Greedy teenager

[Brownthomas]

I remember being a teenager and I was very self centered & preoccupatied.

Our 15 year old is out of control with food. He is average weight etc but needs to eat everything in the house.

Today I asked him not to eat the food for his brothers birthday party this week, but I didn’t mention the drinks .,,, I’ve just found a 12 pack of Capri sun demolished in his bedroom.

They don’t even that good I have to specifically ask him or else he eats all the food in the house

My 30yr old dp is exactly the same still, he never grew out of it. Hell eat an entire pack of biscuits or caramel shortbread and rarely asks if i want one. Drives me knuts. I keep cheap bars of chocolate in with my baking stuff for when I do cookies and asked him not to eat them, ignored me a week later and ate it anyway and it was fine because he will 'replace it ' during all the food shopping he doesn't do!!

You need to start hiding important stuff.

All those people saying “it’s a growth thing,it’ll stop” We were discussing yesterday how weird it was when our grown up son (finally) moved out and you could still find food in the fridge and cupboards the day after you bought it!

Make it a rule that if you don't ask first, then you pay for it to be replaced.

I knew if I looked on this thread that a PP would compare a teenager's behavior to their toddler/primary child.
Do people not realise that children change as they develop and your compliant toddler will not be like that forever? Just you wait
**See also threads on tidying up and helping around the house, also.

Im relieved my teens eat all the shite, means I cant be tempted to eat it myself!

Do you think there's possibly a best-selling diet book there somewhere?

Do you normally have Capri Sun in the house in a 12 pack?
If not then he knew it was party food and it was really crass of him to drink the lot .
If he was thirsty (and didn't just want water) was there not squash or juice?

I but J2O multipacks from Cotco , they sit in the porch. My DC know they're for general consumption.
If I buy them for Christmas I put them in the garage The DC know that they're there , but not out for drinking.

It could be boredom too ? How many adults on here will eat toast/crisps/ice-cream/wine /chocolate because it's there not because they're hungry .
Why should a 13 yo have any more self control.

My DS forages in the pantry (he is bone thin too) but if its in the pantry it's Fair Game .
Just don't leave the empty packets in there

Capri sun only have 10 in a pack now for the same price as 12! My 2 would never eat everything without thinking of others, its very selfish

On fact, having just checked, you only get 8 in a pack which is a much smaller amount than the 12 stated

My teen is very hungry too! He knows where I put things not to touch and things he can help himself to. He also knows he needs to share with his sister so 4 yogurts in the fridge means 2 each. Anything beyond obvious snacks in the fridge he will check with me that it is ok to eat. He makes dinner 2 - 3 times per week so is involved in meal planning which I think makes him more aware of needing to keep things for meals. There are always things available if he wants to cook/make himself some supper too.

If the Capri Suns were a one off I'd just talk to him about it. He might offer to buy more. In future I'd put party stuff in the 'not to eat' part of the kitchen.

@70isaLimitNotaTarget we don’t usually have packs of Capri suns - they were bought just for the party. We have plenty of water, milk, juice & dilute. I was irritated as he took the box up to his room and drank all of them. There are other kids in the family, even if he didn’t think of the party he should have considered his siblings.

There are lots of snacks, both healthy and unhealthy! He is an eating machine and I usually don’t mind as he’s a teenager. I do mind when he takes it ALL.

He is not starving by any stretch of the imagination.

Last week we bought a pack of fancy doughnuts as a treat. We’d never had them before so kept them for after dinner. When his DF went to get them there was one left he’d ate the rest and expected the family to share one... or was too full for the last one?!

Yeah he’s being greedy and selfish

He knows he shouldn’t, but he’s doing it anyway

@dementedpixie it’s a 10 pack, I had a look at the box & noticed it’s 2 10 packs that were finished yesterday. Hope this helps with your fact checking mission

Maybe its old stock. The 2 boxes I have only have 8. Still the same price as the old boxes though!

My 3 teenage children and, to be fair, my DH are all like this they are like a swarm of locusts when the shopping arrives, the difference is though they know to ask if they want to eat something out of the ordinary. Although if there is chocolate in the house its usually me that snaffle the last bit.

(Some) teenagers have huge appetites but that doesn't mean they can't restrict themselves from nicking other people's food. It certainly doesn't mean they need large quantities of sugary party drinks nor that they should not be made to think about the needs of other people.

Unless the OP is in fact practising food abuse (which we have absolutely no reason to believe), it is unlikely that this boy is so starved that he has reached the stealing-other-people's-food-rations stage. It is also unlikely he could get away by taking his mates' treats at school on the plea that he is a teenager. He needs to learn that his family deserves some of the consideration he wouldn't hesitate to give his pack of peers.

