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

[Elasticwoman]

I caught her in the act of stealing from my purse. It is not the first time. Am incandescent with rage.

Can any one suggest non-violent but effective remedy to correcting lightfingered and economical with the actualite dd? (She is almost as big as me so might thrash me back.)

10 is the age of criminal responsibility

Have you suggested she asks you if she wants money

HAving a fair amount of experience with eating disorders myself, I would say that you've all the ingredients here to lead to a much more serious problem, and that the more you attempt to control your daughter the more she'll act out in relation to food, as there'll be little else she'll have any autonomy over. Seriously, I would back right off from this struggle you seem to have got yourselves into, and concentrate on trying to boost her self-esteem in ways that are nothing to do with diet, fitness, or doing what you think she ought to. You won't win this one - or if you do, it won't be in a way that's healthy for anyone in the family.

"If they take food without asking that would be stealing"

how can it be stealing, to get yourself some food from cupboards in your own house when you are hungry?

gobsmacked at this

they don't buy the food. It's my house, not theirs (yet ). Therefore if they take it without my permission it is stealing. I am amazed that other parents allow children to help themselves to whatever they fancy, when they fancy it. Quite a few of their children seem to think they can take what they like from my fridge when they visit.

I am dismayed that a parent would consider their child getting some food for themselves as stealing. Really dismayed. i'm with you Franny. I would have been acutely miserable if I had known that my own mum considered me a thief if I took a slice of bread without asking.

I think this is an inappropriate level of control for a parent to have over their older child's eating. God, it would have made me both bitterly sad and burningly angry.

We also grew up with the idea that helping ourselves to food in our own house was stealing.
Simultaneously, my mother would bemoan loudly how everyone in our family lacks confidence! And she was a control freak, too.

My own children help themselves to whatever food they want, as do any guests in the house. Im not going to count the radishes, and we dont have sweets & crisps in the house at all.

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.

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.

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).

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.

People seem to have got the idea - wrongly - that my daughter is not allowed sweet things and has no money to spend as she likes. As any one who has read this whole thread will know, she does have pocket money regularly from her grandfather - it is only the money she gets from her father that is "virtual".
Also she does eat cakes and sweet things at home. We all ate her cupcakes this evening, which she had made at school. We have desserts, both home made and shop-bought, but cakes and sweet biscuits are usually home-made and I don't buy crisps unless it is a special occasion, so we have them sometimes but not regularly. I don't think I am being extreme about this. What I forgot to say earlier is that all the family are allowed to help themselves to savoury biscuits (eg ricecakes) and chocolate spread (or other spread, but chocolate is the favourite) as well as from the fruitbowl.

Thanks to all those people who have owned up to stealing in the past. I am hoping it is a phase in my dd, and any insight people can give as to why they did it is helpful to me.
Neither dh nor I went through this phase so it shocked me.

Thanks also to the people who have written about their eating disorders. I'll bear in mind the rebellion thing. She does not seem to have a poor body image, and she has not seen me go on diets or be obsessed with my weight. She does not know that I have the slightest concern about hers, and really I'm more concerned with her setting up bad habits for the future as she seems to want to binge on junk food in secret. (Don't think she has induced vomiting or diarrhoea though.)

Thanks, Stoppin. Custardo didn't suggest anything I hadn't already done, apart from locking the cupboard.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

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).

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!

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.

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!