Stepdaughter eating too much fruit

[Katey83]

My dsd, 7, moved in with us full
time back in January. Our situation is that I am higher earner and breadwinner on Mat leave with 5 month old baby, husband does some part time work that doesn’t bring in much (he runs our family vehicle and contributes towards household costs such as shopping etc). Dsd’s mother does not contribute towards her expenses while she is living here (indefinitely for now).

At the moment, we are on a tight budget due to my mat leave - and one thing driving me crazy is dsd eating all our fruit. We will buy a weekly shop with 2 bunches bananas, few punnets of berries, peaches, melon, grapes, tangerines etc and she will eat her way through the lot in two days. For example, yesterday she ate a punnet and a half of raspberries, three peaches, four tangerines, some grapes, a slice of melon and two bananas. This is on a school day (so she eats this at breakfast and in the evening). She is then obviously reluctant to finish a proper evening meal or try anything she dislikes. She also has had a couple of accidents with loose stools (imo this is from bingeing on fruit). She takes from the fridge without asking and leaves nothing for DH and I.

I’ve spoken to my dh about this and he says she is a growing child and at least fruit is good for her - fair enough I buy fruit partly for her to eat, but the amount seems greedy to me, and beyond what is necessary for a healthy child. I think reasonable is a small
bowl of berries and grapes along with a tangerine and banana after school as a snack and then one piece for dessert. She can also have melon and banana for breakfast along with cereal and a yoghurt. I want her to learn that food costs money, we don’t have a bottomless pit of it and you don’t just gorge on whatever you want because you are bored/tired/didn’t eat your dinner, you ration portions in a family so everyone gets a fair share, and sometimes eat less tasty things to maintain a healthy diet.

We provide substantial breakfast, lunch and dinner portions, and I try to accommodate her tastes (though she can’t just have fish fingers and strawberries as a diet, which would be her preference).When she first came to us she was also gorging like this on sweets - that’s been easier to nip in bud as dh can see how unhealthy it is. I want to handle this in a compassionate way, would I be unreasonable to stop buying fruit until dh agrees to a sensible ration for dsd?

Free reign within clear boundaries sorted this for us. I have an ADHD girl who likes the sensory input of eating, plus the dopamine rush of yes/no argument behaviour, sneaking sugary food in her room and generally turning it into a Thing.

I got to the end of my tether with it and I repurposed a play kitchen as a real kitchen, put breakfast cereal and snacks in it, plus a little box in the fridge.

The kids (4 and 6) are told that I'll top the snacks up as and when about once a week, so not to smash through it otherwise they'll run out. One of their friends came over and did eat a lot of the food (their mum was over too), and it really upset my two that there was nothing left, so it was a good lesson learned. I topped it back up the next day once we'd spoken about it.

It's worked brilliantly, totally taken away the power of snacks and is teaching them moderation.

In their kitchen they have:

Fruit bowl of apple, banana and oranges
Breakfast biscuits
A portioned tub of raisins (that I remake daily)
Fruit rollers
Pepperamis
A couple of low sugar cereal choices.

In the fridge box they have:

Babybels
Cheese dunkers
Carrot/cucumber/pepper sticks
Yogurt pouches

They have complete carte blanche over it all, but I've realised that if they don't think they should have something that they tend to ask me if they can take something. So in that case we talk it through. I tell them that it's from their kitchen so they can choose to eat it without my permission, but the fact that they are asking me suggests that they don't think it's such a good idea- what's their inside voice telling them? Is it because they can see dinner being made?

It's worked like effin magic!

Thanks for this - I never meant to make myself out as a millionaire. I am a higher wage earner than my husband, bringing in enough to support the family when not on Mat leave: this doesn’t mean I have an endless pit of money.

To those saying I’m over-focussed on the money side, this may be true. But it’s not because I dislike dsd it’s because I have gone from one half of a couple who could spend what we liked within reason, to a mother of two also supporting husband while on statutory mat leave ina cost of living crisis in the past five months, and that is quite stressful. I’m trying to balance giving dsd the comfort and sense of being loved she needs by buying her favourite foods, along with managing a budget and trying to parent (aka introduce boundaries) all at once. It’s pretty hurtful to read that I am resentful and don’t care when I think my actions indicate the absolute opposite - if I’m frustrated about the fruit eating it’s because I know it’s bound up with a lot of other things including our new family dynamic and dad’s emotional state!

For those saying £5 a day on fruit is nothing, have you totalled it up over a year?

It’s £16,425 on fruit, along for one person. It’s not sustainable in anyone’s budget.

OP, I have a bottomless pit of a 7 year old too. They get fruit at school for snack, they’re allowed maximum 2 more pieces at home because it is bad for their teeth. Carrots and mini cucumbers are also encouraged.

During lockdown we put snack boxes into place as eating from bored was a thing, they make a reappearance once in a while.

My children ask before they get a snack, for many different reasons, if we’re going out and they may get messy, how long until a meal time, if they’ve already had enough that day, if the proposed snack is for a meal, a myriad of reasons, and none of them make me mean!

We had an incident recently where a massive tub of salted pretzels was finished off without asking. We had a sensible discussion about portion sizes, a balanced diet and making sure everyone in our family can have a fair share.

You haven't done anything wrong. Some people on here just love to stick the boot in!

