Reply to Helping kids learn to manage eating and exercise during the tween and teen years

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Your son is 15, not 5.  I can't imagine it's healthy for him to have his parent monitoring and fretting about his food and exercise habits to the degree you describe.

A bit of advice:  15 year old boys are trying to understand and get to know their bodies.  Having their mother or father intimately involved in that effort is at best awkward and at worst counterproductive.

Please consider backing off and letting him figure things out.  Unless you think he's experimenting with drugs, alcohol or sex.  That's free game for parental intrusion at age 15.  But portion control, flavor intensity, mix of carbs/protein etc.?  Those things should absolutely be his domain by age 15, if not quite a bit sooner. [/quote]

OP here,

Like most parents of 15 year old boys, I'm still the one who buys the vast majority of food that comes into this house, and since my kid is currently at an age when he eats anything that isn't nailed down, it means that I'm pretty much in charge of the mix of flavors and protein/carbs he eats.  In many ways it's like we turned toddler hood on it's head. I have a great deal of control, whether or not I want it, about what he eats, and relatively little control about how much he eats.

Short of sending him to do the grocery shopping (which we've done, with some success, but don't do on a regular basis), I'm the one who is doing the majority of thinking about whether I buy trail mix or granola bars, and whether I get 4 boxes of cereal or six.  I understand you think that's intrusive, but it is how it is.

I should note that I do ask, every single time, "what do you want at the grocery store.  Send me a text and I'll add it to the list", and I get maybe 1 thing.  Like "cereal" or "guacamole", or most frequently "food".  Unless he asks for something that's sold out, I buy it, but I'm not going to fill my cart with guacamole, so I still have to decide "carrots or chips?" and "what else?".  [/quote]

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