Child stealing sweets and snacks

[Elsalvador]

I really don't know what to do. I'm almost at my wit's end.

DS (9) keeps stealing sweets and savoury snacks. He then hides the evidence so we don't always discover if and when he's done it so he's self-rewarding (i.e. he gets away with it for some time until we've found the wrappers or realised it's gone missing). This has been going on and off for the best part of the last two years but more so this year.

What makes us despair is the sneakiness. He's incredibly creative in finding ways to get the stuff from cupboards. Doesn't matter how high or well hidden it is, he'll find it. I cannot watch him 24/7 as I work from home so sometimes I may be in a meeting or I'll need to cook dinner, feed the cat and dog or go to the loo. At this age, I shouldn't have to watch him 24/7.

He then hides it in his bedroom. Then he either eats it at night (so I worry about his teeth also) or he feigns excuses to go to his room and eats it then. Or he'll say he's going to the loo for a number two. The evidence is then disposed of in creative ways. I have found them under his bed, hidden under rarely worn clothes in his drawer, under the sofa, in the shoe cupboard, thrown outside the window into the back garden, kept in pockets then discreetly into the bin 😢. If we ask him if he's done it once we've found stuff missing, he will always admit it if that makes a difference.

To be really clear. We do not ban sweets and snacks in the house as we don't want them to become illicit. The kids do get them but we try to be balanced about it and they know the importance of eating healthily. This is not about having too much (we don't think it's a sugar addiction) or not having enough. The issue we feel is that DS has no impulse control. We have seen this sneakiness with other stuff that he wants, including the laptop (required for school) or he fixates on an idea and has to do it. It's just that sweets and snacks are the main focus now as the laptop now has the WiFi password disabled permanently.

It's having a detrimental impact on family life. DH and I are extremely frustrated with the sneakiness. His sibling also gets upset as he steals her stuff. When she's little sweets from end of term at school or from a party bag etc, she'll put it away in her tin to eat later but he has always found a way to find it and eat it only for it to be discovered missing days later. Recently, he opened a couple of doors from her advent calendar and ate the chocolate even though he has his own. He did this last year too. He also went through my bedside table and found a hidden bag of jelly beans which was part of his siblibg's birthday present and ate that. We realised as he dropped a jelly bean on the floor which we found. The empty packet still hasn't been found.

Things we have tried:

• he understands it's a poor choice and the consequences and impact on others. We talk about it a lot. He feels genuine remorse afterwards and often cries as he feels sad but I'm not sure if this is at being caught, remorse at his own behaviour or sad because I'm cross with him. He gets away with it enough that I think it's worth the risk in his head. I cannot weigh and stock check every food item in the cupboard nor do I want to.

• we don't keep lots of sweets in the house but like to think we're like most family households in this regard. We have snacks in the cupboard as the kids need to take their own snack to school for after school club. So we're talking things like oat biscuits, Ryvita bars, yoghurt bars or popcorn. He'll take these as well as savoury snacks (mini cheddars e.g.) as well as sweet stuff (mini celebrations, haribos etc) that we get from trick or treating, parties, school fairs etc.

• we have stopped buying as much but the kids still snacks for school and DH needs it for his packed lunch for work. Also, I'd rather DS not steal than completely deprive the entire household of any snacks in the house and I feel this wouldn't work anyway as it would make them illicit.

• we make it clear that he does get snacks/sweets when it's appropriate and as part of a healthy balanced meal. I should say that he's not hungry. He eats well otherwise and is at a perfect weight for his height. We also have a fruit bowl and a fridge full of fruit and Greek yoghurt which he's welcome to anytime if he wants a little snack) and he often likes a glass of milk as a snack. We know it isn't hunger motivated.

To avoid drip feeding, it is possible DS has ADHD. We are in the process of having him assessed but we are at the start of our journey. We have been he presents "flavours of ADHD and possible ODD" but he's possibly on the edge of the spectrum or very high functioning. He is bright (above average) but it isn't channelled in the right way (school frequently reports that he's bright but not engaged at all and doesn't listen, focus or try his best in lessons).

DH is at the point where he's exasperated but doesn't know what to say or do anymore as nothing makes a difference to DS. The behaviour continues. I worry a lot that DS will grow up and this will escalate to drinks, drugs and other anti social behaviour as he doesn't have self control. It's less the sweets but more the sneakiness and lack of impulse control we find frustrating and worrying. His sibling also gets quite stressed and upset because she's exactly the opposite (naturally compliant and all about doing the right thing) and feels he "gets away with it" all the time.