@Marmite27

Not quite sure how you got to £16,425 !

£5 x 365 = £1825

Which is still more than one months salary for some people.

£1825 a year
£152 a month
£35 a month

and that last month should say £35 a week!

dad’s emotional state

What's going on with him? Sounds like you've got a very complex family situation on various levels. I wonder if you thought through what you were getting yourself into when you took up with him if he's got issues, he's lost his job, his ex is not contributing to her DD financially and possibly in other ways too....but the answer certainly isn't taking your stresses on your DSD. I have to say you chose to take on this family and however hard it is you need to deal with it.

That’s true, I used my phone calculator for the fruit but used the figure from my laptop calculator in error for the post

Sorry typo I meant a dsd’s emotional state but it auto corrected. There’s also a loT
of assumptions about my husband on here that I can’t be bothered to extensively engage with. If I wasn’t happy and committed to the relationship we wouldn’t have just had a baby and I wouldn’t have agreed to take on dsd full time.

To me, family dynamics are irrelevant here (although obviously I am sad to hear that they are problematic). I would really challenge the concept that ANY member of the family has unlimited access to food stores to simply eat what they fancy at any time. I think that prepares them very poorly for real life. (And in this I include ALL members of the family except the person who actually budgets for, and buys, the food, who presumably has a handle on the food shopping and plan for the week. I'd be equally irritated if it was DH/DP helping themselves without any notification or consultation, since I might have been planning something for that food.

Of course this is slightly OTT - there should be some snackage provided. But I do think that family negotiations - about what is snackage and what isn't - need to happen in all families. Even in very wealthy ones it is not healthy to reinforce any notion that the fridge is simply a self-refilling magic machine.

OK, sorry, my bad.

If I wasn’t happy and committed to the relationship

But you also need to be happy with and committed to your DSD. If you get together with a man with kids you're not just committing to him, you're also committing to his kids, not just financially but emotionally. If you love her, things will fall into place.

Better fruit than junk and as an ED survivor -- which began in childhood/teens I would say tread extremely carefully, especially in the context of the change re the resident parent.

@Katey83 Ignore the posters painting you as an evil stepmom. How you and your husband organise your financial life is up to you.

hahahaa im crap at maths but even I sat here thinking "it bloody isnt" 😂

I think it might be a comfort thing as she's had a lot of changes but I'd be concerned about the sugars (I know it could be worse).
Maybe offer cucumber sticks or carrots and pass it off as you think she needs more variety.
My daughter doesn't eat any fruit or big (asd restricted diet ) so I'd love to have your problem but i can see why you are concerned x

How about a day out just you and DSD doing nice stuff together and maybe you can get her to tell you how's she's feeling/what's wrong and how you can help her?

@GoldenFarfalle

a LOT of fruit though, let’s be honest

GlitteryGreen has it. As an adult you sort out snacks and include some protein as it will keep her fuller for longer. Carrot sticks, cucumber sticks cracker and cheese, etc Sort her out her after school snack then nothing until dinner.
I had 6 children living with me at one point they were not allowed to just constantly graze on fruit or what they wanted. They had snacks with fruit. Soft fruit was incorporated into a pudding. Yoghurt and berries. Chopped fruit with merengue and yoghurt. Etc

I always like to wait 30 minutes after eating fruit before brushing or you can do serious damage to your teeth by brushing when they are in a demineralised state. I like to have a small piece of cheese after fruit to try to remineralise.

I told my husband about this thread. He told me that his family had this exact problem. They solved it by the boys each having a fruit bowl with fruit parcelled out. Everybody had their weekly fruit allocation in their bowl and when it was eaten, that was them for the week. Previously, the fruit had vanished in a day or so and nobody other than the phantom fruit eater got any fruit. My husband has strongly denied being the phantom fruit eater and it does make me be view my brothers in law in a new light.

Yes, her dad needs to find a full time job. He also needs to claim child support from his ex (the girl’s mum). It’s not fair that OP has to solely financially support this girl who isn’t even her daughter. She has 2 parents that are failing her!

However, 5:30pm is an early dinner. I’ve always eaten after 6:30pm even as a child. I’d have a snack after school.

That's why the OP is paying for therapy for the child.

I think this thread has become overly obsessed with this inevitably being a trauma response tbh. Loads of children do just like to eat a lot of food without there being underlying issues at the heart of it.

She’s not the very hungry caterpillar, she needs to rein that in a bit!

And no, that amount of fruit is not healthy, that sugar content will be through the roof!

This! And it's a ridiculous amount of fruit for anyone to eat.

These threads are a joke.

The OP is NOT A VILLAIN BY VIRTUE OF BEING A STEPMOTHER.

Jesus Christ.

She’s paying for this little girl, single-handedly. She’s started a thread asking for help with this issue. She’s taken on the role of mother for this child and the child lives with her full time.

The kid’s actual parents are doing fuck all. Mum isn’t in the scene anymore and dad isn’t working much, nor actively seeking out the reasons behind this kid’s insane fruit consumption. And there probably are some.

Some posters are so threatened by stepmothers, or so coloured by their own experience of their own children having a stepmother, or so threatened by a bread-winning woman, or so determined to take against any sort of blended family (delete as appropriate) that they lay into a woman whatever the circumstances.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so annoying.