AIBU to ignore parents dietary wishes for their che

[Calmondeck]

(For background, I’m in a country where things have reopened)

I am currently spending a lot of time with my brother’s 2 DC, giving him and his wife a few hours break from the kids each day (they were going batty in lockdown). The DC are on extremely strict diets for ethical/environmental reasons - v limited grain/carbs, no milk, no sugar, 1 small piece a fruit per day. We were recently at the park where some other parents expressed surprise at the small frame of one of the DC.

This DC (3yrs) is always asking me for food when we are alone together. We planned to have a picnic in the park (prepared/approved snacks from home) and were joined by a friend who brought homemade banana bread and butter. Before I could stop DC, she reached for the butter and popped the entire thing in her mouth. I was silently laughing to myself, but decided not to react to DC.

DC asks me for milk for her doll (which I put into a little toy bottle and she subsequently drinks herself / pretends to feed it to the doll if within eyesight of the parents), we also sometimes sneak in a natural yogurt on our trips together and grain crackers.

I am not a parent, but can imagine feeling frustrated if someone I trusted my children’s care to was defying my groundrules. At the same time, this child is underweight, and when I enquired with my brother about whether she eats all of her dinner (worried perhaps I was creating dinner time issues for them later at home) he said the DC always eats everything she is given. AIBU to continue this little eating charade when DC is in my care?

This is neglect, are they the batshit types to not give their kids medicine?
I think not feeding a child properly is the same thing as that.

Children need enough to grow. This is worrying. Seasonal fruit has no ethical or environmental issues and children need enough carbs. I’d discuss with Social Services anonymously to see what they think. It doesn’t sound like neglect in the extreme sense but they might not understand the difference between the dietary needs of adults and children.

If you talk to them and say anything like they need to feed her more, be prepared to be cut off. They think they are feeding her properly and you don't know anything. Just saying.

Unfort you are teaching her it’s ok to have secrets from her parents which is not great. If she is hungry I would give her more of their approved food. If you are worried about her health maybe call your go for advice.

"don’t think she is neglected, she’s just very small and very hungry."

Children that aren't neglected aren't hungry.

And secretly laughing that the child is so hungry that she grabs a chunk of butter the second it appears makes me feel a bit sick.

You are witnessing child abuse and trying to put a "funny side" to it

Unfort you are teaching her it’s ok to have secrets from her parents which is not great

The op said she sometimes gives her crackers or a yoghurt...imagine a child feeling that they can't tell their parents they had some yoghurt

No matter how hard they're finding it, if they are so pedantic about their children's diet I'd let them look after them.

What do they eat for meals, OP? If you had them over lunch, what would they have?

Please don't feed them dairy if they aren't used to it; it could really mess up their digestion.

What ARE they allowed to eat? I wouldn't want to risk the parents cutting you off because these children need you, and we don't know if social services are going to intervene. I would give them calorie-rich foods within the approved list so you can help the children without risking the parents stopping contact.

Sounds like the parents suffer from orthorexia, whereby the diet needs to be perfect, “ pure” etc. It is a form of eating disorder. Imposing this on growing children who have high needs for energy and protein is going to result in hunger and possibly stunted growth. They probably don’t mean to harm them, but I think their choices will have consequences on the kids’ growth and development, and possibly on their school attainment. For example, iron deficiency has a direct effect on learning ability.

Hmmm...yes, I would be annoyed if I had very clear rules and the person I trusted to look after my child deliberately broke them BUT, if I had complex or a long list of requirements, I would make food for my child to take with them. You said your brother has, on occasion, sent a packed lunch for his kids, but it wasn't enough. What would happen if you simply said, thanks for preparing a picnic lunch, could you please pack more next time, as the kids were still hungry?

From what you say, I would be worried that your brother's kids aren't getting all the nutrients etc that they need to be healthy. Can you have a conversation with him about your worries and ask how they're ensuring the family is getting all the vitamins and minerals they need? If they're just making it up as they go along, could you suggest they go to a registered dietician, to get a qualified view of what the kids need and how this translates to daily foods?

