DD 11 has been stealing our money to buy sweets every day

[Catkitkat]

Some girls are selling sweets in school during lunch break and DD is their number one customer. We noticed some cash going missing and eventually put two and two together, and asked DD who then told us.

She has been eating at least an entire bag of maoam every day. I think you can see from my posting history that she has a real craving for sugar, and that we have had discussions with her about eating sugar straight out of the bag on the sly and so on.

To not drip feed:

• we do allow sweets and treats, we keep this to the weekends for movie night or similar
• DD restricts her eating at dinner time, she just picks at her food. We often cook her favourites, I’m a decent cook and I know she enjoys what I make
• DD did a lot of secret eating during lockdown (cake mix, sugar, anything)
• I haven’t weighed her recently but she was underweight as per the nhs paediatric bmi the last time (8 months ago?)

Reasons I don’t agree with the daily sweet buying and eating:

• health/dental reasons
• I believe she restricts her eating of dinner to allow for eating sweets. I feel this is disordered eating
• she has spent about £80 with her enterprising friends at school 😱
• she might be creating a horrible habit which she will struggle to break

What do we do? How do we help her? Any advice gratefully received!

@fairylightsandwaxmelts I see what you mean, I just don’t feel I’ve restricted her access to neither cash nor food? It’s just that she spent all her saved pocket money this way, and when she ran out of cash she took to stealing cash from us. So that’s what she decided to do with her financial freedom. We are shocked that she was able to go through so much money so quickly, and we are surprised that she’s been spending it in this way. One of her friends has racked up a debt to the sweet selling girls and is in trouble with them over this, so I’m keen to avoid the same scenario with DD.

My view is that she needs to learn money management and impulse control at some point. She is only 11 and she may well mature in the coming years but surely we have to support and guide her along the way.

Snacking is normalised and I would even say encouraged from the earliest age. Babies can't walk or talk but are already eating baby crisps or melty puff or rusks or cereals bars. People eat all day long. People eat in the street, on buses, People carry food with them wherever they go, in the car, in handbags. It is so weird.

We don't serve morning snacks. Breakfast, lunch, if a child is young, there might be 4 o'clock snack after school but always eaten at the kitchen table, not in front of tv, or bedroom, and then nothing till dinner around 7.30-8. French kids survive surprisingly well the lack of crap and are the least fussy eater I can see.

It is an Anglo-Saxon culture thing, UK, US, AUS. The snaking, the takeaways, even the word "treat" , the lunch combo with a soda +crisps+sandwich and they can't see anything wrong with it. So don't worry about the comments, @Catkitkat . It is hard in the younger years, when the kids see crap and it is highly palatable and addictive crap. Both for kids and many of the adults. So no, you can't give free rein , because this junk has been engineered to be irresistible.You are a parent, you teach good habits for life. There are sometimes food. Not daily, not weekly. There are however ways to include them in your life

We used to do the book marathon. We would go to the library, take the maximum amount of books allowed on each card. , go to the lollies shop and each kid bought a bag, and then we would spend 5 hours on my massive bed, the kids eating the lollies whilst I was reading them the books after after the other. So yes occasionally, as part of something. A luna park trip, A cinema. A special occasion.

Good luck!

@Cormoran your criticisms of food culture in the UK and IS are really valid but I struggle to see how they’re relevant to OP. She has done the opposite of the stuff you’re criticising and yet her daughter obviously has a serious issue with sweet foods- stealing to buy sweets and eating sugar from the bag are extreme behaviours even in UK/US. I think it’s worth looking at factors specific to her.

@DaffTheDoggo it is the food environment. Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, people are constantly eating crap. Bus stop ads have this continuous scrolling of Magnum, crisps, .... Add to that that a "safe" place such as a school be, has a black market of lollies, in addition to the lunch bags most kids have, no surprise a kid who hasn't them becomes obsessed.

I was validating the OP's approach in restricting crap

Snacking for children is expected within the NHS. One of mine was under a dietician for gastro issues and there was at least 3 snack sections in the food diary.

@Cormoran But her approach isn't working. She restricts crap so DD takes bags of sugar to eat in her room. OP stops her doing that, so DD spends her pocket money on sweets. OP stops her doing that, so DD steals money for sweets...and so it goes on. What comes next?

