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?

Fast forward to your own 5 month old being your dsd age. What would you do ? There is your answer.

You've also got to consider your young baby will be weaning soon. It's not really fair if they can't have they're first taste of fruit's because they're older sibling has eaten it all. Frozen berries are just as good as fresh though. Might be something to consider.

I’m finding it hard to grasp having a child with someone that works part time. He needs to do more, he had two children and works part time. Come on .. that is not ok.

What worked for us was having a lock put on the kitchen. It was more of a safety thing as well. So they weren't sneaking down in the early hours and climbing on the worktops to eat any treats we had in .

Gorging and greedy are bloody horrible words to use about a child.

I really think people are overthinking the words gorging and greedy. I'd use these words about myself if I ate a second piece of cake and it wouldn't be the huge insult people are taking it as. Lots of people use greedy more casually than people are taking it here.

Well, exactly. Especially a child who has had so much emotional upheaval and may be comfort eating. A little more understanding would be nice. By all means curtail the fruit intake, but also can the unpleasant thoughts about a 7 year old who has been through a lot.

That's quite tricky because @Katey83 sounds far more sensible and thoughtful about parenting & setting appropriate boundaries than her DSD's mother has been.

If a child, at 7, is used to unlimited sweets, applies the same almost obsessive and certainly disordered eating to fruit, that suggests that the child's parents weren't doing a particularly good job for their DC in that area.

The OP is concerned at this disordered eating - eating far too much sweet fruit (to the point of diarrhoea) - and not eating proper meals. I hope she shows this thread to her DH, so he can step up to parenting.

I really feel for the OP - she's got a new (first?) baby of her own, and is coping with a probably quite traumatised 7 year old step-daughter, whilst bearing the burdens of getting over pregnancy & giving birth, probably totally sleep-deprived, on top of bearing the responsibility as the main bread-winner in the family, and people enjoying piling onto her in this thread.

I imagine I’ll do as my own parents did and restrict snacks to a set amount and make sure they are reasonably healthy and not too close to dinner.

Buy frozen berries instead of fresh , they’re great but won’t be as easily accessible

I would maybe get her a little fridge of her own or a shelf in your fridge and say that everything on that shelf is hers for the day
maybe get her to suggest recipes with what she has for the day
you can portion up her fruit in little bowls on the shelf maybe

Far too much fruit and it’ll stop her body absorbing vitamins and minerals, and she will have dental issues, and that amount of fruit will have too many calories.
Stop her eating fruit until she has eaten her meal.
Sounds like comfort eating so a trip to Gzl to get her some counselling.

Talk to her about when she had a poorly tummy and explain that eating too much fruit can cause that, then put some rules in place. Talk to her about her teeth too. I get my son (6) to eat vegetables by reminding him of when he was constipated.

Don't call her greedy or make it about weight!

Exactly what I thought! 😂

@Katey83 . I think you are doing a great job and coping well with all the changes that have come your way. Some posters! She has not told the child she is greedy, though the behaviour is greedy. Imagine if this behaviour is not stopped. You think future school friends and work colleagues won’t call it greedy.

Nobody seems to have taken in my point that uncontrolled raiding of food by ANYBODY in the household is unacceptable. The OP needs to set boundaries about what is up for general consumption and what isn't. Nominated shelf in the fridge or nominated fruit containers/bowls are a good start to this.

I am beginning to understand where all those threads about housemates in shared flats stealing all the food come from!

OP

Your husband needs to open a CMS claim on the child's mother.

That's a lot of fruit and unsurprisingly it is killing her appetite and leading to loose stools.

You are carrying a ver heavy load.

It certainly doesn't sound as if you have landed a prize though.

Yours is a story told on here regularly.

Single solvent working woman lands herself with a single father that needs housing with children in tow....your prize is working part time.

You have married him as well and now are paying for his child too.

OP mind yourself, because men like him are ten a penny.

Ach sh. As someone who weaned my 1 yr old months ago and has a 5 yr old, if the strawberries were gone I'd mash a banana. It'd have been on me to have ensured I had what I needed available. Ridiculous

I do agree that this example is a tad dramatic but I agree with the underlying sentiment that the fruit needs to be shared (albeit unequally, especially as the little girl loves her fruit) between 4 members of the family. So I agree with all the PPs who have said that she needs to learn that it’s to be shared by saying something like “we don’t want anyone to feel like a piece of fruit and it’s all gone.” I don’t think 7 is too young to start learning this in an age-appropriate way. Otherwise, she won’t just suddenly be a teenager who can share.

But they haven't done this, op and her husband have instead argued about it, he's allowed her to gorge and she's branded her greedy and herself resentful. Over fruit.

Ij our house we'd say 'of course you can have strawberries' then we'd make a plate with strawberries, some yoghurt, a handful of Cheerios etc. Someone would portion and make the snack and hang out with our kids while they eat

He MIGHT go to the fridge for fruit himself but mostoy we discuss food and he knows he gets breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, supper so he'll request certain things but we ultimately give him food. He doesn't have to go foraging etc.

Butop and her husband aren't doing that. Why not? Why is she resenting a child for eating food and he's not bothering to parent?

I totally agree that a 7yo shouldn’t be getting her own unlimited snacks all day long, especially not too close to meal times, and that your approach of snacking being nutritionally balanced and more substantial is sensible (thus minimising her feeling the need to eat enough fruit - which alone isn’t filling of course - for several adults a day). I suppose that’s exactly why she wrote this post as this thread has suggested lots of possible solutions.

Op both my dc would munch through copious amounts of fruit, leaving none for me or dh, and I get your frustration at going to the fridge/ fruit bowl to find none left for you both.
I found an excellent solution was putting a berry in an ice cube tray, filling with water and freezing over night, they each had a 12 cube ration tray, which they could help themselves to. They are teen and nearly teen now and make the trays up themselves👍.

To be clear they would have a berry/ grape/ melon ball etc in each ice cube!

Put her daily fruit ‘allowance’ in a basket. This may be like you say 1 banana, a handful of grapes, 2x tangerines etc. Let her know she can eat this fruit whenever she likes but when the basket is empty thats it until the next day.