Please be gentle. We are at our wits end. Once Xmas is over we plan to stop buying any nice snacks at all in the house. Any sweets can be eaten there and then e.g. those they get from party bags, from school at the summer fair end of term etc. This isn't forever but I feel we need to set him up for success and see what happens when there's nothing at all to take. If we need snacks, I'll buy them on the go in single packets on the way to school and do it that way. To be clear, he would never steal from a shop and has never done this nor do I think he would ever do this. It's just in our house.

Does anyone have any advice? It makes me so upset this behaviour. We try our best as parents. We have routines, boundaries and communicate a lot with the kids. We are engaged etc so this isn't DS not being supervised. We have another child who is the exact opposite and we worry also as she's getting fed up with her brother's sneakiness and it's impacting their relationship (they don't get on as well as they used to in part because of this). We also get so cross and exasperated with him and I worry it's harming out relationship with DS. Nothing we have ever said or done seems to make a difference. As I said, once DS fixates on an idea he has to do it.

Or if anyone has ideas as to how we can reframe this in our minds so we don't get as frustrated with DS, that would also be helpful. We feel like the worst and most ineffective parents when he does this. DH doesn't but I feel a lot of guilt and anxiety that it must be because I'm doing a rubbish job though the logical part of me knows this can't be true. I just don't know how to approach this in a way that DS responds to.

Just put it in a locked cupboard. Stop talking about it and just do it. He'll probably grow out of it in the meantime don't set him up to fail.

One of our DC did this, OP, and it was so difficult to deal with.

He was eventually diagnosed with ASD and ADHD.

I remember once when we were on holiday and I gave all five DC a sum of money (£100 for the fortnight) for treats, and he bought a load of stuff. I helped myself to one small bar of chocolate that he'd bought (and he had loads of other stuff left) and he was very, very distressed when he found out. He kept saying "but that was mine!" No matter that he had frequently and continually taken other people's stuff for years.

You can't win sometimes. Now he's an adult he isn't so bad. That isn't much comfort to you now, I know, but it does get better.

You send he confesses when the wrappers are found. What would he do if you asked him before the evidence was found? If, before bed, you asked him if he had anything hidden would he fess up at that point?

I would keep pursuing help through medical channels because it really does sound way beyond a child who likes sweets. In the meantime, I would follow the calm, natural consequences route.

Do you think it's the sneaky aspect that he's addicted to rather than the sweets? Does the high he gets from getting away with it make up for the times he gets caught?

I don't think it is fair to remove sweet things from the house as I feel that is punishing sister.

How about a cupboard lock/child lock? That way she can still have her treats and until he learns to stop stealing he won't.

I was like this as a kid (I have ASD and ADHD).

I think you're really struggling to put yourself in his mindset, which isn't surprising if his mind works differently to yours (and how yours did as a child). This means that it's very difficult for you predict how he balances risk and reward, now and future, pleasure and pain etc.

For example this:

One Halloween, he had a huge stash from trick or treating. We said he was allowed to take some every day but he couldn't eat it all in one go. If he chose to do that, then he'd lose the entire stash. Logically, you'd think he'd self limit and be sensible. Instead, he couldn't help it. He ate so much in one go and hid the wrappers, he ended up losing the rest of it.

set up a perverse incentive. By telling him that the stash was not 100% definitively his and that you were willing to take it and throw it away if you wanted to, you incentivised eating as much as possible, as quickly as possible. The fact that you said you might at some point throw away all his sweets would be far more salient and urgent than all the other complex and boring details.

He's not daft — he knows he struggles with impulse control, and knows that he's unlikely to be able to sustain willpower consistently for the length of time it takes to gradually eat the Halloween sweets in the sanctioned way. Look at the MN threads about having Christmas treats in the house — even many adults struggle with sustained self-control every minute of the day for weeks on end, when there's tins of sweets and biscuits calling to them from the cupboard. It's a massive amount of self-control for a huge length of time and, for someone who'd struggle to resist for an hour, an impossibly large task. He knows this, so the second-best option is to stuff down as much as possible before you throw it away.

I don't have a definitive answer for you, but my suggestion would be to find ways for him to practise exercising self-control for much, much shorter periods of time, rather than on a timescale of days and weeks like you expect him to with food that's just in the house.

That's a really interesting way of looking at it.

He sounds very like my son.
But he also sounds like me - I bought some chocolate for Christmas for the kids but have eaten it myself already. That's not good but also not particularly uncommon in adults. It's hard for a lot of people to have a snacks and sweets around and not to just eat them.

I’m glad you mentioned ADHD or other forms of neurodivergenxe because that was my first thought. It does sound very extreme.

One thing about ADHD and food/over eating is dopamine seeking. Because the brain lacks it, craving (and eating) food gives that dopamine boost. My daughter (autistic but lots of ADHD traits) is so greedy with food and snacks, I worry that she’ll overeat badly when she’s older.

