My kids steal food.

[Anonymous]

1) OP, I like that you used the word perfidy.

2) PP, string cheese is real cheese. American cheese is not.

3) OP, I'd suggest making your meals bigger. Breakfast burritos can be really filling, depending on what you put in them. Consider adding yogurt with your breakfast fruit. Chicken nuggets and apples and string cheese might not be filling enough for growing kids. Consider adding a salad, especially one with cheese and nuts. For the dinner rice, consider making it brown, which is more filling than white. And make sure your chili is filled with meat and beans, both of which are filling. My suggestion for you is to increase the intake at meal times. Three snacks is a lot during the day, although I appreciate how hard it is with kids doing DL (my kids are doing in-person school now but they definitely snacked more when they were home last spring). Another idea is to find things that take longer to eat at snack time. So pepperoni and fruit leather are easy and quick to consume and aren't all that filling, so they're not ideal. Sunflower seeds or pistachios that you have to shell take longer. Celery with peanut butter takes a while to chew. Carrots and hummus or even ranch are the same. Hardboiled eggs are super filling and easy to make ahead. Just some thoughts. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Kids cannot steal food from their own mother, father, and their own house! You are absolutely insane, there is a diagnosis for this, that is for sure.
I am worried about your kids growing up with a mentally unstable parent!

[Anonymous]

A waitress in FL just rescued a child from his stepfather and bio mother who were abusing him. One of the main changes is denying his food.
Are you that mother, op? Are you in jail right now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Typical day: breakfast burritos and fruit. Chicken nuggets, string cheese, apples and ketchup for lunch. Chili with ground beef and rice and a veggie for dinner. Snacks about 11 and 2 and 4. Snacks might include: pepperoni, fruit leather, yogurt, carrots, bell peppers, cheese and crackers, popcorn, plus a serving of whatever we baked that day. We go for hot chocolate at Starbucks once or twice a week. We do dessert of fruit and cool whip or a serving of ice cream.

The additional food is on top of all that.

You are simply not feeding your kids proper meals and enough food. I read your menu like some kind of soup and fast food advert.
I recommend you try something like this:
Breakfast: eggs, bacon, pancakes, yogurt.
Lunch: Ribs with potatoes, soup, and salad.
Dinner: rice and meat and veggies, as in a ton of it. For example, teriyaki chicken with rice and veggies. Juice, milk, etc.. to each meal.

Stop with soup and stew-like meals. In my country, these are starters. My grandma would look at your chicken nuggets and ketchup and ask you where is the meal. You don't have a proper carb side dish for lunch. For dinner, you have a stew. Not a single kid grandma fed was overweight. ANd she gave us a snack of bread with home rendered lard and paprika on top!

[Anonymous]

OMG - she is not abusing her kids! Normal kids told to not eat the ice cream shouldn’t eat it every time. They should usually be able to leave it until dessert time. OP is right to be concerned and is asking for ideas and help.

I have few suggestions, but just want you to know, OP, that you aren’t some evil mother for being worried about this. Feeding your kids chicken nuggets for lunch isn’t horrible parenting. But yes, try upping the amount of food, especially protein at meal times, try reducing the boxes of carb treats in the house, maybe less sugary foods overall (dessert twice a week, not every single day), and try a new therapist. I agree that punishing them for eating forbidden food is probably setting up unhealthy dynamics at this point.

Also, if your kids are bored, they might be eating to deal with the stress and sadness of that. Get lots of new books into the house (if your library is down you can buy used from Amazon for pretty cheap) spend the ice cream money on some new games and toys, get a pet/aquarium/ant farm, take a walk to see the birds (maybe instead of the hot chocolate), make sure the kids are outside at least an hour a day and make sure they aren’t seeing lots of ads for junk food during their screen time.

[Anonymous]

What are your and your husband’s eating habits?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are psycho.

Why is the 9 yo talking to a therapist anyway?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How can food belong to someone else within a family? Other than teaching them that it's not polite to have the last piece of dad's favorite cake, I think your rules are very rigid and they are rebelling.

Of course food can belong to someone else in the family. If I order takeout and don't finish it, I put it in the fridge and my husband respects that it is my food.

When I was a child, my mother and I would bake chocolate chip cookies. My father would eat not only his share of the cookies, but also help himself to mine after he'd finished his. He said he "couldn't help it". I, a child, could control my intake, and certainly never took any of his cookies, so I was not impressed with his behavior.

From OP's description, it sounds like the father has to lock up his ice cream in order to have any ice cream to eat, not that he lords it over the kids with his rocky road while they sit, bereft and ice cream-less, watching him savor it, a limp rutabaga on their plate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: My kids — 9 and 5 — are home all day distance learning and cannot stop stealing food. They eat three squares, I’m always ready with a healthy snack. They get plenty of treats. hot chocolate, bake something, etc. but they will still go into the cabinets and fridge and eat an entire box of crackers or pick the top layer off of the lasagna left over from last night. My husband locks his ice cream in our chest freezer but if we forget they will destroy it.

