AIBU for making DD12 give up her treat for eating more than her share of a takeaway?

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My DD12 is a big eater and honestly can be quite greedy. She has often tried to take more than her fair share when sharing food with her sister DD11. This weekend, we ordered takeaway and there was a side for the two of them to share. Typically they will divide the side up to start with so there are no complaints about either of them eating too much of it. However, we were in the middle of watching a movie when the food came. I told DD12 to divide the side up and she said "oh, it's ok, we can share it reasonably" and I said fine since we were in a hurry. Maybe 10 minutes later I look and she has eaten all but 2 pieces of the side (out of 30 maybe?). I ask DD11 if she's had any and she bursts into tears and says no. DD12 says sorry repeatedly and that she didn't mean to do it.

It wasn't something that was easy to rectify at the time, so we said that DD12 would owe DD11 something. DD12 is in secondary school and gets an extra pound or so each week to spend on a treat at lunchtime on Wednesdays. AIBU to tell DD12 that she needs to buy the Wednesday treat and bring it home for her sister tomorrow? If there is a better suggestion, please let me know!

It doesn’t matter how many calories they were, it matters that the beans were chosen by both of them, they had agreed to share, and the younger sister was looking forward to them as part of a once-in-a-while takeaway treat, and she had her sister’s portion on top of her own. If both my daughters really loved brussels sprouts, and one of them ate her sister’s sprouts as well as her own, I’d be telling her off too. Not for eating brussels sprouts, but for taking her sister’s things.

Maybe all sit and eat together at the table and turn the TV off.

And @Viviennemary (you sound hateful btw, is that how your family treated you?).

It doesn't matter if she was hungry or 'greedy'. You can not use that language around a teenage girl with regards to food. It's so fucking risky.

Not looking forward to them enough to actually eat any though? Or bother to look at the pot in those 10 minutes? 10 minutes for 30 edamame is not scoffing the in, that's a normal pace of eating.

Yes obviously OPs Dd1 shouldn't have eaten all of the beans but I suspect there's some deeper food dynamics at play and potentially some manipulation from DD2. OP plaves the blame entirely on her eldest but allows everyone else to get away with not noticing

OP I think you hare having a hard time on here and it's really unfair. I see a mother who is trying to instill kind and thoughtful values into her children, and honestly I totally understand where you are coming from. I'm sure maybe your eldest didn't intentionally decide to deprive her sister, but she wasn't showing any regard for her at all, and that's not OK either. I know people seem to be trivialising it, but I honestly do understand what you are getting at! I did like the suggestion of getting your l eldest to pick a gift with that extra spending money, it's a consequence of her actions but also helping her put it right herself.

At the time, I would have told DD12 that she had just lost her treat next Wednesday. I would not be giving her extra pounds this week.

DD12 was devious and effectively stole her sister's meal. She knew clearly what she was doing as she had woofed down almost all of it.
I think it is fair to punish by restricting another food treat. Your DD22 needs to be more considerate.

I don't think any normal people "like" punishing kids, but sometimes it's necessary in order to teach right from wrong.

You sound like you don't like your eldest and prefer your youngest. It's coming through really stronger.

Forget the girls relationship, what do you think this is doing to your own relationship with your eldest?

Totally not the point, but a lot of supermarkets sell the frozen bags of edamame beans still in the pods, which you can steam and salt. If you wanted to have them as a cheap snack at home more often, or for DD12 to pay for a bag for DD11!

Tell the eldest she was being selfish. Next takeaway you dish out. Making a mountain out of a molehill honestly.

This. All this fuss over some edamine beans

I think she was set up to fail here tbh, how many of us have absently eaten a whole tray of something while eating watching the telly. I'm not saying never eat in front of the telly but take that extra 30 seconds to portion out the food.

I love how you’ve selectively quoted me 🙄
Let’s face it, if OP had divided the food and plated it up, then this wouldn’t have happened. She already said her child can be greedy, and yes, in this circumstance she wasn’t to be trusted. That doesn’t mean in alternative situation she can’t be 😳
Rather than scrutinising my response, maybe you should just go back and read the original post? 🤷‍♀️
Enjoy the rest of your day 😊

Yes, I'm getting this impression.

