to be so glad that my friend's daughter is going home tomorrow?

[duchesse]

12, nearly 13 yo daughter of (French) school mate (hadn't seen her for about 15 years until last year though) has been here two weeks.

Over the last 2 weeks, she has:

-snacked constantly (her mum tells me she doesn't eat much when I express surprise that such a slender girl needs to eat every 30 mn or she basically keels over), helped herself to biscuits, crisps, bread, etc without asking although I made it clear when she arrived that only fruit was available between meals (same rule for everyone in this house);

-used the home phone to phone her parents about 3-4 times a day without asking permission,

-got her parents to ring up and get me to log her into the internet she could go on Facebook, got her mother to sanction 2-3 hours of FB and internet a day (which I consider crazy especially at her age), sent her here with a Blackberry on which she's been texting her friends constantly,

-basically refused to do the same chores as the other children in this house -ie lay and clear the table after one meal every 5 days

-demanded inappropriate food at random intervals (ie ice cream when none was on offer, fish and chips, repeatedly)

-continually made negative remarks about everything- took her to a concert at DD's school, all the performers were crap apparently (she plays in the conservatoire so obv vastly superior), sneering at children having pizza at 4:30 in a pizzeria

-rung her parents to complain that my DD is not treating her right- apparently replying "thank you" when someone compliments your nail polish is not the right thing to say.

Can you tell she's been driving me fecking nuts over the last two weeks?

1 week and 6 days she appeared to suddenly relax and calm down a lot- if she'd stayed a couple more weeks she'd have been fine. As it is I'm just overjoyed to be shot of her and more specifically her parents and their bizarre demands that their daughter be treated differently from my children and other foreign student (and seriously my little Spanish girl's parents are fine about us and on their third child with us and she's coming back for the autumn term).

My personal feeling is that her mother has become seriously unhinged and that the child is just expressing the pressures on her in her daily life. I actually think her mother is either deluded or lying about the food thing and worry that the child may have a health problem although tbh she could just be growing very fast. Either that or her mother starves her at home and she's eating while she can.

Fruit is a calorie dense food. Fruit juice even more so. There are healthy ways to provide calories and energy for children without resorting to crisps/biscuits/chocolate.

IME portion sizes for main meals in England are quite small because most people follow it with pudding/dessert. Perhaps some of you with hungry children/children who need more energy/calories should consider increasing their portion sizes at main meals and including additional carbohydrates such as wholemeal bread, pasta, potatoes and rice. If they still really need a snack, something like peanutbutter and toast or houmous and breadsticks/ pitta bread with a glass of juice would provide plenty of calories without all the extra sugar and saturated fat that they'd be getting from things like chocolate, crisps, biscuits etc.

oohjar maybe she did but didnt realise she was being billeted in a prison camp

Teehee this made me lol

She's 12. She's a long way from home at her age, she comes from a different lifestyle and after two weeks isn't slotting in with you perfectly. It's understandable you want to let her go so you can go back to doing things your way but I think you're being a little harsh.

Your food rules are your food rules but imo they're skewed.

My 16 year old is very independent. This week he's off to T in the Park, with his (older) cousin.
I trust him implicitly.
But if he was stuck in a house with so many rules, even though he'd be polite enough to abide by them, he's used to my, obviously very lax approach to motherhood and I think he'd feel very restricted. And this would go for when he was 13 too.
He's also old enough to choose between healthy snacks and crisps and stuff, as am I, and chooses accordingly.
He's over 6foot tall, slim and sporty, and doing very well academically.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

I don't think the OP is getting a hard time because of healthy eating. It's because of her super-controlling attitude.

The children can have two biscuits if they are revising...
The children can have crisps or whatever if they are walking on the moor...
They children can have kettle chips if there are visitors...

That's a lot of rules around food. Basically the OP monitors:

Who is eating
What they are eating
When they are eating
How much they are eating
Why they are eating

They can have certain "bad" food if they are doing a "good" specific activity. I would predict that if "bad" foods are eaten at other times then there is hell to pay and that if why the OP is so upset with this girl. It's frankly not that she is concerned about this girl's weight. It's because the house food rules were broken. I would speculate there are a lot more rules e.g. around Christmas, holidays, birthdays.

Making rigid detailed rules about food is the sign of a deeper issue around food. It's the micro-rules that take the OP's behaviour beyond the bounds of healthy eating.

Oh I absolutely love the way MNers crawl up french arses go all 'oooh the french eat perfectly darling' on threads like this.

Let me tell you what I used to eat when I stayed at Mum's old penfriend's house in Brittany by myself in the holidays- so a similar sort of situation:

Breakfast: dry crepe out of a packet with nesquick powder (wtf) sprinkled on it. And a huge bowl of hot chocolate.

