5 year old ate my Mother's Day chocs

[fishstiks]

Just found DD has sneakily been getting my Mother's Day box of chocolates from my bedside drawer and has eaten 3 out of the box. We only allow sweets once a week and never have dessert. Obviously the temptation was too much! A few weeks ago she found a large bar of chocolate belonging to DH and ate more than half! When we found it she owned up straight away and we banned all sweet treats and chocolate for a week (no chocolate spread, no sweets or chocolate, no biscuits and no milkshakes)

Should I punish her for the latest chocolate stealing? Are we too strict overall with sweet stuff?

She's a really picky eater she survives on crumpets with sugar free chocolate spread (we only introduced the chocolate spread as she won't eat butter and then will eat no toast or crumpets etc) berries, tofu, rice, pasta and cucumber mostly.

Any advice on the picky eater stuff or appropriate discipline would be appreciated

It's ok, after she goes NC with me she can pay for therapy herself

You obviously have so much going on and only really you and your husband know what you can and can’t realistically change.

I kind of agree with your husband on the sweet treats front if your DD really has been eating better but also don’t think chocolate should be forbidden. I think apple pie and custard is a really filling dessert, so wouldn’t offer it regularly. If she loves chocolate so much, can you not just give her a packet of buttons or something similar? There’s hardly any in there but she’ll be getting a really big treat.

Kids eat in color- this is exactly what you need!

Would this be for dinner? Maybe I could take them to the park after school and then come home and have the food already ready and get it all out, she was running around with DH before lunch today after ballet and ate really well at lunch time

@Kwasi when should I give the buttons? As a dessert or at another time of day? And then would you give like one small packet every evening? And then would it be on the condition she's eaten at least some dinner?

Totally agree! The last para is exactly the right approach.

i haven’t read all replies and have read your answers.

I was a very picky eater as a child and just like you was served up meals again and forced to finish. . I now have a picky 4 coming up 5 year old and am dealing with the problem slowly and slowly making progress.

what I picked up on from your meal this evening was that the majority of the food on her plate is currently ‘unsafe’ foods for her. She doesn’t want to eat them or try them. With the minority as her ‘safe food’ - plain pasta.

What has worked for me is explaining carefully that there is no expectation for him to eat everything on the plate. I plate up majority safe foods ( can make up interesting meals but never mind ) with one unsafe food ( just a small amount ). I leave him be but ask him to firstly smell the unsafe food. It that goes ok, then I’ll ask him to lick it, and maybe progress to a nibble. This is all controlled by him so he can stop at any point. It can take over 20 exposures to new foods for a person to decide whether they like or dislike something - and that can be due to taste or texture.

obviously this is slow going but we are gradually introducing food back into his diet and he’s more likely to try new things. As others have said we wouldn’t restrict sweet things in that he can have ice cream after his tea, but we would dish out the portion and requests for more would be declined ( all round, not just for him ).

In terms of taking food without asking - yes he does this too, but more likely to be apples. We tackle this by saying as a general rule he needs to ask before he takes any food( otherwise he’d eat 4/5 apples during the day ) rather than focussing on the specific.

Good luck OP - it’s hard having a picky eater, it’s very often about control that they can have, and it’s hard not to stress about what they aren’t eating. If you can chill out and let them get on with eating at meal times instead of encouraging to eat x,y and z it can help as well and just ask them to try one unsafe food at a time.

from experience though - safe foods can change over time too and become unsafe food … and it’s just about getting as many safe foods as possible for your daughter moving forward.

hopefully some of the strategies I’ve used may be of help to you moving forward with her.

"This evening for dinner she refused everything we offered, didn't even eat her pasta, asked for a banana said it was "too wet" and then ate 3 slices of Vienetta"

Why on earth would you give her 3 slices of Vienetta if she didn't eat her dinner?

You make 0 sense. Why would you give any child 3 slices of Vienetta?

You could have given her a small piece, appropriate for her age. Then later some toast so she doesn't go to bed hungry. Next day, try again.

We give them as a dessert or after-school snack, but he can’t have chocolate for both. We give DS his choice of dessert. It can be buttons, a penguin bar, a mini roll, a scoop of ice cream, etc; it’s never any bigger than that, as I don’t want it to be something he saves room for.

I wonder if it's to do with your DS being SEN and even if you hide the fact you could be a bit more anxious around him than with DD and this is a bit of unconscious attention seeking on her part .
I think sometimes at school there is just so much going on to enjoy your food - too many distractions for a 5 year old. So she nibbles her favourite bits.
I wouldn't buy vienetta but a good quality ice cream - not the horribly sweet ben and jerry's for example.
Possibly better quality chocolate too.
I still don't like yoghurt - it has a sourness to it imv - I mentioned in a previous post I was a sugar fiend as a child.
I never ate my school dinner unless it was soup (maybe twice a term). Would eat the pudding sometimes.
However was fit and tall and still am 50 years on.
I don't know the answer I have a DGS like this. Just keep up the vitamin supplements.

I’d love to say we’ve incorporated this into daily life but it was more a summer holidays thing where DS was playing for a sports club a lot. We’ve not kept it going over winter much because logistics and winter viruses have got the better of us. But fresh air and exercise had a really good effect on the quantity and to some extent the range of foods he’d eat

Op
It sounds really hard but making her eat in secret away from your son sounds like it could create a lot of problems

@sidsparrownew I think she did that because at least 50% of posts on here are saying if you stop limiting sugar the DD will self regulate. And that limiting foods causes sneaky behaviour. Unfortunately not all children can and will self regulate - neither of mine can for sure. With those kind of children you try all sorts of strategies to try and understand what to do to keep them healthy and some of them fail

Are you serious?

