AIBU for making DD12 give up her treat for eating more than her share of a takeaway?

Gosh, you're really rude. And despite your proclaimed superior reading comprehension, you don't understand the concept of sarcasm. Sucks to be you, I guess.

This, and don't listen to crackpots trying to tell you your quite reasonable punishment will lead to your eldest developing an eating disorder...

Only on MN are people so ridiculously literal whilst at the same time barely literate, or at best working at infant school levels of reading comprehension.

Nowhere did I say it was the same as a bag of sweets. I suggested that a poster who seemed to actually think OP served up 15 edamame beans each to her family for their main meal of the day instead conceptualise the question as the dd taking an extra treat (like sweets, you know, as an example) above and beyond her main meal, rather than it being understandable because she was starving from lack of nutrition due to OP dealing out hunger rations.

What a lot of drama, honestly.

You say, "Oh no, you were supposed to be sharing those. Apologise to your sister." And then you say, "What are you going to do to make it up?" And the kid says, "Maybe I can give her my share of hummus," or whatever other middle class snack she's got, and the sister says, "yay, hummus," and then, look at that, it's all sorted, and no one got scarred for life over a few beans.

I can't believe the number of people who are this outraged over something so absolutely petty. Or who are prepared to slag off a kid for acting like a kid. You all need to get some perspective and a sense of humour.

@SongsOfSongs maybe you need to buy more food. 12 year olds can eat as much as an adult these days, or maybe always. She could be going through a growth spurt too, which leads to eating more.

So I think correcting her portion size should be looked rather than punishing her.

No, I don’t think her treat money should be spent on a treat for her sister for something that happened 4 days ago. A consequence should have been found and delivered at the time if you really felt DD1 did something wrong.

Unless she’s obese, then less attention to what she eats needs to happen during her teenage years, otherwise she could end up with an eating disorder.

I think this comes down to a parenting problem, not a child being greedy.

You are setting an arbitrary limit on what you consider a portion size. Portions need to change as children grow.
you admit the daughter you label greedy does not have a problem with weight.
You didn’t take the time to portion the food despite knowing sharing has caused issues in the past.

Most importantly, you described a child eating vegetables as greedy.

It’s like a recipe for how can I
create a disordered relationship with food in my teenager.

Ah I read DD11 as DD1.

But I still think shaming for the amount of food consumed is not the right way to deal with it.

I'd focus on not keeping her word, or not considering her Dsis.

Oh my! I’ve read the thread!!
@SongsOfSongs i think your ‘snack’ punishment idea is reasonable. She needs to learn that actions have consequences.
But don’t make a huge deal out of it now. They’re kids there will always be sibling rivalry and arguments.
Move on

It was the younger DD who didn't get any that cried, not the DD who ate them all, so no.

I think it's really important that any punishment doesn't involve your other daughter at all. If your oldest daughter's punishment involves a reward for the youngest, the effect is that your oldest daughter perceives it as a double punishment and resents her sister. Neither of them are old enough to rationalise it.

Quite frankly I think an apology and genuine remorse is sufficient and your youngest daughter learns that it's not fair but that she could have spoken up. Your job is to treat them as the individuals they are and help them to get the best out of any situation. Accept the apology but recognise that she is simply too young to take responsibility for avoiding temptation and either don't make them share or you divide it up. The punishment is simply that she's not trusted again to divide up the food. Tell your younger daughter that yes it wasn't fair, her sister is sorry and won't be allowed to do that again. Teach her that it's okay to stick up for herself and to call her sister out and involve you if that doesn't work,

You need to find the balance between equal and fair. Taking away a treat to give to the other might be equal but it's not necessarily fair and sibling relationships in my experience flourish if fair even if not equal.

She is 12. Not 2. Why the hell shouldn’t she have to take a tiny amount of responsibility for actions that have upset someone else. Maybe she did do it without thinking. She still did it. She is not a small child. It should NOT be the responsibility of other people to dole out snacks that she knew where to be shared and had, in fact, minutes earlier agreed to do so!