Lunch - some sort of foul salami on stale baguette.

Dinner - some sort of foul sausage with cubes of overcooked boiled potato and no seasoning.

Where were the fruit and vegetables? Whenever we went to other peoples houses it was the same sort of stuff. Apart from one house where they cooked moules frites which smelt slightly dicey.

However I never asked for more / other food because I would have felt like a spoilt brat - when you're a guest you get what you're given imo.

OK, briefly, she had no PMT as no periods yet, she has has been away from home for 2 weeks+ many times before, mostly to an English language boarding camp in Somerset (with a load of other French children, very full timetable so potentially no time for homesickness).

My sister knows the family fairly well and told me today that this girl and her brother also go through her cupboards (without asking) as soon as they get to her house in front of the parents and they don't seem to think there's a problem with that. Which might explain something. This girl did the same the other day at my neighbour's house whom she had only met once. It was 2 hours after she'd had cereal and two slices of toast and butter. My guess is she's never been told it's not polite.

And yes we did have fish and chips, and pizza (twice! once out, once in), I took her out to see something interesting almost every day (I seriously changed my usual routine for the fortnight in fact), and in the end the only solution was to ask the recently arrived German au pair to devote herself entirely to the French girl, which worked well. One to one attention from a 19 yo was just the thing apparently.

Could I just run the 1 kg a day of bananas for the first 4 days past everyone (this added weight to my neighbour's theory about tapeworm as she'd be after potassium with all those bananas)? (I bought 4.5 kg of bananas on the Friday morning, mostly all gone by Sunday afternoon, most of them into the little French girl (it would be long and convoluted to explain how I know this basically to do with compost/normal bin/ the fact we aren't using the normal bin at the moment because the baby posts her toys into it, and I forgot to explain this to the French girl, followed by me trying to find source of fly infestation)

Combine, Brittany's not really France...

Sounds like she was eating a lot Duchesse.

I don't think your rules sound too harsh, but maybe as others have said she is growing and hungry (my son is very slim and eats masses).

You don't want to feed your kids junk and that's very commendable.

Also have to say Bonsoir that not all French people have awful memories of British food. The French side of my family love it (except for Marmite of course) if it is nicely cooked and presented.

I have had horrible food in France at times for example I hate Russian salad (trad at Xmas)!

I think the OP is getting an unnecessary kicking here. Only offering healthy food like fruit in between balanced, homecooked, meals is just a normal, healthy way to eat imo. The OP wasn't restricting food - just not letting her eat endless junk because, I assume, she doesn't allow her children to and it wouldn't be fair to treat them differently.
I wouldn't be that bothered about fb and I wouldn't make a guest do chores but aside from those things the childs behaviour sounds appalling!
OP - YANBU.

Meant to add that we do have treat food in the house - but it is just that - for treats - not every day.

Poor kid :-(

Thin kids don't need to be stuffed full of food unless they're anaemic or there's some other problem. It's silly to assume that they'll just waste away to nothing. They have fast metabolisms and won't go anywhere near starvation having access to lots of fruit (which does feel filling anyway, if you're worried about the poor darlings getting these "food/neglect issues").
Me, I was always underweight by other people's standards (i.e. not really, but you could see ribs) and whether I ate tiny amounts or normal amounts I steadily gained weight until I'm quite normal today. I doubt food had much to do with it, it's just I was a very fidgety rushing around child.

The OP doesn't have a super controlling attitude at all. It sounds normal to me. Besides, rules are good. I blame Jim Morrison and his ilk- bliddy "please, please listen to the children". Um, no! Wasn't the general consensus that we don't know what we want?

altinkum, I think you mean someone else - I am not psychiatric nurse, though you're not too far off

anonacfr fair point, parts of Brittany (including the locals) were suspiciously like the West Country.... 'Mum I'm supposed to be on holiday, how come it rains every day and all we can drink is rough cider'

OP She sounds a bit rude, but don't write her off yet. My brother's German exchange partner came over at the unfortunate teenage stage of bad skin, not washing and being terribly shy. When brother was forced went back to his house reluctantly a year later, German boy was incredibly cool and had loads of girlfriends.

Wasn't Jim Morrison the singer in The Doors?

Part of the generation who set off all this indulgent thinking about kids needing a voice and an audience to accompany it.
I like the Doors. I love the 60s, everything about it except this.

We have a no grazing rule here to I simply won't allow the kids to stuff their faces with crips all day long and if their Hungary they will eat up their dinner.

I would of packed her bag and dropped her off at heathrow

My rules my house my nephew is a bit wild he lasted 2 days I called my sister and back her went I won't stand for Tom foolery.

Mmmmmmmm I fancy some revision biscuits now!