I made my kids pay for the food they took

[piqueen]

Did I go too far?
I took their Christmas money to replace the sweets and treats they took. We do a big shop once a month and I buy all the chocolates/ crisps and other cupboard bits for the month. These are for lunchboxes for the kids, dh and for picnics on the weekend (or pack lunches for days out) , also biscuits and breakfast bars. You know, the good stuff?
I did the shop on the 1st and by the 3rd I thought, the cupboard looked a bit empty on the 3rd (so 2 days) and by the 6th I definitely knew something was up.
The boxes of cereal bars were empty (but still stacked so first glance there is non missing), all the chocolate had gone, the biscuits had been opened and eaten.

me and dh did a big clear out of their room and moved the furniture around. We found all the evidence, evidence which included loads of fridge snacks too. Frubes, cheesestring, baby bell which the wax has got stuck in the carpet.
I was so pissed off i took the kids Xmas money and have been using it to replace the items for DHs lunch only. The kids are having no treats in their lunch and I'm only buying fruit.

The reason we do a big shop is because I don't drive so I get a taxi once a month to keep costs down. (it's cheaper to shop at aldi and pay £10 once a month than shop in sainsburies every week, so I bulk buy aldi and top up at the more expensive shop) The kids have obviously been doing this for some time as there was so much rubbish behind and under the wardrobe.

It's been 2 weeks since I took their money but I feel so guilty. They only get a little bit (it was £40 between them) and they are only 9 and 10 but, also they stole a month's worth of treats for everyone (dh works in a physical job so he gets easy bars he can stick I his pocket, sometimes he is doing a 12 hour shift, very labour intensive and no chance to nip to mcdonalds)

I'm going back and forth between
'actions have consequences' and
'kids will be kids'

I don't even know if the lesson has sunk in because they have been eating loads of fruit instead now which is better but obviously costs more than chocolate bars and the price if everything is going up I'm wondering if I'm being too harsh

Yabu - give the money back
Yanbu - they should pay for the food they took

@flutterbyebaby what's your point?

You couldn't have budgeted or calculated very well to not notice all this time? Kids absolutely will steal sweets when they can? It's no big deal just don't buy as much or hide it better

I used to have to hide treats from my two, and yes, they were VERY well fed!!

I can't believe some of the responses here, basically saying your kids should get away with eating as much junk as they like???

I perhaps wouldn't have taken their money, but definitely hide the snacks, get a cupboard or something with a lock and give them the amount of junk food that you deem reasonable each day.

Agreed. Mumsnet beggars belief sometimes! 😂

I don't quite understand why you took their money. Couldn't they just not have sweets for the rest of the month so they understand the consequences? Are you trying to teach them sweets cost a lot of money? Are you worried about money? I'd also suggest being careful with messages you give in relation to treats. If they're stealing, hiding in their room this suggests some deeper issues, they're afraid of telling the truth, sweets are smt to obsess about, etc, leading to issues with food as an adult.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else considers treat food.. frubes and babybels are treats in ops house. Because they are expensive. The kids are absolutely old enough to know these are allocated for lunches and will also know parents are on a budget… so yes they took a months worth of treat food and ate it over a couple of days, hiding their actions so basically acknowledging they shouldn’t be doing it .

back in the day My brothers ate half of the front of all the Christmas chocolates on the tree… we weren’t starved but chocolates were treats … left the front half so wouldn’t be spotted… it’s not unusual behaviour with kids.

op I don’t blame you for punishing them, maybe let them earn some money back and have the tubs moving forward. Just a life lesson for them!

Yes. Cheese and yoghurt. SUCH TREATS! And exactly the kind of thing non hungry children steal

If it was just cheese and yoghurt you might have a point, but it's frubes, cheesestrings and babybel. All are snack foods designed to appeal to kids. While babybel may be cheese, it's still a food I'd buy as a treat, or for packed lunches. Frubes and cheese strings are junk versions of yoghurt and cheese.

Well you are being very OTT OP - give them a token fine for a first offence by all means - but don't take all their Christmas money. They'll be talking about this in 40 years, and not in a good way.

I think the biggest thing to do would be to say on reflection you don't want to take all their C'mas money, so you're giving it back minus a fiver, but if they do it again then you will be doing the piggy bank sweep.

I get these things are expensive, but they are still youngish kids, treats are very tempting, and they don't fully understand the value of money. I understand your husband needs snacks but cheese sarnies won't kill him for a month.

Going forward give them a weekly tuck box as a PP suggests, and when it's gone it's gone.

Sorry, have to agree with @flutterbyebaby on the budget.
When I was raising my brother around that age, me being 7 years older (went on about few years, our mum used to f*ck off with her lover for up to a week without warning and very little money), there was no way he’d have had the snacks in the cupboard.

Although he was sporty, and always hungry, so I just focused on the health aspect mostly and said he needed lots of nutritious food, and I’d gently include in that that I didn’t have enough left for lots of snacks. So he did have like most PP mentioned enough to eat and healthy snacks, which was the main thing.

I tried to budget for a pack of crisps a day, his choice, I simply said we need important food for fuel for sports and school, but some are just nice to eat but don’t bring much to our bodies, we can enjoy a bit of that as well, so you can choose every week : always was crisps.