It's really tough to be the eldest girl - in some/many families, the daughter's entwinement with a mother's feelings can be really difficult. And in some/many families, the mother's feelings about an adolescent daughter can be very ambivalent. Usually, mothers sort this out by the second daughter, but there can be a lot of projection from the mother onto the first child if she's a girl.

Hi OP — following with interest as we had some similar experiences in my childhood home.

Responses to this are probably going to fall into a few different camps, because approaches to issues like this are often rooted in people’s core parenting beliefs. Some people lean towards stricter consequences, while others focus more on understanding the “why” behind the behaviour and helping children develop self-regulation over time.

As the older sibling of someone who later developed an eating disorder, I’d just encourage a bit of caution around how food-related consequences are handled, especially at this age. One thing I think about a lot as a parent now is: when my children are adults, how would I want them to describe their relationship with food, boundaries, and discipline growing up?

In our family, consequences around food sometimes seemed effective in the short term, but over time they also created a lot of tension and shame around eating. My sister and I (who were around the same ages as your daughter when these struggles first began) have both done work as adults to unpack some of those patterns and build healthier relationships with food.

My sister and I were actually messaging about this thread earlier and reflecting on how differently we approach food with our own children now. For us, food isn’t a reward or a punishment. We try (not always successfully — Easter chocolate definitely humbled us!) to give our children opportunities to practise moderation, while trying to remember especially in the moment that self-regulation is a skill that develops gradually and imperfectly.

When things don’t go well, we try not to shame or overreact to the kids, but instead see it as part of the longer process of teaching and modelling healthy habits around food. We’ve also found that if we relax one boundary eg eating away from the table we usually need a bit more structure elsewhere, like portioning things out in advance, checking everyone’s got what they need before eating, or if we are eating whilst watching something we need to remind then to eat until they feel full not just keep eating because they are distracted

not a perfect science or a perfect approach but wanted to share

But they also put themselves into these roles.

Whaaaaa?

A 12 year old ha no idea about how to deal with this undercurrent of YOUR emotions. You're the adult. Stop blaming your eldest daughter.

I was measured in my post about "And in some/many families, the mother's feelings about an adolescent daughter can be very ambivalent."

Your feelings are hardly ambivalent.

You've already acknowledged you should've portioned out the food and I think that's the best thing going forward. Yes, 12yo DD did say she could handle it - turns out she was wrong and she can't. You don't know if she was distracted by the TV or whether it was deliberate. Maybe it was selfishness, maybe it was a slip of the mind - have you talked to her about it?

I don't doubt that you don't call her greedy to her face but my step-dad got it into his head that I was greedy as a kid. He never said it either but every time he or my Mum dished up tea for me and my step-siblings he'd always sneer at me "Of course you picked the biggest." I got into the habit of asking which plate was mine, was told they were all the same and that it didn't matter, and yet somehow, without fail, I was always accused of picking the biggest portion. Miraculous really.

Some siblings can't share! My brother has autism and my Mum would get us those sharing ice-creams you can get in places like Hungry Horse, he'd eat it at the speed of light so I'd have to gobble it down too rather than enjoy it otherwise he would've taken all the decent bits. I'd tell DD it wasn't fair or kind to take her sisters portion then just dish it up yourselves next time or stop getting things that they need to share.

Ughh no, eating a side dish of vegetables (or any food) cannot be considered ‘wrong’, surely??! YABVU. I feel really strongly that as parents we should be navigating anything to do with food sensitively. Esp for a pre-teen girl. You’ve already called her greedy. I think you need to take a step back and think about how you think about and approach food with her before you contribute to any potential issues down the line.
You knew sharing the side would be an issue. It’s ok to just say “you know what guys, we all eat at different speeds, we want to chill out and watch the movie and not worry about keeping track, let’s just divvy up what we all want now and what ever is left over we’ll just leave out for whoever wants seconds”.
I’m not having a go, but I would urge you (and the others on this thread who think it’s ok to punish over this) to do some research on this.
This author (Anna Colton) has great online content and a fantastic book: www.amazon.co.uk/How-Talk-Children-About-Food/dp/1785120557/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=26KPHH5IVLTGV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.B-xhfQetJOYXdxqK0Wjc7HaY_yZnnZIsR1NW7jsoSXea78HtTcaar17KtEv_knWM799gA15GSTIDyA_kQgq6CBbNXchXZZy3rEqI5hvNu3-bHE5MuVnEuS-RHbGAt5tynAq0mnsUd8Hx0o3CoDUT6k6xNuv7U1P0Pj2_qGcdo5sdMcqxs7kh5CywBM-ZsJ9qDZX5yoae56BTL-Usi2DBAg.lZ-UV0EGEo96T0Q2nSjSRyT9dz_j_iXR3wOvy_TmRQs&dib_tag=se&keywords=how+to+talk+to+children+about+food&qid=1778591408&sprefix=how+to+talk+to+ch%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1