Being small and very hungry isn't on its own a sign of neglect. My not quite 2 year old is petite and will happily eat all day, any day. Especially if it is on someone else's plate.

I'd check with things like butter/ dairy. Is it ethical or an allergy?

How long are they with you at a time? What size meals do they have? Other than the fruit, are they allowed other snacks if hungry?

Lots of contextual info needed.

If you genuinely feel this child is being abused by lack of adequate food, you need to report it to the proper authorities.

If they really want to cut out all these good groups they need to work with a nutritionist because it is so dangerous to growing children. Childhood osteoporosis is a real phenomenon. Where does she get her calcium?

I am trying to work out what she can actually eat.

Being small and very hungry isn't on its own a sign of neglect.

Except this child is small, very hungry, on a very restrictive diet, and has started lying in order to sneak food she isn't permitted to eat . Can you really not see the difference?

If there was an allergy, the OP would know. This diet is down to the parent's choices, not necessity.

As other pps have asked OP,
what are the children actually allowed to eat?
Have you ever been present at a family meal?

I try to have a conversation first about why they view fruit / vegetables as unhealthy and no milk etc. Carbs and milk are important for good growth. Check allergies. But talk to them -don't be critical but you say fruit is limited but are vegetables?

Vegetables are great but they don't contain enough energy for a child to thrive - children's stomachs are small and they simply can't eat enough veg to get sufficient calories from them.

It's disordered eating by proxy, and a total abandonment of parental responsibility.

Exactly. The child is underweight, hungry and eats everything she can get her hands on. How can parents kid themselves this is good?

A family member of mine used to take pride in her child's small appetite, fussy eating and small build and use mentioning it to make digs at obesity being normalised. She'd go out for whole days and only offer her child cucumber and a tiny fromage frais as a snack/ lunch, saying she wouldn't eat anything more. She absolutely loved her child, and her child had all sorts of material advantages, time, attention - but not enough, not a wide enough range of, food.

Child used to take other people's/ children's food when her mum wasn't looking, but had cottoned on to her mum not liking to see her eat and loving her more when she didn't by age 3, and wanted her mum's approval.

Fortunately for her not becoming malnourished but unfortunately for disordered eating habits the child spent a lot of time in her grandmother's care and her grandmother was a feeder, so got enough food but in a very unbalanced way.

There are people with serious eating disorders who over restrict their children's food and genuinely think they're doing the right thing and everyone else overfeeds their children. Those children rely on wider family feeding them or someone involving whatever the relevant childrens services in their country are, but it can be a very hard thing to prove if the children are otherwise well cared for.

In practice you probably need to feed the child and if it's not a problem for you keep having them in your care a few hours each day in order to feed them long term.

Nobody should be putting a three year old on a heavily restricted diet unless it is under the supervision of a pediatrician. Your brother needs to consult his child's doctor about the diet. Children need carbs and fat to fuel growth and I think some fats are needed to make hormones. I'd be worried about her brain development tbh if she isn't getting enough fat and calories.

Starving a child for environmental reasons is ridiculous. The carbon footprint of their transport, home, activities, and possessions will dwarf that associated with the food a three year old can consume.

To follow up on my post above, I would tell your brother to talk to his child's doctor about the diet and think of better ways of preserving the environment than cutting his daughter's milk intake.

Could you not just give a lot MORE of the foods that are are approved by the parents. She certainly sounds like she needs more calories but I do think that ethical choices should be respected so long as the child is healthy.

could you get in some "approved" but higher-fat snacks - seed bars, pumpkin seed "butter" (no butter in it), etc? Olives maybe? Nuts if no nut allergy issues?

If she's always hungry then she should be fed more.

There have been children who have died or got childhood osteoperosis because their loving parents gave them very restricted diets.

I would hope child protection in your country would want to investigate this. If the parents are not small, it seems a reasonable inference that the children are because they aren't getting the food they need to survive. Being always hungry and grabbing things like squares of butter sounds like a hungry underfed child. Their diet sounds very low in carbs that children in particular need a lot of. as other have said, children's dietary needs are different from adults.

I would really implore you to take this seriously and call someone OP.