5 year old secret eating?!

[Frozenheart]

My lovely 5 year old DD has always been a very good eater ever since she was weaned.
The last couple of months, I have come downstairs to find my fridge and cupboards raided. All of this is being eaten before I wake up in the mornings.
Yesterday, her morning raid consisted of:

6x small petits filos yoghurts, 1x dairylea dunker, 1x apple and 1x satsuma.

This morning, she ate 6x more small yogurts, 1x packet of wotsits and 3x plain tortilla wraps

We always make sure we have filling, healthy meals during the day, but the words ”im still hungry still come out after finishing her meals and when we put her to bed!
In reception class last year, she was weighed and measured and it later came back to us that she is overweight. This wasn’t a surprise to us, as she has always been ahead of ages in clothes for her age. and her dad and I aren’t the slimmest of people!

So my main question is, would any see this as a cause for concern and to contact the gp? Is there anything we could change?

@tiredanddangerous

I imagine she's bored and lonely. That's why I comfort ate as a child.

I imagine the OP is too...

Prep and batch cooking is your friend, it’s cost effective and saves time

Aside from anything else, does she actually need to go to bed so early? As she's waking up early she might not need so much sleep.

And if she got up a bit later, it would make it easier for you as well.

And check her portions and weigh her food/ calorie count (without her seeing/ knowing of course!) so you get a rough idea how much she should be eating as you said she's overweight.

Even a bowl of homemade soup like lentil and carrot or ham would make a good supper.

It depends on what works for your family routine, but you could do a healthy snack when home from school and then have a later dinner if that works better?

remember that she might not be overweight because her main meal portion is too big. It might be, but equally might be fine or even too little. The weight could be due to the sugary snacks and eating the wrong things outside of meal times.

Get dd involved in cooking she’ll love it,and get sense of achievement
Home made pizza. Buy the base add tomato purée cheese and dried or fresh herb
Grate cheese for a sandwich or pitta
Make flatbreads and hummus. Really easy get a cheap hand blender hummus will store in fridge 3-4 days
Boiled Egg in a cup
Make meat balls or own mini burger. Let her roll the shapes
Ham & toast

Hi OP, you do just need to get up, it will make such a difference. Our house is quite weird as I take a lot of medication which is sedating for 12 hours + . I do all the school mornings and my DS is well used to me so it doesn’t bother him. My point really is you just have to get up. Sometimes I just can’t get up and he fends for himself. He’ll eat a pack of yoghurts. It’s easy. They’re nice. He can’t pour a big milk carton himself. It’s not ideal and I try and only let that happen every couple of weeks. Your post has really resonated with me. I hope you can hear what I’m saying in mine. Often I get up and just sit down so I’m not doing very much at all but I am supervising, and sharing some time of sorts. Weekends/holidays/ DH and I share “doing the morning” or when we know it will be very difficult to get up term time he will do it and be late for work. Everyone can make this work together! As many posters have said Good Luck!

She has her tea very early. Maybe some supper would help, she might sleep for longer and then you can get up together and have your breakfast. If she has tea at 5 and wakes up at 6 or 7 that’s 13 or 14 hours without food. She must be ravenous. I would introduce toast, crumpets, muffins, sorreen, or sandwiches, and glass of full fat milk before bed. Your weekends would be nicer if she slept a bit later as well.

Just jumping on here to say OP my just turned 4 year old also watches TV in the morning while I sleep and most of the parents I know get extra sleep while their kid watches a bit of TV first thing in the morning! Just wanted to stress you are not the only one doing this at all! May not be usual on Mumsnet but it does seem to be in real life. It's a great thing about them getting a bit older. He is always within earshot. I sit while he eats a tangerine or banana as I am still too scared of choking to have him eat unsupervised but then I go back to sleep for anything up to an hour until he wakes me up to say he's hungry.

@mswales you’re describing being awake and supervising breakfast then sleep for up to 1hr
That is completely different to the op scenario. There is no comparison
Her child is up for 2.5hr no breakfast and is unsupervised
Can you see the difference?

Does your dd drink enough water? She be confusing thirst with hunger.

Ignore the snarky posters OP, they always find something or someone to berate.

It's definitely worth getting up with her. It also sounds like you've got quite a bit of child-accessible food: things that come in individual servings and don't require any prep (mini-yogurts, dunkers, fruit pouches, cheese strings).

I know these are amazing time savers, but it might be better to have the only accessible food being fruit and find ways to prep these snacks so she needs to ask you for them. Just having the prep involved leaves some space for her learning that getting food is a process, and that leaves space for deveoping self-regulation.

For example, bread sticks and dip instead of the dunkers, a block of cheese you can cut up instead of cheese strings, a larger thing of yogurt which you add frozen fruit to etc. There can still be fruit out for her so that she's got open access to something.

its NOT secret.she knows you know! any kinda faddy/over/nil by mouth eating-in my book=non ptoffessional= "control"
if you do bfast,lunch dinner....supper...within wwtf you believe is (more than)adequate...you gotta lookit what the problem is(yes,thats hard)If sod all hiytting you in face---jumpt to pedomiter-swapp "calories for aactivities"imaybe

Out of interest, those who say 5pm is too early for tea - what time do your DC eat and go to bed?

