Child stealing food, now needs to lose weight - anyone else been in this situation?

meritaten

yes - I agree blue-monkey taking sweets that belonged to the 'school' was stealing. but tbh - you didnt make that plain in your post did you?
all I get from your posts is diet diet diet - YOU want to diet because YOU are at the top end of the BMI - never mind that this is considered healthy.
your son is on a diet
you want to put DD on a diet
the only one exempt from a diet from what I have read is your OH!
Please dont take this the wrong way - but, I think that you are the one with issues with food.
you consider cheese to be 'bad' - when in fact it should be an essential part of your childs intake.
You seem to think that an adult 'diet' is healthy for yourself and the kids -it isnt hun - Kids NEED FATS AND CALCIUM AND CARBOHYDRATES in THIER diet! a childs needs is much different to an adults - and an adult wieghtwatchers diet could quickly put a child at risk of malnutrition.
it seems to me that everyone in your family has to be 'on a diet' except OH of course - who apparently can stuff himself with chocolate, biscuits and crisps and nothing is said.
I really dont mean to offend - I just hope that you will go back and re-read what you have posted. because I dont think you understand that a childs needs for fats etc is totally different to an adults.

poet123

claire16c wrote: »

Of course you explain. Ive told her some children are not always nice to others and she should ignore them. Ive heard her mum telling her quite a few times how beautiful she is when shes said something similar to her.

Making sure she has a healthy diet has nothing to do with other kids comments. Her brother is not overweight at all, and he is also not allowed to gorge on chocolate/biscuits etc.

Making sure she has a healthy diet is one thing, locking stuff away etc is another and is reinforcing the comments you say she gets from school which is not good.

blue_monkey_2

WhiteHorse wrote: »

The key question is why this is happening.

I have asked her especially as she will take them even on sweet day. She just shrugs her shoulders and says 'don't know'.

Short of getting therapy (which I cannot even get for my son despite being referred numerous times over the last 5 years), what am I supposed to do if she does not know herself?

However, I am guessing it is just because she likes sweets and wants to eat them and I do not let her have as many as she wants. I do not know any of my friends that have a free reign on the kids having treats as they would not eat anything else but those.

claire16c

poet123 wrote: »

Making sure she has a healthy diet is one thing, locking stuff away etc is another and is reinforcing the comments you say she gets from school which is not good.

Its locked away because she was stealing it.

If she had been stealing money that would have been locked away!

Same if she takes veg from the fridge without asking me - she will get told off.

Her xmas stuff isnt locked away - she now knows not to take/eat stuff without asking so it doesnt need to be. The cupboard with other stuff in, is still locked now because I guess youd have to get a screwdriver to undo it and it would be a pain so its just been left on. I guess the parents just put it there in the first place because they told her not to take food without their permission and she was taking it anyway.

blue_monkey_2

poet123 wrote: »

Making sure she has a healthy diet is one thing, locking stuff away etc is another and is reinforcing the comments you say she gets from school which is not good.

I've thrown them away.

All of my friends have their treats hidden and up high otherwise the kids will just eat them.

I just do not buy them anymore. If I did and I left them out, she would take them and eat them.

I could put a whole range of things here that she takes that are not hers. I have had to hide loads of my things because she takes them, uses them and breaks them, she has no respect for anyone having something of their own that is special either. Anything special she has just gets ruined or lost.

So yes, if I have something I do not want her to touch I lock it away.

However, while CAMHS might well be interested in her, I cannot even get them to see my son who has been referred about 10 times in the last 5 years and they will not see him. And as my daughter is a little angel at school, I am not getting anywhere fast there - no-one believed what she was like at home until the lady next door started there as a teaching assistant and now everyone seems to know about her daily tantrums.

IF it is ASD related then, like my son, she might need more visual aids. He has to have social stories to help him learn what to and what not to do. Maybe my daughter is the same. As we have a lot of history of women on the maternal side of the family having ASD, maybe this is not something to be disregarded either and maybe she needs more visual prompts on what is good and what is bad.

I think I have just answered my own question there.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

You can't strop over something that just isn't there.

Well, you can, but it's a waste of time as nobody can magic a biscuit out of thin air for you.


If she knows there are biscuits in the house, then a strop is worth the risk of being sent to bed. There are biscuits somewhere and it.might.just.work.


Just don't have them in the house. She'll get the idea eventually, that there is NOTHING in the house that she could feasibly steal, beg, pilfer, TWOC, wheedle or whine out of a tired and stressed parent.

The chances of a 9 year old being allowed out to go shoplifting is fairly minimal as well. And even if they did, well, plenty of children steal sweets (so what exactly is the difference? Is it that stealing from your parents' doesn't count?) from shops that have plenty of them at home, it shows they aren't doing it for the lack of them, it's other reasons - like displaying their anger at a crappy divorce where their needs aren't being considered over the grown ups getting at one another - so giving loads of sweets at home wouldn't solve that one bit.

poet123

claire16c wrote: »

Its locked away because she was stealing it.