A 12 year can be held accountable for actions that have negative outcomes.
I can’t believe the amount of people who would apparently just be ok with their children doing this without any expectation that they try and make amends.
What the food is, is NOT the point.

It definitely needs to be addressed in the same arena. One consequence is not going to cause an eating disorder.

My brother was the selfish one when it came to food when we were younger. He is exactly the same as a grown man. If there are six pieces of chicken and six people, he would take two of them. I make it clear he is out of order and not to take more more than his fair share. He doesn't have an eating disorder. He is greedy and selfish and unlikely to change.

Jesus. It's hardly 'wrong' for someone to eat a pot of edamame beans. You are totally overreacting to a non-issue. It all sounds very intense and dramatic, and then you remember you're talking about a kid eating beans while watching a film and just not paying attention to how much she's eating. She's not greedy or selfish or mean to her sister. She's just a kid.

It's your fault for not sharing the food properly or even pausing the film so you could all eat together. It's well known that eating in front of screens encourages everyone to eat more because they're not paying attention. You're the parent, you're supposed to actually help your children rather than expecting them to be perfect and then calling them greedy and selfish to strangers online. Poor kid. Just get over it and buy two pots of beans next time.

Well firstly I think it odd your other daughter burst into tears over it. It’s food, it shouldn’t hold that much importance. Something has gone wrong there.

Oldest sounds like she's going through a growth spurt where she's hungry all the time? A couple of friends were like this at school . They pigged out and got quite chubby, the shot up in height over the next 18 months. Both ended up tall and slim.
I had very strange christian foster parents around the same age, and they restricted what both me and their biological daughter are. I was forced to eat dried apricots daily to 'help me go to the toilet' 🙄
Would loved to have pigged out on takeaways sometimes then!
Fortunately my next foster family were a big Afro-Caribbean one and they made sure we are as much as we wanted & had fruit available 24/7. I actually got chubby myself at age of fourteen or so but I loved my curves.
The punishment thing has obviously passed the window of carrying it out. Don't make a huge deal of it and move on. Your daughters will forget it fairly soon.

Ughh no, eating a side dish of vegetables (or any food) cannot be considered ‘wrong’, surely??! YABVU. I feel really strongly that as parents we should be navigating anything to do with food sensitively. Esp for a pre-teen girl. You’ve already called her greedy. I think you need to take a step back and think about how you think about and approach food with her before you contribute to any potential issues down the line.
You knew sharing the side would be an issue. It’s ok to just say “you know what guys, we all eat at different speeds, we want to chill out and watch the movie and not worry about keeping track, let’s just divvy up what we all want now and what ever is left over we’ll just leave out for whoever wants seconds”.
I’m not having a go, but I would urge you (and the others on this thread who think it’s ok to punish over this) to do some research on this.
This author (Anna Colton) has great online content and a fantastic book: www.amazon.co.uk/How-Talk-Children-About-Food/dp/1785120557/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=26KPHH5IVLTGV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.B-xhfQetJOYXdxqK0Wjc7HaY_yZnnZIsR1NW7jsoSXea78HtTcaar17KtEv_knWM799gA15GSTIDyA_kQgq6CBbNXchXZZy3rEqI5hvNu3-bHE5MuVnEuS-RHbGAt5tynAq0mnsUd8Hx0o3CoDUT6k6xNuv7U1P0Pj2_qGcdo5sdMcqxs7kh5CywBM-ZsJ9qDZX5yoae56BTL-Usi2DBAg.lZ-UV0EGEo96T0Q2nSjSRyT9dz_j_iXR3wOvy_TmRQs&dib_tag=se&keywords=how+to+talk+to+children+about+food&qid=1778591408&sprefix=how+to+talk+to+ch%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1

You've already acknowledged you should've portioned out the food and I think that's the best thing going forward. Yes, 12yo DD did say she could handle it - turns out she was wrong and she can't. You don't know if she was distracted by the TV or whether it was deliberate. Maybe it was selfishness, maybe it was a slip of the mind - have you talked to her about it?

