i have just been through my pre teen DD’s room as it’s permanently messy and wanted to sort through all the end of year detritus that’s in her various bags.
among the scraps of paper, face masks broken pens etc is an alarming amount of biscuit and sweet wrappers. I’m not talking individual wrappers but wrappers for family size packs of custard creams etc. I had noticed that she has put on a bit of weight recently but didn’t want to raise it as her weight fluctuates with growing etc.. the secretiveness of this has really upset me.
she had a history of this a few years back where a tin of sweets stored for Halloween was found virtually empty and when questioned she owned up to sneaking them to her room and eating them.
She seemed deeply ashamed of her behaviour at the time which in hindsight was worrying in itself, but it appeared to stop and so I’ve given her more freedom and trust her more now.
the problem is she is now nearing the end of her first year at secondary school and so has more freedom to use her bank card and go to the supermarket next to her school before she catches the bus home.. how do I tackle this in a way that isn’t going to do further damage?
she is at her dads this weekend and I plan to speak to him about it but he had a really disordered approach to food growing up that I worry may have an impact on how he will react to this.
She hasn’t been unduly stressed or anxious recently to my knowledge but is quite chaotic in the way she approaches looking after things and tidying away etc which I just put down to her age.
does anyone have any experience of this and how did you approach it. I don’t want her to feel shame but want to try and get to the bottom
of why this is happening.