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'd scale back on the variety. Not sure I'd restrict it but I would buy in season to reduce the cost.
I used to have a plate of fruit and sultanas (or other healthy snacks) for my kids when they came home from school. Sometimes a fruit dip. They'd sit, eat and then go off until dinner time. If a snack is provided after school, there should be no need to go foraging in the fridge. I'd try and add some veg to the snacks to reduce the fruit.
It need not be an issue if you are both on the same page and focused on health and wellbeing rather than resentment and cost.

I guess we are all different, it just blows my mind that some people would think eating fruit is gorging and being selfish, and unhealthy. It's literally eating food. It's sad if this is considered a treat. Veges are better of course, but fruit is still OK as a snack. As long as it's not processed food or food with lots of salt. Reminds me of my mean older cousin who "told on me" for eating cereal as a snack when I was younger. Perhaps I'm projecting! 😆

The OP didn’t have the kid in question. However, both of the parents in question seem to feel no obligation to pay for their child's food. But you think ithe OP's problem and fault. Funny, that.

When my kids were that age we had bento boxes (the ones that are divided into compartments). They would help me fill the boxes so they were ready for snacking. They would get one fruit, cheese, peanut butter and crackers, green veggies, yellow veggies, nuts, and yogurt. We also kept boiled eggs, hummus and pitas, pretzels, deli meat, chicken salad and tuna salad in the refrigerator. This helped me teach them to eat a variety of healthy foods and how to prepare them.

Prepping snacks would be a good activity for DH and DSD to do together. I would write down guidelines for the contents of the snack boxes (1 fruit, 2 veg, 1 protein, etc…) then let DSD choose something for each category. This would also give her some control while you can be make sure she is getting the nutrition she needs in appropriate portions.

For breakfast, we like to have oatmeal or cream of wheat with berries, bananas, nuts, seeds and either Greek yogurt or nut butters mixed in. Another option for us is eggs, sausage, grits and melon. Our children have always been limited to one portion of fruit at breakfast, afternoon snack and sometimes after the evening meal. We put the focus on adding variety to their diets rather than limiting fruit.

Can't you simply tell her not to eat so much fruit yourself? Why do you have to get your DH to discipline her?

Dried fruit is incredibly bad for children's teeth. It clings. My children's dentist said that from a dental point of view she would rather children ate sweets than ate dried fruit. She told me that the worst teeth she ever sees belong to usually slightly older mothers who are determined to only have "healthy food" which in their view includes dried food and they don't have regular dental checkups because their children "don't eat sugar" so how could they have decay. By time the child has toothache, it's a root canal or extracting teeth rotted beyond saving. I was there at the dentist when I overheard a little girl talking to her mother about getting some new nail polish for being brave during a root canal. This was a very expensive city practice so we're not talking about people who were needing to economise.

I thought this was OPs stepdaughter living full time with them? I feel sorry for the poor kid that's for sure.

How much fruit or indeed any other food do you consider a snack? Do you still think it's a snack if it prevents the consumer from eating their normal meals?

Obviously not, it sounds like it was only dinner, and I still think it's best she eats something rather than proceesed crap which so many other kids do. It also seems that there are other issues at play, so the poor kid probably need someone to cut her some slack. If fruit is expensive, therapy is going to cost a lot more 🤷‍♀️

The child is already getting therapy paid for by the OP.

A 7 yr old child eating fruit from the fridge is not being greedy, there's more at play, behaviour is communication.

Was there not enough food at her mum's?
Was she praised when eating healthily and isn't used to having so much opportunity to eat fruit so thinks she's supposed to or that it will gain praise?
Is she comfort eating?

It's interesting that you didn't care he'd lost his job until you became resentful of feeding a 7 yr old child. Your resentment is about more than fruit.

She's a child who now lives with you, parent her, has she got enough food to eat overall? Are you giving her a big enough portion of other food? Is fruit the only food you have that's entirely familiar to her? Is she filling up on it because she doesn't like the other food you have? Have you tried taking her shopping with you and letting her help plan meals? Talking to her about what meals etc she liked at mums?

Instead of going 'shes eating all the berries wah wag' maybe try 'why is our 7 yr old traumatised child acting in an unusual way and how can we help?'

Yes, that's too much fruit and not good for her. It's understandable that she's comfort eating, though, she's so little, and it sounds like she's having a hard time.