I don't doubt that you don't call her greedy to her face but my step-dad got it into his head that I was greedy as a kid. He never said it either but every time he or my Mum dished up tea for me and my step-siblings he'd always sneer at me "Of course you picked the biggest." I got into the habit of asking which plate was mine, was told they were all the same and that it didn't matter, and yet somehow, without fail, I was always accused of picking the biggest portion. Miraculous really.

Some siblings can't share! My brother has autism and my Mum would get us those sharing ice-creams you can get in places like Hungry Horse, he'd eat it at the speed of light so I'd have to gobble it down too rather than enjoy it otherwise he would've taken all the decent bits. I'd tell DD it wasn't fair or kind to take her sisters portion then just dish it up yourselves next time or stop getting things that they need to share.

But they also put themselves into these roles.

Whaaaaa?

A 12 year old ha no idea about how to deal with this undercurrent of YOUR emotions. You're the adult. Stop blaming your eldest daughter.

I was measured in my post about "And in some/many families, the mother's feelings about an adolescent daughter can be very ambivalent."

Your feelings are hardly ambivalent.

Hi OP — following with interest as we had some similar experiences in my childhood home.

Responses to this are probably going to fall into a few different camps, because approaches to issues like this are often rooted in people’s core parenting beliefs. Some people lean towards stricter consequences, while others focus more on understanding the “why” behind the behaviour and helping children develop self-regulation over time.

As the older sibling of someone who later developed an eating disorder, I’d just encourage a bit of caution around how food-related consequences are handled, especially at this age. One thing I think about a lot as a parent now is: when my children are adults, how would I want them to describe their relationship with food, boundaries, and discipline growing up?

In our family, consequences around food sometimes seemed effective in the short term, but over time they also created a lot of tension and shame around eating. My sister and I (who were around the same ages as your daughter when these struggles first began) have both done work as adults to unpack some of those patterns and build healthier relationships with food.

My sister and I were actually messaging about this thread earlier and reflecting on how differently we approach food with our own children now. For us, food isn’t a reward or a punishment. We try (not always successfully — Easter chocolate definitely humbled us!) to give our children opportunities to practise moderation, while trying to remember especially in the moment that self-regulation is a skill that develops gradually and imperfectly.

When things don’t go well, we try not to shame or overreact to the kids, but instead see it as part of the longer process of teaching and modelling healthy habits around food. We’ve also found that if we relax one boundary eg eating away from the table we usually need a bit more structure elsewhere, like portioning things out in advance, checking everyone’s got what they need before eating, or if we are eating whilst watching something we need to remind then to eat until they feel full not just keep eating because they are distracted

not a perfect science or a perfect approach but wanted to share

Yes, I'm getting this impression.

It's really tough to be the eldest girl - in some/many families, the daughter's entwinement with a mother's feelings can be really difficult. And in some/many families, the mother's feelings about an adolescent daughter can be very ambivalent. Usually, mothers sort this out by the second daughter, but there can be a lot of projection from the mother onto the first child if she's a girl.

I love how you’ve selectively quoted me 🙄
Let’s face it, if OP had divided the food and plated it up, then this wouldn’t have happened. She already said her child can be greedy, and yes, in this circumstance she wasn’t to be trusted. That doesn’t mean in alternative situation she can’t be 😳
Rather than scrutinising my response, maybe you should just go back and read the original post? 🤷‍♀️
Enjoy the rest of your day 😊

I think she was set up to fail here tbh, how many of us have absently eaten a whole tray of something while eating watching the telly. I'm not saying never eat in front of the telly but take that extra 30 seconds to portion out the food.

This. All this fuss over some edamine beans

Tell the eldest she was being selfish. Next takeaway you dish out. Making a mountain out of a molehill honestly.

Totally not the point, but a lot of supermarkets sell the frozen bags of edamame beans still in the pods, which you can steam and salt. If you wanted to have them as a cheap snack at home more often, or for DD12 to pay for a bag for DD11!