They know because we’ve said really clearly what they can and can’t have. We’ve tried taking away electronics and putting things in time out or canceling fun stuff when they disobey but honestly the problem is so pervasive that they’d have to be in perpetual lockdown if we punished every infraction. Also, sometimes the perfidy is not discovered until later which complicates things. It’s not just carby sugary things, they will pound a box of lunch meat or a pint of strawberries, leave the trash, and lie about it.

At first it was annoying but is getting to be a big problem. My 9 yo is getting seriously overweight. Her stealing is obviously compulsive in some way. She has discussed it with her therapist and has made some progress but often backslides. The 5 yo is a normal weight but now refuses food at meals because he knows he can just get something better later when he pokes around. He is sharp enough that when he gets caught she blames his sister which causes extra strife.

I feel like locking things sends a bad message. And I have a healthy diet with a good amount of splurges and I don’t want to stop buying things I like because they can’t hang. Any advice appreciated.

OP, a few things:

1. don't keep a lot of tasty, ready to grab/eat junk food in the house
2. make sure that you're serving hearty portions and anything you serve is going to taste better than what can be taken
3. understand that DL is a drag. Kids are sad, out of school routine, socially isolated. On top of this, they're bored. They may be looking for a pick-me-up (dopamine) from snacks and treats. I would suggest less controlling the eating and more exercise, board games, fun times any way you can manage it.

Yes, taking food is impulsive- my DS has ADHD and has often "snuck" food-- he will still do this, but it's more normalized in teens. (i.e. a teen boy grabbing an entire bag of chips from the pantry is fairly typical).

[Anonymous]

don't stock foods that are "stealable" or more attractive to them than regular meals. No crackers. No processed foods. No sweets. Put out a bowl of fruit for them to "steal".

[Anonymous]

OP-- I totally understand where you're coming from as my 0-year-old does the same thing. Eats snacks and hides the wrappers or eats all the crackers in a box. I actually posted here and was told by a nutritionist that it was perfectly normal for this age.

We set up a shelf in the fridge with food she can eat at any time, doesn't have to ask: applesauce, fruit, cheese sticks, jello, hummus. We've also been having her help make more of the meals in the house so she gets to eat more of what she wants. It's helped a bit (not 100 percent but a decent amount).

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A waitress in FL just rescued a child from his stepfather and bio mother who were abusing him. One of the main changes is denying his food.
Are you that mother, op? Are you in jail right now?

That’s so nasty. she’s here trying to help her child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How can food belong to someone else within a family? Other than teaching them that it's not polite to have the last piece of dad's favorite cake, I think your rules are very rigid and they are rebelling.

Of course food can belong to someone else in the family. If I order takeout and don't finish it, I put it in the fridge and my husband respects that it is my food.

When I was a child, my mother and I would bake chocolate chip cookies. My father would eat not only his share of the cookies, but also help himself to mine after he'd finished his. He said he "couldn't help it". I, a child, could control my intake, and certainly never took any of his cookies, so I was not impressed with his behavior.

From OP's description, it sounds like the father has to lock up his ice cream in order to have any ice cream to eat, not that he lords it over the kids with his rocky road while they sit, bereft and ice cream-less, watching him savor it, a limp rutabaga on their plate.

This is a different story altogether. When I buy food it is for everyone. Unless we are talking about a baby who can't eat honey or food than no food should be off limits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A waitress in FL just rescued a child from his stepfather and bio mother who were abusing him. One of the main changes is denying his food.
Are you that mother, op? Are you in jail right now?

That’s so nasty. she’s here trying to help her child.

dp Please end this phrase. it is so cringe inducing. Along with "thriving" Nasty is eating poop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Typical day: breakfast burritos and fruit. Chicken nuggets, string cheese, apples and ketchup for lunch. Chili with ground beef and rice and a veggie for dinner. Snacks about 11 and 2 and 4. Snacks might include: pepperoni, fruit leather, yogurt, carrots, bell peppers, cheese and crackers, popcorn, plus a serving of whatever we baked that day. We go for hot chocolate at Starbucks once or twice a week. We do dessert of fruit and cool whip or a serving of ice cream.

The additional food is on top of all that.

Suggest you take a hard look at how you all eat and feed your kids.

Ketchup is a condiment, not a food. Fruit leather is garbage. Just do whole fruit. Chicken nuggets? Pepperoni? You mentioned baking--that's not healthy eating either. String cheese isn't real cheese.

Maybe do some reading on nutrition. Not what you asked about, but a pivot in eating styles for the whole family, and eliminating processed snack foods for all of you might help. And call a professional for the other parts.

If you are having 6 meals a day, kitchen is closed at other times. That's an insane amount of food and you need to tell them they cannot help themselves outside meal and snack time. Agree with this poster.

DP I think we can't really trust that op is telling the truth. Perhaps she was expecting sympathy and now that she hasn't gotten it is writing a different story to make us feel that the kids are wrong. Nope not working here.