To ask if you can control your 13 year old buying shit food?

[Coldwater12]

How much control do you have over your DC buying crap food - like bags of sweets and fizzy drinks?

Only insofar as I control his allowance.

I recently found out those 'Tesco meal deals' were actually him buying a whole cake and taking it to school to share with his friends.

He'd live off McD's if he could. So I curb his money.

More since he managed to cock up enterting his pin buying something and got his card blocked and hasn't managed to organise himself enough to get to a cashpoint to reset it.

His weakness is grab bags of crisps and fizzy drinks. I try not to worry about it too much - I make sure he eats well at home (and he always does) and hope for the best.

Mine gets a hot lunch at school and then I give him £5-£8 a week as there is a cafe too so he’ll buy some crisps or sweets then. He also has crisps at home sometimes. He eats well most of the time and is slim and active so I don’t overly worry about it.

Quite like the mental image of him sharing round a sponge cake, like a group of grandmas.

I don't. I let him get on with it but feed him salads, vegetables, and fruit, and send him to clean his teeth.

The cake thing sound quite sweet but does he also buy a proper lunch (with a bit of protein, veg etc). This may be a silly question......

My son eats a ridiculous amount of junk its what he wastes a lot of his pocket money on and grandma is always treating him too. All the good snacks in the house are often gone in the blink of an eye, I rarely get much of a look in.

I try to cook healthy meals as much as possible and he’s not fussy about veg or salad and also not averse to eating plenty of fruit in addition to all the junk so I don’t really worry about how much crap he eats more about how much it costs!! If he were overweight I’d probably care / do more but he's plenty active and as thin as a bean pole.

I was concerned about this when DS went to secondary. For all its pontificating about being a 'child rights respecting school' and 'healthy' and 'hydration friendly', the canteen offerings and school dinners were laden with chips, burgers and pizzas, sweet puddings and biscuits; and there were vending machines in the canteen selling crap.

Opposite the school were a café, a Greggs and a 'penny sweet' shop, with the back of a supermarket about five minutes away. The back entrance is where the supermarket has all the meal deals and bottle of fizzy drinks with an express till.

And the school would send us newsletters about healthy eating ...