If she had been stealing money that would have been locked away!

Same if she takes veg from the fridge without asking me - she will get told off.

Her xmas stuff isnt locked away - she now knows not to take/eat stuff without asking so it doesnt need to be. The cupboard with other stuff in, is still locked now because I guess youd have to get a screwdriver to undo it and it would be a pain so its just been left on. I guess the parents just put it there in the first place because they told her not to take food without their permission and she was taking it anyway.

Food is not the same as money in a family home though is it? The child is five years old and in order to ensure she does as she is asked a lock is required? Strange way of parenting. As you say, what if it is money next time, does everything have to be locked up? How far do you take that? I am sorry but if a lock is needed to ensure a five year old does as she is told there is a real issue.

Surely building up an element of self control is preferable to locking things away? In my house my kids could always get a biscuit after dinner, but they were not available in such quantities that they could go mad, so they self regulated. If there were 4 cakes they all got one each, and asked each other who had had theirs, they did not just eat what was there.

poet123

blue_monkey wrote: »

I've thrown them away.

All of my friends have their treats hidden and up high otherwise the kids will just eat them.

I just do not buy them anymore. If I did and I left them out, she would take them and eat them.

I could put a whole range of things here that she takes that are not hers. I have had to hide loads of my things because she takes them, uses them and breaks them, she has no respect for anyone having something of their own that is special either. Anything special she has just gets ruined or lost.

So yes, if I have something I do not want her to touch I lock it away.

However, while CAMHS might well be interested in her, I cannot even get them to see my son who has been referred about 10 times in the last 5 years and they will not see him. And as my daughter is a little angel at school, I am not getting anywhere fast there - no-one believed what she was like at home until the lady next door started there as a teaching assistant and now everyone seems to know about her daily tantrums.

IF it is ASD related then, like my son, she might need more visual aids. He has to have social stories to help him learn what to and what not to do. Maybe my daughter is the same. As we have a lot of history of women on the maternal side of the family having ASD, maybe this is not something to be disregarded either and maybe she needs more visual prompts on what is good and what is bad.

I think I have just answered my own question there.

You said she will eat and eat? There is a syndrome called Prader Willi which affects children in that way. I am not saying she has that , but it may be something to think about. You know her best, can she really not help it, or is it greed?

blue_monkey_2

JulieGeorgiana wrote: »

When I was 9 my mum found out that I was at the high end of the weight scale... and she put me on a diet! once she singled me out from my siblings I felt picked on and resorted to anything to get food! I hates eating salads while they are pizza!!!!

because of that I went from puppy fat to real fat to a BMI of 46!!!!

The advice on here is mainly to just monitor her snacking (don;t eliminate it) and make sure you all eat healthy balance meals... but don;t make her diet is EXACTLY the right thing to do. Because that's what I encouraged my mum to do when my sister (who is much younger) started getting chubby! And she turned out to be a wonderful healthy sized adult.

You have to not let it be an issue.

PS. There is always a reason a child eats too much, and it's normally an emotional issue.

Also, if she is eating warm at lunch AND at dinnertime... that is too much! My DS9 get's one or the other, you don;t need two warm meals a day.

I just wanted to add on from this, we do not - and have never - singled her out, se eats the same as us but my son might have (for example) more cheese on something so he gets the higher calorie content. Her diet would never be different and we are cooking meals that are pretty much fat/sugar/salt free.

The problem was (I say was as I no longer have them in the house) biscuits and sweets - she will ask, I will say no, but she will eat them anyway - by the handful. As I said, I assumed it was my husband taking them - he is an adult and can choose to stuff whatever crap he likes in - while I am the parent I will (try) and control how much bad stuff she eats. Yes, I missed this happening and now I have to reverse the damage that this habit did.

I do not want to make food an issue, this is what I am asking, if others had experience of this kind of thing. I want HER to understand she should not be eating too much bad food - if she never understands she will always want to keep on eating it as she will see no reason not too.

blue_monkey_2

poet123 wrote: »

You said she will eat and eat? There is a syndrome called Prader Willi which affects children in that way. I am not saying she has that , but it may be something to think about. You know her best, can she really not help it, or is it greed?

I am not sure if I am honest, if I give her a meal she will ask for more, and more and more and she will continue to eat until she is physically sick. I have to put enough food on her plate that is not too much - if I give her it, she will eat it. Now I give her a portion and tell her to come back if she is still hungry - tonight she had dinner then a yogurt and I said 2 chocolates as it was the last of the Xmas sweets, 5 minutes later she was back asking for more food.

I tell her no and she stomps off in a huff but she will still be back asking for more and more. If I left her she would just eat it. Before I started doing this she would just eat and eat until she could not eat more and then used to be sick.

I never thought it could be medical, just that she was greedy and I just put portion control into place so it could not happen. When I started seeing it happen with cereal I put a little pot in which measured a certain amount of cereal so I could monitor how much of that she was eating too.

I just assumed she was greedy.