I did also try to have conversations around, yes it’s partly due to our budget, but this is the way healthy eating works really so you’re not missing out on anything.

I just made sure I had a bit aside for experiences like trying out McDonald’s, kfc, whatever was ‘in’, although I’d have nothing and he’d have the tiniest menu, because it would really have sucked for social life (thankfully they weren’t old enough to go alone). Again with the same conversations as the previous paragraph.

A lot of it was ime about gently explaining : ex yes our meals at home are a bit boring, but we’re never hungry are we and they’re quite healthy, it allows me to save for your sports club fees. Which I wouldn’t be paying if healthy albeit boring meals weren’t possible, so it’s about reasonable compromises (and he’d have the occasional chips and pizza at school anyway). I never had tons of tantrums so overall I think he approximately got the message, as much as age allowed.

I would have been a bit worried in your case @piqueen if they’d replaced them happily with the fruit though tbh.
Although maybe the novelty of the top cupboard you mentioned ?

Fwiw he’s 25 now and eats like, well, a 25 yo, sometimes he may cook, sometimes takeaways, often times can’t be bothered and makes an oven pizza ! He doesn’t think twice about it though.

I've quoted the wrong post - do ignore me

Sorry that was very long, the main thing I wanted to say really was I think without the conversations he’d have been completely lost in it all. Now as an adult he regulates fine (as do I incidentally), despite being on a very tight budget before

£40 is for a month worth of packed lunch snacks for them all though and Op says £10 taxi to Aldi cheaper than shopping in big supermarkets.

Obviously no one needs crisps/biscuits.
But it sounds like op does pretty typical lunchboxes of sandwich, crisps, fruit and a biscuit and now she’s got no crisps and biscuits for anyone.

Frubes are high sugar same as a chocolate or biscuit.

At 9 and 10 your kids are old enough to ask you for food surely. Cheese and yogurt is not really a treat as such so it's hard to understand your post.

Do you not clean and enter your own children's room very often the way you have described finding the rubbish. Also you would of noticed if SO MANY snacks had been eaten from the cupboards and fridge surely?.

What about after school don't your kids have snacks? Mine DS has snacks DAILY...

Poor kids was probably hungry.

You make some good points here and I am glad that your son has good eating habits. Mine do too (all adults now). However I didn't let them eat what they wanted when they wanted, and I suspect you didn't either. The OP has not heavily restricted treats - the quantity they ate shows that. But we do owe it to our children to teach them good eating habits and a healthy diet. The number of children who are overweight and obese shows that this is not happening for many children, and overeating on snacks is shown to be one of the causes (not the only cause). There is a big range between heavily restricting foods so the child and managing them in a sensible way I think

Jaffacake, but surely there's an issue around food if they're 'stealing' it, hoarding whatever. Not all kids do this. Punishments around food won't do them any favours in the long run

The taxi is a tough one, I guess it depends on everyone’s circumstances. I’d take my little one each week, and we’d walk 45mins each way each way. Then he told me one of classmates on that main route had seen us and was starting to tell others.
So it took the bullet and we switched to the closer but a bit more expensive one (still a large chain though). Again, it was a conversation about how things would be a little more expensive, but he was all for it.
I can’t imagine how you could handle a month or pay as much for a taxi but I appreciate different circumstances are different, my decision probably seems stupid as well to some (although I was 16-17)

I don't think you are unreasonable, but whenever I stopped pocket money for a while, I'd work out an age appropriate way for DS to earn it back. So maybe they cluld do some chores so they can gradually get their Xmas.money back.

No one knows if the children are bored or hungry

No one knows how a 9 and 10 year old managed to take all the snacks from the kitchen over a period of several days and eat them in their bedrooms without their parents noticing

We do know that that OP has punished the children twice - once by not buying more snacks and twice by stealing their money. And we also know that the OP feels like admitting she's made a mistake to her children would be wrong.

Christmas money belongs to them. It's not something that can be taken back if there is a transgression. That's really unfair. And it's absolutely fine to admit that you were angry and lost your temper.

I'd give them the money back and apologise for that. And get to the bottom of why they took all the food. And also have a look at your levels of supervision in your household because most children of that age are supervised a lot more closely.

And I get a Tesco delivery for £1.50. I can't believe that Aldi and that massive chunk of your time on top of the tenner taxi fare works out cheaper.

More supervision implies the taking of the food was wrong, it needs to be declassified as a misdemeanor, so the snacks lose their mystique

I don't get why so many posters are referencing the obesity crisis, are the DC both obese?

I think you need to understand the outcome you want here OP. Are you going to stop seeing the items as forbidden fruit are they going to replace secret eating of so called, 'treat' cheese with normal cheese. What's behind the secret eating? I'm not sure why you would plough through with this reactionary punishment when you're doubtful over the logic of it yourself.

Good point about a delivery fee being cheaper than a taxi.

That’s not really the point here though is it

I think you’re missing the point. You are making far too much junk food available. It’s addictive. It has now been proven to permanently alter our brain chemistry. If you buy it they will eat it.