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?

I’ve become a mother to a 7 year old while postpartum having never had children in my life before. I assumed asking for some suggestions over how to handle a pre ring difficulty was the point of mumsnet. It’s not as if I called the police - I didn’t realise the post would blow up and get put in newspapers etc (that has actually been a little embarrassing in case anyone I know puts 2 and 2 together). In any event I got some helpful suggestions from more experienced parents, so it wasn’t Ott at all, the post served its purpose.

I'm glad she liked her snack plate
That's great

Absolutely OP. I’m not a stepparent admittedly but I can imagine it’s bloody well so much harder having to create boundaries and undo certain ingrained behaviours when she has been parented in a different way for over 7 years! I agree - and I mean this supportively not in a patronising way: it’s not like you’ve experience of parenting this tricky age yet, made all the more trickier by this little girl having upheaval in her life. While sleep deprived and also simply exhausted by becoming a new parent and all the mental energy that already requires when you’re very much learning how to care for a newborn/young infant on the job. I found the weight of that responsibility alone overwhelming when I became a mother.

But it’s great to hear you’re making some progress. Good luck.

Some people just love to tare strips off over pp. When they have likely never been in your situation before.

Kudos to you Katey83 for sorting the wheat from the chaff.

I thought of you this morning when I put my (Spanish) blueberries and raspberries on my yoghurt and left the rest out on the side for the teens to polish off.

Handy hint for any future posts (if you dare 😉) is steer clear of AIBU unless you are in the mood for a fight. Generally speaking, parenting and step parenting will be more supportive. Not always though as this is MN after all and warts and all.

Good luck. This too shall pass. They’ll be 9 and 2 and things will have changed. The leg work you and your DP put in now will help later although there are always trip ups around the corner for all of us.

Nobody has all the answers. Except on AIBU 😂

It sounds to me like you are a loving, caring stepmother and you're doing a fantastic job under stressful circumstances. Your dsd is lucky to have you.

Having fruit as part of the diet is healthy but it is still full of sugars so a child should not be left to plough through the fruit bowl unattended. Children need a healthy balance of protein, fats and vegetables as well. Check out NHS guidelines and send these to your husband in a non confrontational way.

I would say all children are greedy guts if you give them a chance. We buy frozen berries, mango etc which are great to add to breakfasts, yogurts or to make smoothies for pudding and work out more cost effective.

My child has one piece of fruit in the morning, some frozen berries on cereal. (Sometimes mornings are a banana and clementine). Usually one piece of fruit straight from school and a savoury snack. Or if I give them two pieces of fruit their pudding after dinner is something like greek yogurt and honey not more fruit. I tend to cut up carrots, tomato’s or cucumber before dinner. (My child has a huge appetite- if they do not their whole dinner I explain that the following day snacks will have to be limited as they are obviously eating too much snack food).

You are in a very difficult position. It is right to expect financial support for the upbringing of your child, but it seems like this isn’t easy. Can your partner get more hours working, especially whilst you are on maternity leave? If the mother isn’t contributing financially either and his child is school age it may be more fair he picks up more hours to help support his child? Alternatively will he be the stay at home parent once your back at work? I hope you aren’t doing all of the baby child care, paying all of the major bills and doing all of the housework, as that seems to be a very cushty set up for him and unsustainable for you in the long run. You’ll feel taken advantage of.

Regarding the fruit would have a conversation with your partner and explain that unlimited fruit isn’t recommended and that a well balanced diet is, especially if main meals are being wasted. If he still disagrees, I would buy fruit less frequently and pick up some alternatives like vegetables, dried fruit and nuts, cheese. Personally I try not to have too much snacky food in the house at any one point as it can either get gulped down too quickly or wasted and does need to be managed. For example if I buy grapes, or strawberries my husband and child will finish off in one sitting when I’m not looking. I have to have the conversation about making sure there is enough for everyone not just ploughing through it!!

@Babycakes6 you can filter by the ops posts. You shouldn't be accusing her of being a bad guy if you can't be bothered to read it properly.

@Babycakes6

READ OP’S POSTS

“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

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”

Also, how is the OP a breadwinner if on the maternity leave for the second time within a year ( a 5 months old baby and she is pregnant again?)
She wants a little girl to contribute for the fruit?
It’s her father’s house, how can a 7 year contribute for bills and fruit, what on Earth?

The point is she's usually the breadwinner and now she's on MAT leave, money is tight.

And apples may be cheap but berries etc are not.

It always amuses me when people come along with their outrage, trying to claim moral superiority whilst actually advertising their complete inability to empathise with people that don't have endless money spare.

Millions of people do have to set some restrictions on how much of a weekly budget of food it is reasonable to eat in a day, and acting like that is somehow cruel to a child and you cannot believe how evil the person is just shows you to be enormously out of touch with the reality of most people's lives.

@Babycakes6

well it is an unnecessary amount of fruit for a child isn’t it ? Or a grown adult for that matter

@Babycakes6

”
Millions of people do have to set some restrictions on how much of a weekly budget of food it is reasonable to eat in a day, and acting like that is somehow cruel to a child and you cannot believe how evil the person is just shows you to be enormously out of touch with the reality of most people's lives.”

this sums it up really well

I am totally speechless the girl’s father hasn’t moved out yet, the OP is so mean and clearly hates the poor little girl as not her child.

Well, you can't argue with stupid. Read the OP's posts before you make such idiotic statements.

Could she be diabetic?

Are you just making stuff up now? She quite clearly doesn’t want her step daughter to contribute towards buying the fruit (or bills!). The OP is buying what should be enough fruit to last a family of 3 until the next food shop, and her step daughter is eating the majority of it so there’s not enough left for everyone else. So clearly, the solutions are to buy more fruit, or to try and limit the amount of fruit that her step daughter is eating.

Ignoring finances, given that the amount she’s eating is upsetting her stomach and causing her to poo herself, do you genuinely not think the second one is the better option?

@Babycakes6

have you missed the bit about the little girl eating so much fruit that she is soiling herself?! Do you think that is ok?!

Have you even read Cinderella??

It’s shocking that anyone who has a child believes they can eat a ton of any sort of food and that eating fruit is breaking the bank. If a kilo of apples is indeed breaking the bank, why would you have 2 consequent pregnancies??

It’s the little girl’s father’s house and her father is contributing. The OP states the father is paying for the food, provides car etc.
If the money is tight why make 2 babies within a year and then take it out on a little girl?
I am a single mother on a single salary and still buy and share fruit with any child at the playground. Fruit is very cheap- in fact much cheaper and healthier than crisps, chocolate etc. To complain about the little girl eating more than her share of fruit is not petty but simply evil

Having to budget a bit with snacks would not be a deciding factor in whether I had another child.

And quite frankly, I don't think I've ever heard anything more ridiculous in my life than you saying budgeting food a little is "simply evil". I don't think that opinion is even worthy of respect.

Where are you reading that the OP is pregnant again?

@Babycakes6

if you read the OP’s post you will see that it is not just apples, it’s punnets of berries etc which ARE expensive. Restricting consumption of these things is not evil, it’s normal! Especially when the child is eating so much that she is soiling herself.

I can’t think of any families who would want to spend endless amounts on excess fruit, plus who can be bothered to constantly be going down the shops to buy it?! where does it end in your mind?? Maybe don’t go on holiday in order to be able to continue buying all this fruit?!