Parenting is teaching good life rules, and a particularly good life rule here is that we don't eat that much fruit because
a) It will make your tummy hurt.
b) There will be no fruit left for tomorrow.

(I don't think this particular 7-yr-old needs to understand the economic aspect of it, to be honest; the last thing you want is to give her more things to worry about or give her the idea you resent spending money on her.)

Make sure that there is food that she is allowed to help herself to if she's hungry (carrots and apples are a good idea). In your position, my priority would be her wellbeing, not the fruit itself.

I just want to add that my kids are all older now, and I do remember there being a financial tipping point where we went from being able to afford blueberries and peaches for small children's appetites to bulk buying apples and carrots to keep up with teen appetites.

She got into a serious relationship and had a baby with someone who had an older child. Same principle still stands.

No, they don't. Biological parents should provide for their children.

So if ops husband were a mum and not a dad, remarried and had a second child and decided to work part time would you say the same?

In ops setup she is the full time working parent of their family and her husband the part time worker who takes on more childcare. Many mums will be in that position, are you suggesting those mums are not providing for their children?

Fruit in moderation is great.

The sample day OP gave in her first post included about 900 calories from fruit alone, and 50 grams of fibre. That's on top of normal meals.

So this little girl is getting well over half her daily calorie needs (about 1550) from these fruit snacks alone. She is overdosing on fibre (needs maybe 20 grams) and having toileting accidents. She is getting nearly 200 grams of natural sugars - better than added but will still be bad for teeth.

This isn't healthy and OP is right to be concerned. Her husband isn't stupid - lots of people on this thread have the same idea that fruit is fine in any quantity. It's not. He's wrong.

How to deal with the issue is another question. I think GP - if bowel issues aren't diet related, you'd want to know. If GP thinks it's likely they are, you'd have an easy way to explain problem.to husband and daughter.

It wouldn't be kind to let this situation drag on.

(Assumed 20 raspberries, 10 grapes, everything else medium)

Yes, i would expect the mother (I hope in conjunction with the father) to provide 100% financially for the child that is not that of the current partner.

Really? Where does that end? My husband and I have entirely joint finances. He earns more than me and works longer hours as we have children with some health issues so not possible to sustain 2 full time jobs.

Are you suggesting someone in my position wouldn't be able to be fully joint finances if they had a child from a previous relationship? So the step parent in that scenario shouldn't be paying more housing, heating and food costs?

Your reasoning is ludicrous to me. If my husband had a child from a previous relationship or I did I'd expect that child to be fully a part of our household when here.

Yes the BM in the op should be paying maintenance but if op wants a part time partner for childcare reasons for their shared child she needs to accept she's paying more household cost.

I got time by my dentist that I was eating too much fruit. Something to do with the acid?

I also think comfort eating and that is a lot of sugar in the fruit.

One thing I notice is that the fruit she is eating is fairly small and soft, there is no effort in eating raspberries out of a punnet, just sit watching TV and idly putting raspberry after raspberry in your mouth. I'm 56 and I can eat a punnet of grapes that way.

How about introducing some fruit that is harder to eat? Apples, pineapple, oranges and also swap some for veg, carrot sticks, celery (even though I hate it) spring onions.

Make her after school snack carrot sticks and hummus or cheese. Maybe a hard boiled egg or some crackers.

Make fruit part of the evening dinner, as a pudding, but you stay at the table and fruit is 'prepped' so apples are sliced, melon is cubed.

If you peel and freeze bananas then put them in a blender you get something similar to ice cream.

That’s how I’ve read it as well

Cut fruit and was in white vinegar then put the fruit into portions for your dsd and into glass jam jars or Tupperwares then place in the fridge. Apart from bananas

explain those are her portions as the fruit needs to be shared with everyone, so the other portion is for yourself and her dad

My sil ate lots of fruit and dd had to hide some for herself.
Sil had 9 fillings recently and has been told by dentist to eat less fruit.
Also eating acidic food before bed and then scrubbing teeth is likely to affect the tooth enamel.

My 8 year old will eat fruit like that if allowed. Drives me crazy. We have to have a cut off time for fruit eating otherwise he won't eat dinner. I had to look him in the eye and say that is the last piece until dinner time every single day.

This would annoy me too. I might be in the minority here but my kids have to ask for food before getting it. They wouldn't be helping themselves to food out of the fridge. That is a lot if fruit for one child to be eating in a day. Dad needs to step in with you to tackle this though. I have a 7 year old who would fully understand the reasoning behind budgeting etc.