You're actively allowing / telling your DD to eat in secret, but you're somehow surprised that she took it upon herself to eat your chocolates in secret.

Come on!

Your'e food shaming her OP. '....she's gone right in there rooting about in my things and found them '

Rooting?
You sound disgusted. Shes a kid. I have disordered eating due to my mum..she shamed me when i was just a kid and not over eating or anything. Its cruel.

Youre too strict. Let her have chocolate now n again etc. a dietician will tell you that whilst not ideal, because she isn't eating, the chocolate will give her calories. Ask gp for dietician they will prob prescribe milk shakes with calories, vitamins. Please don't shame your child...theu pick up on words.

I’ve just come back to this thread this morning and I think, OP, it sounds like food in general has become a massively massively fraught issue in your house. Understandably. I still don’t think the chocolate eating is a big deal.

But re: your daughters food behaviours more broadly, which is a totally separate issue,a few things jumped out at me reading back- have you considered any of them as possibilities?

• you say your daughter is a “picky” eater - but she isn’t really. She eats lots of different textures, flavors etc. could she be using food as a way to “say” something - maybe assert control? For attention?
• you talk about your dds “safe” foods and then later, you mention DS being kept to bland foods etc in the morning and at lunch for health reasons- could your DD be mimicking how you feed your son for attention/ to “match”/ from a place of insecurity? (But taking it to the extreme because… 5).
• you say your son vomits as he eats too much- does your daughter know that this is a cause and effect situation? Could she be worried about over-eating at meal times, and then vomiting herself? (To a 5 year old, it may have translated as “eat too much and I’ll be sick too”. At 5 she can’t understand the differences.
• if so- then she’s self-restricting the AMOUNT she eats, of course she’s then going to focus on pudding! It’s the best bit for a kid!
• what is YOUR feeling about your sons eating/reflux? I don’t mean overt- I’m talking- do you feel stressed? Has she overheard you talking about it in a stressed/ tired/ worried way? Kids pick up on tiny tiny cues. These could be informing her feelings/behaviour.

Im just another parent muddling through, not an expert. But I know from my own son, that you’d be surprised what they pick up on, and how it translates in their little minds. I think in your shoes I’d be exploring what’s going on with food and why, a bit more.

and by fraught- that doesn’t have to mean shouting and arguments and punishments- by fraught I mean for you. It sounds like it’s taking up a lot of parenting headspace.

So glad I've scanned back looking for the helpful responses again this morning and found your comment. Yeah this is exactly it, we let her start eating Nutella in desperation as it was the only thing she would accept as a spread which would open up options if her eating toast, sandwich, crumpet, hot cross bun whatever, without her being allowed Nutella she wouldn't eat any of that stuff. She loves eating pancakes with maple syrup and berries that's one of her favourite things bc d to eat but they she would request it for every lunch time during half term and it's just so much sugar! And I would offer loads of other options that are normally safe foods for her but she would refuse all of them and her dinner and then cry and bed time because she was starving. Am I supposed to give in and give her pancakes every day? Other parents just don't get it if they haven't had a kid like this, so I'm well aware that the vast majority of people telling me I'm an awful parent for banning sugary foods haven't been where I have been and if they had they would be commenting quite differently

But she mostly refuses dinner and always refuses yogurt! Hence why we said no more sweet stuff

Don’t make her snack in secret. Will a second snack negatively affect DS?

• she is picky, she has a limited amount of things she eats that doesn't change, only reduces, recently would eat egg or yogurt and now both are being refused. We can't just go out to a restaurant as there would be nothing on the menu she would eat (apart from asking for a dessert)
• no it's more like the other way around I think DS has carrot porridge and banana for breakfast, sausage roll or pasta, cheese and fruit for lunch and then whatever for dinner. She has wanted plain foods since before he was born.
• no she doesn't know that he overeats and sometimes is sick, we've talked about it with the speech and language specialist, his pediatrician, nursery staff but never with her also present. He has had reflux with milk since a baby and she will always call from the next room for us to come and wipe it up if he has reflux
• i struggle with it tbh as I have emetophobia which I try to hide from her and him, my husband is good at dealing with my son when he eats too much and I just get up and get on with the washing up or similar. I never talk negatively about DS and his eating habits in front of her we keep talking about food to a minimum

It's honestly hard as when we were allowing her something sweet after dinner every night we would say as long as you eat some of your dinner you can have your dessert and she would then eat like a single piece of halloumi and then say well I ate SOME of my dinner and you did say as long as I ate some of it etc

She had no self regulation around sweet stuff at all, and it's extra hard when going to parties and she comes away with a massive cone of sweets as a party bag, they even give out sweets to every child at the end of her dance lesson at the weekend which I don't think is right and I had no control over that as I would never take it away from her if she was given sweets along with other kids now THATS cruel. But she was having cereal with honey for breakfast, a chocolate croissant for snack, pancakes with syrup for lunch, Nutella on crumpet for snack and then refusing all dinner offered and happily eating sticky toffee pudding afterwards this was when we were more relaxed, so you can imagine after a week of this we discussed it that something had to change, hence why we stopped offering high sugar foods

It could potentially as he has hyperphagia and will constantly eat and one of the tendencies of his syndrome is to be overweight so we've been advised to keep a handle on his food intake by his doctor.

It’s normal for kids to go off foods. From everything you’ve said your DD eats, she really doesn’t sound picky. She might be choosy and not in the mood for something, just like adults can be, but she eats a huge selection of foods, she really does!

Ok I see what you mean, she will then refuse these foods and eat only the ones with a high sugar content. Would you let that continue?