To hate my pre-teen (12yo) right now?

[t33jay]

Having checked Parent Pay Transaction History we've realised he has been stealing money (sums approx £500) from us, then using the money to top up his cashless account in school via the machine. Sometimes in cornershops to buy sweets, but mostly to buy school dinners.

He is on packed lunch as we have told the school that he is on organic diet only to find out that he has been given a 'canteen access card' in school and this is what he has been using to buy ridiculous amount of food. He does not have the fingerprint access, hence the access card.

So gets his meals at home + snacks & pudding + packed lunch AND gets sweets + at least £10 worth of food from the canteen ON MOST DAYS!!!

Surely the schools should put a limit on the amount a child can spend on a day!?!!!!!!!

I have a meeting with the headmaster tomorrow. Give me more ammos, am going there all guns blazing!!!!

To say that I am livid is an understatement.

If school dinners are so bad why would you allow either of your sons to eat it?

He can have them if he loses weight? But if they are as awful as you say he will just gain it again. I guess giving you the stick you so love to beat him with.

The problem here is you and your frankly disgusting attitude to your child.

I doubt the head teacher issues the cards. This will be done by office staff and unless there is a proper record not to issue any form of access to allow dining room purchases then I do not see why on earth the head is expected to have your all guns blazing attitude. Why not ask for help with your son rather than laying blame at school? If someone restricted my diet even in good faith I'd probably seek solace in crap elsewhere. Good luck.

I'd say this child already had an eating disorder. Looks as though he's a comfort eater and hardly surprising really.

I would suggest you and your family need some kind of help from a psychologist.

Your son is 12 - he would probably be seen as having Gillick competency, which means he can legally make all kinds of decisions without you necessarily being informed. And that is going to increase over the next few years.

Organic food will not cause weight loss.
The best way to give someone an eating disorder is to focus on food all the time.

You do sound as if you don't even like this son very much. And not just because of the stealing.
His brother sounds like you favourite child.

To be honest if you told the school some of the things you have written here, they would be justified in seeing you as a "safeguarding" concern.

mummytime above has it spot on.

Your son may have some issues with food, and it won't help him if you are excessively controlling and obsessive about food at home.

Stealing is obviously a bad thing to do, but it sounds like it needs to be seen in the context of a mental health problem.

The school should have a limit on daily spending but otherwise they haven't done anything obviously wrong.

I feel sorry for your son and your relationship with him. I feel sorry for the headmaster too to hate your child is dreadful poor child

I wish I had never read this thread.

So sad. OP you are concerned for toxins in your son's diet.

I would suggest there is far more toxic stuff in this poor kid's life than what he is eating.
Perhaps SS does need to get involved here.

Worth saying too that based on the stats given by the OP, this child is not just a bit stocky but very overweight - he would need to lose around 3 stones to be an average weight for his height.

This is not going to be solved overnight, or with a bit more running around or "organic" food. It's a medical problem that needs medical advice.

The one child whose diet was restricted by his parents at my dds school was obese by the time he was 15. He didn't steal money, his friends gave him bits of "unhealthy" food because they all felt sorry for him. So in effect he was eating two lunches every day!
You are telling your son what he can eat whilst most of his friends will be free to choose. At 12 he should have done say as to what he puts into his mouth.
I suspect if you actually spoke to him and LISTENED and gave him back some control, his weight might stabilise.
I feel very sorry for him!

Good point ilove, it is because the older one is much more active , a foot taller, behaves at home & in school (he's in grammar school) whereas this troublemaker is short & stout.

We wanted him to slim a little before we let him choose what he eats.

Now having this incident, is it right to put him to school dinners without giving the impression that if he does something terrible he will eventually get what he wanted?

FUCK. ING. HELL.

Why is everyone focussing on the op saying she hated her DS right now? It's often said on here and being on my 4th teenager (and counting) I often feel something akin to hatred when they are sneaky or foul mouthed or devious causing loss to me or others.
When did mn stop being a safe place for parents to have a ranty vent?

OP all the answers you need to why your son is doing this are RIGHT THERE in that post of yours I just highlighted above. Read it again. Slowly, and imagine you having an out of body experience looking at yourself and your own words through the eyes of someone else.

Penny dropping yet?

I don't think people are (on the whole) focussing on the "hate" bit.

They're concerned for a child who is manifestly very overweight, who has a parent who is very controlling about food, and who has stolen quite a large amount of money in order to buy food. All that suggests that this child has some really quite serious physical and mental health issues that need to be taken seriously!