We have always eaten at 5pm and bedtime is 6:30pm. He doesn’t eat anything after that meal un till breakfast around 8am.
This has never been an issue (granted we don’t have a cupboard raider either!) so I’m a little shocked at some of the replies (particularly the ones about ‘not feeding a child for 13 hours’)

I used to let my DD (now 15) watch TV sometimes at weekends if I was too tired to get up. Most parents do this. But I used to go downstairs with her and get her something to eat/drink and tuck myself up on the sofa with a blanket and doze rather than actually being asleep upstairs in my own bed while she was downstairs on her own. More often, she would get into bed with me and some fruit or toast, and play a game on my phone (big treat) or look at a book while I had a little nap beside her in the same bed. If she talked to me, I could hear her and I'd wake up and chat a bit. This was a rare occurrence that I would be asleep/dozing when she was awake, like maybe once a month if I had had a late night or a hard week.

Mostly, I just got up whenever she got up and if she slept late it was a bonus!

In any case, she would always wake me up when she woke and most of the time I would get up and be fully present. This is normal. This is what parents are supposed to do. Unfortunately, part of having small kids is getting up earlier than you'd like to for years on end. It is normal for a child of primary school age or lower to expect a parent to be reasonably awake when they are.

My daughter is 15 and I still feel a bit bad if I haven't woken up when she does. She's an early waker and a definite lark and I'm a night owl but I still wake up whenever she wakes me. And I say, please wake me up if you want me and by 8am latest because I know she will be up at 7 whatever and I don't want her to be lonely. She's obviously fully competent now to make herself breakfast or cut up some fruit or operate pretty much anything in the house at 15, but she's my child and in a few years she will be off doing whatever she wants to do and I don't want to miss these precious moments. I love it when she decides to get into bed with me in the mornings now. It's like a special blessing actually.

If I hadn't spent all those years waking up when she did (despite the pain!!) and talking about crapping Roblox or whatever (which I most certainly had no interest in), I don't think she'd still be getting into my bed of a morning and telling me about her life . This is the time in your life when you get to set the pattern for what happens later on. So you need to be connected very strongly now if you want to be connected later.

The eating is actually a sort of side issue. Your child is telling you that she needs more. She's filling the gap with more food, but you could probably fill it with more mum. Some kids will be fine with being unparented for a few hours a day. Some won't. Yours isn't and she's telling you. Please listen.

We always ate at 5pm and mostly still do @ThorsLeftNut. Sounds like your child might be younger? If they were eating at 5 and probably finished at 5.30 and going to bed at 6.30 then supper wouldn't be required but presume they'd still have milk before bed?

As they get a bit older and go to bed 7 onwards then a supper to get them through to breakfast is needed even if that is only a cup of milk but they'd normally be hungry enough for something else.

Prader-willi?

My first thought. Get her checked. I don’t think this is normal at all.

@ElephantOfRisk

We always ate at 5pm and mostly still do *@ThorsLeftNut*. Sounds like your child might be younger? If they were eating at 5 and probably finished at 5.30 and going to bed at 6.30 then supper wouldn't be required but presume they'd still have milk before bed?

As they get a bit older and go to bed 7 onwards then a supper to get them through to breakfast is needed even if that is only a cup of milk but they'd normally be hungry enough for something else.

Yes he’s only two! He has milk before bed, usually 6:30 but can be closer to 7 too. Just something for me to keep an eye on - till reading this thread it literally never crossed my mind!

It’s not really secret eating, she’s just hungry in the mornings. It wouldn’t bother me, everyone is different two of my DDs always wakes up hungry the other one needs to be awake at least an hour before eating. Maybe leave something a bit more substantial to fill her when she gets up. I also don’t think what’s she’s eating is particularly unhealthy, it’s far healthier that what my DDs would get themselves given the chance.

My boys were always looking for supper and I'll make you laugh in that DSs are now 21 and 20 and still have milk and supper before bed. DS2 away at Uni caused a lot of teasing about his milk habit... They are 6'3 and 6'2 though so I'll happily put that down to plenty of good nutrition.

Things like fruit pouches and petit filous don't fill you compared to the calories they contain. I'd get bored eating them long before they filled me up. Some toast with banana or peanut butter etc would fill you before you were fed up eating them.

Some really mean comments on here when OP is clearly trying to make changes. The outrage about not going downstairs are relentless, I'm sure OP has got the message.
If you struggle in the morning going down with her and snuggling up on the sofa a good idea. Give her a banana as a start point then maybe weetabix or porridge with full fat milk a good breakfast.
I am an absolutely dreadful and lazy cook (I can't stand all the mess) so like minimal effort with anything food related. Rules I go by, only brown/wholemeal bread, we eat eggs, often boiled few at a time and keep cold ones in the fridge, full fat cream cheese so useful for toast/bagels or put into pasta dishes etc jacket pots etc, cucumber sticks, chopped up pepper super easy and tasty , baby bell cheeses, always have plenty of seasonal fruits in, rice cakes with peanut butter or butter and marmite and lots of full fat Greek or natural yoghurt - every day after dinner. I don't buy any junk and only give treats like juices, choice, ice cream when we go out.

Sorry loads of typos - my approach to typing is as lazy as my approach to cooking

We all snack before bed in our household. Oat cakes or cheese, something like that. No way me or my 5 yo would be able to go 15 hours without food. None of us are overweight. Usually when my DC eat more it means they’re gearing up for a growth spurt. I wouldn’t worry about it.

We're big eaters in the morning! Our usual breakfasts are:

Pancakes with banana
Poached egg and toast
Honey and chia seed porridge
Home made granola and yoghurt with fruit
Home made waffles
French toast

You can make them all healthier. Good luck op!