I had to work hard on my own teenager at this age to make sure he didn't help himself to more than his share of treats. But it was work that needed to be done, and the OP is right in recognising that.

We have actually put a lock on our kitchen door - the last straw was finding he'd eaten two weeks supplies of crisps and cereal bars (bought for lunches for 6 people over two weeks). He had just taken the lot into his bedroom and eaten through them all. I actually cried. Even teenagwr admits he has a problem and is glad there is a lock on the door.

Yes the Capri Sun and the donoughts - he knew they were for a special event and just ploughed in.

It needs to be said to him "I cannot trust you - You See , You Take"

What's his reasoning if you ask him "Why did you drink the lot" ?
Is he jealous of his Siblings party ?
Or is it just laziness that prevents him going to the kitchen and getting some squash?

My DS once swiped a box of AfterEights from the cupbard (DH had bought for me but I would've shared them )
He denied taking them (but I can tell when he lies much to his annoyance)
He also didn't hide the wrappers !

So the upshot was :

"If you're going to lie , be convincing . And you don't have a good enough memory to be a liar . If you're going to eat the evidence , hide the waste . Now go round the shops and buy me a new box"

It either cured him or he got more careful !

Totally normal boy behaviour.
My eldest is the same (he’s really skinny too) but will demolish everything in the cupboards, one time we brought a box can of cokes he drank all 24 within two days and hid them in his room.
I just stopped buying snacks and drinks. I hid all the good stuff in my room. 😂

My 16 year old DS is a pain for doing this, especially since the start of lockdown as he has turned practically nocturnal and so is up after we've gone to bed. He just doesn't seem to think, so I'll buy a tube of Pringles for us all to share and he'll just wander off with them and they'll be gone, big bars of chocolate are the same.

So I've stopped buying them, it suited me that he ate them ( so I couldn't!) but it isn't at all fair on DS2 who also wants some! So now if I buy chocolate I buy multipacks and he knows everyone gets a certain amount. It's much clearer he's eating someone else's share then

Eating everything in sight is normal for teenagers, and I do think boys especially. But drinking 12 capri suns which he knows were for a party is rude. My sister used to do this sort of thing. If my mum bought a bag of ten cakes, she would take them all to her room, eat as many as she could and when she couldn't eat any more, she would eat the filling out of the middle of the remaining ones so nobody else could eat them! It was a control thing I think.

But other than that angle, eating a lot at his age is normal, and he isn't overweight, so I'd just try and make sure he has plenty to eat. But no, taking all the stuff for a party to your room to have it in secret is not a good thing imo.

Could you send him to the local shop to replace the party stuff he took out of his own money? No big deal - DS14 pops to the shop on his bike every now and then when I need something.

Like a PP we have food in constantly for everyone, but also food for treats that's in the garage - DS14 knows the garage food needs to be checked but if it's in the house it's fair game. He is 6 foot 3 and I have never known a human eat the way he does - I can make dinner and less than 90 minutes later he's rooting in the fridge for snacks.

I don't think it's as dreadful as some people are making out, selfishness and greed are traits many adults still have, so a teenager behaving that way is probably quite usual; just teach him to tell you when he's eaten the last of something, and get him into the habit of running more errands - DS1 is more reluctant to eat 14 satsumas in a day if he knows I'll make him cycle to the Co-Op for more.

I can't believe people think it's normal behaviour for a teen boy to eat all but one of something that's a one off treat for the whole family. He's greedy and selfish and I'd tell him so.

Those who say it's totally normal boy behaviour to take everything of something, even if that leaves other people without, would you be happy for your boys to display this totally normal boy behaviour outside of the family? At a party? When staying with friends? At grandma's? What would it be like to be the girl in a family where somebody else grabbing all the treats is seen as totally normal for a boy? Would you just expect them to shrug their shoulders and accept that boys are like this?

I am speaking from my own experience of being the only girl in a family of teen boys. My eldest brother was a gannet and if left to his own devices all the treats would have disappeared down his throat leaving nothing for me. My parents came down on his behaviour like a tonne of bricks to make sure that myself and our smaller brother got our share of treats too. It was good for me to see that my needs still mattered though I wasn't a boy, and it was good for him to be socialised into good behaviour.

They pointed out perfectly reasonably that actual hunger can be assuaged by filling but boring food. In fact, there were fewer treats all round in those days and teenagers didn't starve to death: they just filled up on food items instead.

OP what did he say when you asked about this?

This isn't acceptable behaviour. It's selfish and rude and shouldn't be dismissed because he's a teenage boy. That way entitlement lies.