It can also be a kind of sensory seeking. DD always says “I’m huuuuuuungry” and I remind her that she isn’t hungry, she just wants to eat, and the two things aren’t one and the same. Sometimes she chews gum to satisfy that desire to chew. She also whines about hunger when she’s simply bored and can’t think of anything else to do.

If ODD/PDA is a factor, he could also be getting a kick out of defying you as well, I suppose.

If he's Neurodiverse and possibly has adhd then it's this. Poor impulse control especially around snacking.

Don't punish. Don't give consequences. You aren't parenting a neurotypical child and punishing or making him feel bad will have lifelong negative implications.

We got this (photo attached) for similar reasons. So easy to fit and only you and your husband get to know the combination. Can be fitted to any cupboard.

No more upset. It will help him make healthier choices.

ADHD does make sense (I'm no expert), I believe believe with ADHD crave the rush / highs that you get from sugar, exercise, computer games etc etc. Exercise might be a good one to get him into.

When I talk about possibly giving him opportunities to practise exercising self-control in the short term, I mean really really short term, at first.

It's far harder to resist temptation when you have difficulties with impulse control, and when the task stretches ahead into infinity (there will always be something tasty in the cupboard), you know you're going to fail at some point anyway, so it's possible that since failure is apparently inevitable he just never even tries to resist the urge, which would mean he doesn't ever experience the rewards of self-control.

You could do things like, I dunno, get a pack of marshmallows and say that you're going to make a hot chocolate in [x amount of time], as long as there are still marshmallows to go in it. Whatever period of time and whatever level of supervision you think he'd be able to manage if he put his mind to resisting — ten minutes while you're in another room, an hour, a day, whatever. Something that's not easy for him, but with a good chance of success.

Even if you do this kind of thing, though, it'll still be a lot to expect him to get close to being able to master the much bigger, longer lasting self-control tasks; he might need to get older to develop the ability. You could think of leaving tasty things in the cupboards as being like leaving a pack of fags on a recent quitter's coffee table — an unfair temptation.

Was going to say ADHD too

I was exactly the same as a kid and have been diagnosed with autism as an adult - also suspect I have ADHD.

This article describes the MTHFR gene defect that I have that I strongly believe causes my neurological issues:

www.additudemag.com/mthfr-adhd-genetics-puzzle/

might be worth screening him via 23andme.

I think you should seek out adhd specific advice. On a forum like this you’re going to have a lot of people calling for punishments but you’ve already found they aren’t working and escalating will take you into the realms of abuse,

If it’s adhd you’re dealing with there is a medical problem at the root of this. That’s what needs addressing.

This is not a moral issue and what’s happening isn’t a reflection of his poor character or your poor parenting. You need to step out of that paradigm. I don’t want to kick you when you’re struggling but you can do long term damage to the self esteem of a child with adhd - they’re not lazy or bad but they often grow up believing that.

Drop the punishments and approach this with him as a curiousity or a puzzle to solve, with him. Get on the same team - he might not trust you straight off but what you ultimately want is that he can open up to you about his feelings, thoughts and impulses. The more he understands himself the easier it will be to find strategies that do work.

For an unmedicated child, a sugar hit is a form of highly necessary self medication.

I don’t think you should ban, hide or lock anything away. This is what is causing sneaky behaviour.

Each dc has a snack box. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

When it's gone, others are gone too not long after though. Having a locked box will teach him self restraint.

Thanks everyone. It's been so useful reading the responses especially those that have experience of ADHD/autism. We are struggling particularly as we don't understand his mindset hence asking for advice here and also suggestions for a way to reframe this.

@FurryDandelionSeekingMissile super, super helpful way of looking at this. When I reframe it this way, I can see why what made sense to us at the time set DS up for failure. Thanks for offering that perspective because, seen that way, it does seem logical for DS to have done what he did.

@Jellycats4life another very good point about the sensory issue - DS does have a fidget toy in class.

So glad someone mentioned dopamine imbalance! He is possibly self-medicating and greatly craves the sweets.
caffeinated drinks might help, as insane as that sounds.

I'm glad my post made sense to you! It must be a difficult problem to deal with, especially when there are other children in the house. I hope that the changes you're planning to make, and his upcoming assessments and any outcomes of those, will help you find ways to help him with this. I was wondering if getting a handle on the poor impulse control (maybe including limiting the opportunities for him to "fail") might go most of the way to solving what you described as the most frustrating part of his behaviour — the sneakiness — by removing some of the "need" for it. It sounds from your description like his deceptive behaviour is largely driven by a need to either facilitate or cover up his impulsive urges — I think it sounds more like it's a consequence of that than the more argumentative, angry, blame-shifting type of thing you get with ODD, though I'm obviously not placed to give anything other than a personal opinion based on my own experience, and I'm only going on what you've written here (from which he sounds like a lovely kid, despite the current problems).