The posters advocating a less restrictive approach aren't advocating for more crap, quite the opposite- they're trying to point out that the restrictive approach appears to be having the opposite effect from the one intended. Maybe time to try something else?

It is incredibly unhealthy to ear sweets like this every day even if she is underweight!! People don't want to face the horrible truth about sugar.

I am a massive sugar addict and I hate it so much. All this nonsense about forbidden fruit is I think a bit overplayed. I was given lots of sweets as a child and now have a deep deep problem with my sweet tooth. Husband was not allowed sweet stuff and has no taste for it now.

Kids are starving at that age because they are growing. By using the fact someone in.your family had type 2 diabetes to limit sugar then your going to cause the reverse, I'd be worried about an eating disorder if she's under weight..sweets shouldn't be restricted so strictly its fine to have a pudding now again or some sweets. You've created an issue because you limit them as treats.

I honestly think you should take your daughter to see a dietician because her eating issues have compounded to the point is restrictive. Our GP referred my toddler to the dietician and we were seen within the month. I can fully see now though that her issues were as a result of my behaviour. I was so worried about giving her unhealthy food to the point she’d only eat a small selection of fruit and vegetables, cheese and pasta, she refused everything else at around the age of 1.

The basis of reforming a picky eater is you serve three meals (and two snacks if you wish), you don’t serve their favourite meals but make sure they like at least two elements. Serve pudding at the same time as dinner so it isn’t a reward but equal food.

You don’t need to give sweets every day, but when you serve them your daughter gets to pick to eat as many as she wants. You pick the food, she picks how much she eats.

[quote sanityisamyth]@DuckyNoMates my sister was excluded for selling "ecstasy" tablets at her school. In reality, she'd stolen my multivitamin and iron tablets and was selling them for £5 each. It might be enterprising, but it's still a slippery slope! My sister ended up doing 15 months in prison for GBH ...[/quote]
That escalated quickly

I did this at about the same age. I would spend all my money on sweets, I would pick up money I found around the house (wouldn't have dared actually steal from my parents' wallets though), would be unable to stop myself stealing my siblings' treats, tried to sell my belongings to my classmates to buy more sweets.

I was horribly, brutally depressed and took comfort in food. I also had zero willpower, which has persisted through into adulthood, and I am only now starting to join the dots and consider ADHD.

Talk to your daughter. Not about the food. Ask her how she is, what's going on in her life, in her head. She is not happy. Happy children don't steal and binge.

In large parts of Europe children grow up without a junk drawer in the kitchen and daily crisps/chocolate etc

and you come from one of these countries and yet you still have older family members with type 2 diabetes

Most people put on weight and end up getting type 2 diabetes because they eat too much and exercise too little. Your dd is far to young to be worrying about that and I think you are projecting. I agree that happy children don't steal and binge although there are levels of unhappiness. Personally I'd get away from the sweet thing and get her doing lots of exercise. If she gets into the habit now, there's a good chance she will continue once she reaches adulthood and while you can't outrun a bad diet, having a form of exercise you like definitely helps keep you healthy. Have you got a junior parkrun in your area?

@Catkitkat the stealing obviously needs to be addressed but it's obvious to me that the consequences of spending all your money on sweets are that you then don't have money for other things.

As she gets older she'll learn that if she wants money for other things then she can't buy as much junk

But I'm a big believer in letting children children make their own mistakes within reason, so they can face the consequences - in this case she now has no more money for other things and has to pay you back.

That's what should happen but she should still have access to pocket money (minus her debt) and sweet stuff at home in the meantime.

The sweets isn't the issue. It's the stealing, the sneakiness and the lying.

Removal of all privileges for the foreseeable and a reminder that if you're the victim of theft again you'll contact the police. She needs a sharp reminder that theft will land her with cautions and jail. She isn't immune from the law.

I would be taking her to a gp. Underweight and sugar craving. My dad was like this, he was diagnosed diabetic. Went onto insulin fast. He was just end of 30s. There are other possibilities.
I would also quit creating forbidden fruits. It never ends well.

On a normal day, not weekend or movie night, how much sugar will she have at home?

I have three dc and the 12 year old probably self regulates with the most

He’s slightly underweight / very slim so no issues there but I let him have a treat each day

He gets pocket money and also some stuff here

So I would try to align together on how much and take out the secretive part

Have a treat after dinner instead. Buy what she likes at supermarket

Pretty much take it out of a hidden situation so she can feel responsible and open over food choices

@Thirkettle

The sweets isn't the issue. It's the stealing, the sneakiness and the lying.