Oldest sounds like she's going through a growth spurt where she's hungry all the time? A couple of friends were like this at school . They pigged out and got quite chubby, the shot up in height over the next 18 months. Both ended up tall and slim.
I had very strange christian foster parents around the same age, and they restricted what both me and their biological daughter are. I was forced to eat dried apricots daily to 'help me go to the toilet' 🙄
Would loved to have pigged out on takeaways sometimes then!
Fortunately my next foster family were a big Afro-Caribbean one and they made sure we are as much as we wanted & had fruit available 24/7. I actually got chubby myself at age of fourteen or so but I loved my curves.
The punishment thing has obviously passed the window of carrying it out. Don't make a huge deal of it and move on. Your daughters will forget it fairly soon.

Well firstly I think it odd your other daughter burst into tears over it. It’s food, it shouldn’t hold that much importance. Something has gone wrong there.

Jesus. It's hardly 'wrong' for someone to eat a pot of edamame beans. You are totally overreacting to a non-issue. It all sounds very intense and dramatic, and then you remember you're talking about a kid eating beans while watching a film and just not paying attention to how much she's eating. She's not greedy or selfish or mean to her sister. She's just a kid.

It's your fault for not sharing the food properly or even pausing the film so you could all eat together. It's well known that eating in front of screens encourages everyone to eat more because they're not paying attention. You're the parent, you're supposed to actually help your children rather than expecting them to be perfect and then calling them greedy and selfish to strangers online. Poor kid. Just get over it and buy two pots of beans next time.

It definitely needs to be addressed in the same arena. One consequence is not going to cause an eating disorder.

My brother was the selfish one when it came to food when we were younger. He is exactly the same as a grown man. If there are six pieces of chicken and six people, he would take two of them. I make it clear he is out of order and not to take more more than his fair share. He doesn't have an eating disorder. He is greedy and selfish and unlikely to change.

She is 12. Not 2. Why the hell shouldn’t she have to take a tiny amount of responsibility for actions that have upset someone else. Maybe she did do it without thinking. She still did it. She is not a small child. It should NOT be the responsibility of other people to dole out snacks that she knew where to be shared and had, in fact, minutes earlier agreed to do so!

A 12 year can be held accountable for actions that have negative outcomes.
I can’t believe the amount of people who would apparently just be ok with their children doing this without any expectation that they try and make amends.
What the food is, is NOT the point.

I think it's really important that any punishment doesn't involve your other daughter at all. If your oldest daughter's punishment involves a reward for the youngest, the effect is that your oldest daughter perceives it as a double punishment and resents her sister. Neither of them are old enough to rationalise it.

Quite frankly I think an apology and genuine remorse is sufficient and your youngest daughter learns that it's not fair but that she could have spoken up. Your job is to treat them as the individuals they are and help them to get the best out of any situation. Accept the apology but recognise that she is simply too young to take responsibility for avoiding temptation and either don't make them share or you divide it up. The punishment is simply that she's not trusted again to divide up the food. Tell your younger daughter that yes it wasn't fair, her sister is sorry and won't be allowed to do that again. Teach her that it's okay to stick up for herself and to call her sister out and involve you if that doesn't work,

You need to find the balance between equal and fair. Taking away a treat to give to the other might be equal but it's not necessarily fair and sibling relationships in my experience flourish if fair even if not equal.

It was the younger DD who didn't get any that cried, not the DD who ate them all, so no.