This behaviour sounds so much like my brother as a child. As far as I’m aware he doesn’t have ADHD though DM suspects he is slightly on the spectrum. He’s always been clever.

He used to be so sneaky about it that he would often get away with it for a while as no one had noticed - yet sometimes so brazen, like stealing chocs from my advent calendar or the chocolates on the tree, which he would use the foil to wrap up some rubbish so it looked like the chocs where still intact.

One Christmas he bought me a chocolate Santa for my present but couldn’t resist eating it himself late on Christmas Eve.

A bit like your DS he wasn’t afraid of consequences (even though it was the 80s and our parents used to smack us). TBH I think he probably got away with it much more than he was caught so just wasn’t that bothered.

Not keeping anything in the house didn’t work as I’m afraid he did move on to shoplifting sweets as a teenager. He got a part time job in a shop when 16 and even stole sweets from there.

Not sure I have any advice as he kept on doing it no matter what my parents did. However he eventually grew out of it as a young adult and if it’s any consolation he is now a very successful high flier and has a wonderful life. He just couldn’t help himself taking what he wanted as a child.

I have ADHD and did this occasionally as a child, I had a really bad time trying to stop myself doing things when I had the impulse to, and sometimes gave in to it. I did feel ashamed afterwards, and ultimately this shame ended it for me as a child, but I have continued having issues with binge eating in adulthood. I don't have all the answers, but from somebody who has been there it can be really hard not to give into that urge. One of my children is the same, I just ask them to own up and to explain to me their thought process and what happened and help them to come up with some strategies for when they feel that urge. The only time I discipline them is when it's something that belongs to somebody else, eg. They eat a siblings Easter egg or advent chocolate. Then they have to replace it with their pocket money and apologise to that person. But I don't punish the binges otherwise, I am trying to create a space to talk about those feelings and thoughts and to try and come up with strategies, not to punish something which they struggle to control. Some strategies have been 1. Keeping mouthwash, toothbrush and toothpaste available and talking about the importance of brushing after the last eat of the day 2. Giving them their own bin for empties. 3. Praising them for being honest and opening up, instead of punishing the behaviour. 4. Talking about times their sibling has taken something of there's and it's made them sad, learning to empathise. 5. Having a late night snack together. 6. Having a day each week when they can eat as much junk as they want (this was my child's idea but has worked well, as when they ask for things in the week I say, wait until treat night, and this has taught them a bit about delayed gratification, something I'm still learning as an adult). I've also been modelling the behaviour and talking about my own process, which has helped me as much as them. So I'll say when I eat something that it tastes so much better because I waited to eat it for a special occasion, or I will explain that I love ice cream so much I could eat the whole tub, which is why I'm going to portion it out so I'm not tempted to eat the lot. It's a learning process, my child stills sneaks food sometimes, but we are moving towards a more open and honest relationship with each other around food and I hope that pays off for their future. I think it is really important to differentiate the bingeing itself from the taking of things that are someone else's, though. Because eating a whole packet of biscuits that belong to the family is a problem with impulse control around food, whereas stealing a siblings birthday sweets is essentially stealing their things, and that's never ok and not a grey area as far as I'm concerned.

We have a lockable crate in the kitchen (meant for garden equipment, but not too ugly and boubles as a seat) and a lockable box in the fridge. Anything that ought to be asked for lives in those.

@Elsalvador I've commented on a slightly similar thread so I won't again but SOLIDARITY with you! it's so hard and I don't have the answer- still 🫠 xxxx

This was me as a child and in many ways still now as an adult, added to further impulse control issues which have arisen since then. It was (and is) ADHD, undiagnosed until my 40s. Unfortunately I can't help you much with a solution, but I will say that in my case no punishments or chastisement did or ever would have made any difference. It's a primal need and I actually believe the only thing that could have stopped it for me would have been medication. This is a condition that needs treating just like diabetes, flu etc. I realise this isn't necessarily what you want to hear, nor do I believe in just shoving medication into people, particularly children, but the food issues are the symptom, not the disease, and until the underlying cause is treated it's going to be heartache for all of you, particularly as your son gets older. Push harder for diagnosis (be it ADHD, ODD or something different) and treatment, of whatever kind works.

I think a lockable place is a good idea. Even as an adult there are some things I can't have in the house because I just can't control my eating of them, so I have to buy in portioned servings when our, or accept if I buy them I will over eat them until they are gone. I agree with a PP it's like a primal thing, I'm not in control of, and around some things even as an adult it's really hard so keeping temptations where I can't get them (in my case not bringing the home) is the only real solution.