Removal of all privileges for the foreseeable and a reminder that if you're the victim of theft again you'll contact the police. She needs a sharp reminder that theft will land her with cautions and jail. She isn't immune from the law.

WTF?

I think her weight is completley irrelevant here - and it's very sad that people think that she should be treated differently if she were overweight.

It really, really sounds like there is more at play here than just wanting sweets. That level of craving is usually about something emotional or psychological. If you can possibly afford it I'd be looking into finding a child psychologist with a specialism in food.

@yellowsuninthesky

In large parts of Europe children grow up without a junk drawer in the kitchen and daily crisps/chocolate etc

and you come from one of these countries and yet you still have older family members with type 2 diabetes

Most people put on weight and end up getting type 2 diabetes because they eat too much and exercise too little. Your dd is far to young to be worrying about that and I think you are projecting. I agree that happy children don't steal and binge although there are levels of unhappiness. Personally I'd get away from the sweet thing and get her doing lots of exercise. If she gets into the habit now, there's a good chance she will continue once she reaches adulthood and while you can't outrun a bad diet, having a form of exercise you like definitely helps keep you healthy. Have you got a junior parkrun in your area?

Of course diabetes exists is all countries, junk drawer or not. I can’t explain why we have this in my family or what triggers it, I wish I knew. I’m not on a mission to eradicate sugar from DDs life, I just think this particular behaviour is a sign that something is not right in her world. Some posters seem to agree with this, have a different take.

I was looking for different perspectives, and for other parents to share their stories, and I feel I have both now so thanks for that.

(As an aside diabetes isn’t always related to weight, in my family the people with diabetes have all been slim, you can be ‘skinny fat’ with visceral fat stored around your internal organs etc.)

The number of girls I know who started eating in a disordered way during lockdown would horrify you-whether binge-eating or anorexia. I think the last few years have been very hard on our kids.

In large parts of Europe children grow up without a junk drawer in the kitchen and daily crisps/chocolate etc

I grew up (in the UK) without a junk drawer, and I’ve never had one as an adult.

I don’t buy it, but neither do I restrict it. If they want junk, that’s fine, off they go to the shop and buy it. Then it’s a conscious decision and not readily available to eat without thinking.

The only problem I do have is the kids to keep a few sweets hidden, or their bloody dad will eat it. He did grow up with a junk drawer- and I’m talking makro quantities- and mindlessly eats his way through anything he finds. No though to whether any one else want any, because he’s used to it being a never ending supply. The kids and I take more care as we know once it’s gone there’s no more unless we can be bothered to go to the shop.

I was overweight as a child (having being told I was underweight, so everyone fed me up) and even then the dietician still said one sweet treat a day. I did hate being so restricted and, although I didn't steal, if I found any money like 10p on the floor, I'd take it to the shop and get a sweet. It was the start of a life time of eating disorders.
My son has a genetic disorder which causes him to grow fast. We're managing it with the help of the endocrinologist and a dietician, and the dietician also suggests one sweet treat a day so he doesn't feel deprived.
I think if maybe you loosened up a little with limiting sweets at the weekend and allowed a little treat a day, it might help.

Before I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 13, I was very underweight but craved sugar which, of course, made me more ill. I really hope that's not the case for your DD. Might be worth checking out any other symptoms.

I think there is some cognitive dissonance in this country around sugar and it's visible here on Mumsnet.

Children who eat a treat a day - or who are allowed to help themselves from cupboards - are eating more sugar than they need. that is a fact. I say that as someone with very bad eating habits myself - and also as a parent I know my kids eat too much sugar. I'm not claiming to get it right myself.

but we have insanely high childhood obesity in the UK - over a third of 11 year olds. And you can also be very unhealthy and slim - the fat can pile up internally on your organs even in childhood.

There is clearly a sugary food crisis in this country but people come on here again and again to say the main issue is kids being denied treats. It just isn't true - children do not need a daily sugary snack or packet of crisps and the fact that many children do have this much (and more) is a key factor in poor child health in this country.

The OP is being attacked for worryinng about her daughter eating a packet of very sugarry sweets daily and stealing in order to do so - people are saying she needs to give her child more sweets to combat this!

The reality is children across the UK eat far far too much sugar and we all as a society need to tackle this.