and they all have a completely normal relationship with food...so didn't mean to imply your approach (which is pretty normal) automatically leads to problems.

Elasticwoman

Have just skimmed through whole thread, so I may be barking up wrong tree here. Seems to me as someone who stole regularly as a child (and definitely from middle to upper class) I was never regularly given a reasonable amount of money. By reasonable I do not mean excessive, I just mean the same as my peers. I boarded and was given £3 a term everyone else was given £5 to £10 a term.

I would have benefited from being trusted as an adolescent and being respected.

My heart goes out to your dd, I was her, in my case it was love and attention. Consistency springs to mind, my bitch of a mother treated me well after she had consulted her friends but it soon resorted to the normal nastiness and omg all my bitterness is coming out here.

Just try to hear her out and make sure she is in the same boat as her peers.

God knows what I will do when my dd is old enough, Good Luck

binging secretly is a MASSIVE warning sign. It needs dealing with if she is not to end up bulimic or a compulsive/binge eater. While you feel that she is getting enough sweets, the problem is that for her, it isn't about the sweets as items in themselves. You are seeing food as food - I can pretty much guarantee you that it isn't about food to her. It is about emotions. I bet she certainly feels guilty (hence the hiding it) that will make her feel bad, which will make her seek comfort......and there you go. It is a loop I have been stuck in for 20 years.

It sounds like she is trying to get some control from you (normal struggle at this age) so if you have anything you can 'give' on to make her feel more in control than she does, it might help.

I might be totally wrong. I don't know your family or anything other than the few words you have shared here. But they struck a chord with me and I related my own experience to it.

Much as I hate to admit it your daughter sounds like me as a preteen and teenager. I also stole from my mum to feed my junk food habit. My mum also 'allowed' cakes and biscuits on a very limited basis. I was addicted to sweet things especially and the limits she placed on it created an obsession that took me years to fight. In my mid teens I was very overweight, in my early twenties I was bulimic and normal weight, in my mid twenties I was underweight, for a while in my thirties I was no longer bulimic and ate normally.

I have to say if you approach this like my mother you are likely to create a daughter like me..perfectly normal (honestly!) on the outside but inside completely screwed up and unable to deal with food.

My plan would be to make sure she has access to something sweet every day (even not-home made cake!!) remove any guilt or mystique and let her access the food herself. Encourage her independence to make decisions, keep her busy, go shopping for clothes and make life fun. Make food part of it but never an issue. Make a real effort to make sure as many meals as possible are things she would like to eat...I also didn't eat meals at the table simply because I didnt like them and then gorged in secret.

Its very hard so please don't see this message as a criticsm but I really think you have to drop your standards to help your daughter. I gave myself an appalling diet despite my mum's best efforts..but I'm actually sickeningly healthy (urm apart from the former bulimia part) so its not the worst thing in the world to lighten up and allow some Mr Kipling into your life (still my favourite unfortunately)...you might just stop her becoming an obsessive like me.

sorry very long message. Am not condoning the stealing by the way...just addressing the other issue.

I think it's only manners for a child to ask or tell their parents if they take something to eat in their parents house but I wouldn't go so far as to call it stealing. It's not stealing as the food is there for the family to eat.

I ask before I eat something from my bfs fridge unless I put it there myself. It's not that he'd begrudge it me but it wouldn't feel right otherwise if I just helped myself (other than making tea or coffee etc).

HOWEVER this girl stole out of her mother's purse and at her age she should know it is wrong.

To prevent it happening again, I would just give her her pocket money and let her spend it on whatever she wants.

My mother wouldn't let me help myself to anything except the fruit bowl, and I used to sneak down and steal bread in the night.