Maybe consider he is buying for other people for whatever reason...?

Stealing is rarely about the material gain for a young person, more about gaining what they think they are missing?
Id reccomend some good parenting advice op. Can u ask gp for a referral to do PPP or I can recommend private company's if you pm me.

Lordy me OP

Did you really call one of your children a troublemaker?
And stout

That's way past venting; that's a nasty attitude right there that you might want to think about

Good suggestion Ledkr

And the poor child is probably suffering from very low self esteem at the moment due to being made to feel awful about his weight, so is eating more (and in secret) to make himself feel temporarily better.

Some boys do get inexplicably plump while others manage to eat for England (and have a high sugar/junk diet) and stay like string beans. It's unfair and random but it's just the way it is. My brother has four sons, three were skinny kids and one was always a very chubby child but they were all fed the same diet. The skinny brothers didn't eat any better or any less than the fat one. The chubby child grew up and is a slim, average sized young adult now. Still eats a load of crap out of choice, as most young men do.

Many boys will naturally lose that puppy fat as soon as they hit puberty and start having growth spurts.

not only did she call him a troublemaker Narp she referred to him as 'this troublemaker' as though he were not her child at all, but some random kid belonging to someone else.

This kid is going to need a psychotherapist for sure if she keeps this up.

In my school almost all pupils choose and buy food from the canteen. Only a handful out of hundreds bring a packed lunch. They sit separately and stand out tbh.

I do know how difficult it is to let go on this. My ds has a tendency to overeat but when he started secondary school it was as if he was obsessed. I gave him £3 a day as recommended by the school and he kept nagging for more money and I did catch him taking money from my purse. He couldn't stop talking about the food they served and at one stage he was eating two ice cream sandwiches a day! Why are they even serving that stuff?

I agree with pps that it is unrealistic to expect the headteacher to monitor what/where/when/how each child eats (unless a child protection concern eg neglect or eating disorders.) The pupils are expected to take responsibility for themselves. Even the ones with severe allergies know how to deal with it as they have to learn.

I think you are too controlling and you need to back off and give him a bit more freedom.

Organic food doesn't have fewer calories than non-organic. Let the poor soul have school dinners if that's what he wants. My Dd is 12 and has always had school dinners and gets to choose whatever she wants. They are old enough to choose one meal a day for themselves. You can control what he eats at home and one meal a day isn't what is making him fatter than his brother.

He is probably being bullied at school. He's being bullied at home, so it's all he knows.

This is how my child's school does it - you can log onto the website and top up online, or the child can put coins/notes into the machine at school. Therefore it is entirely possible that a child has stolen £500 - not all at once but £10 or £5 here and there over the course of 6 months. I wouldn't notice £2 or £3 disappearing every day. I am also happy for him to have his fingerprints used, because he is terminally forgetful, forever losing things and up to now hasn't managed to lose his thumb.

OP you need to be clearer on exactly what you said to school - "Jimmy is having packed lunches" is different from "Jimmy must not be allowed into the canteen under any circumstances". My 10 year old has packed lunch 95% of the time but I occasionally let her go for fish and chips on a Friday - many other parents are the same and especially in a secondary with 1000+ pupils you cannot expect staff to think there's something weird about children going into the canteen.

As for the other issues - I can see why the lad is rebelling and wants to be like everyone else. School lunches can be healthier than stodge and chips - most will have sandwiches, baked potato and salad bar. You should be teaching your child about healthy choices and increasing his activity levels rather than trying to restrict what he eats, which has obviously backfired spectacularly. If you are really, genuinely concerned about his weight, take him to the GP and ask whether he can be referred to a nutritionist. Many areas have clubs or courses all about healthy eating and activity. There are lots of resources out there to help BOTH of you. "Organic" isn't the answer - chocolate cake might be organic, doesn't mean it's the healthy choice.

OP I read through the whole thread. You have for some really good advice from the other posters.

I would like to add the following, based on my esprit end working at CAMHS (children / adolescents mental health services).

A 12 year old who steals would always ring alarm bells for me. Not because he's a 'bad boy' or 'troublemaker' (what do such terms mean anyway? Nothing, they're too vague). But because consistent stealing is always IME a cry for help and a sign that something is wrong / broken down.

That does not mean that you don't need to deal with the stealing. You absolutely need to. But I'm also very surprised despite your explanations how come you didn't notice such a significant amount being stolen?

If it were my kid I would ask for help from a professional for this as there are clearly some very complicated feelings and behaviours involved that may need untangling.