Reply to Snack policy with tweens?

Forum Index » Tweens and Teens

Reply to "Snack policy with tweens?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm impressed by these tweens/teens who apparently can self-regulate. Mine would blow through the snacks, meant for a week-10 days, in a day or two.*

We do have mostly healthy stuff, but I also buy snacky, not healthy stuff meant for a once/day treat. A bag of chips with lunch, for example. I could just say, ok, well, if you eat it then it's gone, but I've got two kids, and one would eat mostly everything junky very quickly and the other would complain.

*Honestly, their dad does the same thing, and it irritates me to no end.  I have to tell him explicitly - these are for the kids' lunches, DON'T EAT THEM! Because of course, he doesn't replace or tell me when the snack bag is low, so I'm running around trying to find a replacement because I have one bag of chips and both kids want them --> bickering.

OP, I tell my kids they can have fruit whenever they want, they can make a sandwich whenever they want so long as they are done eating by 4 pm (hate cooking when people just ate two sandwiches). But other than that, snacks require permission.[/quote]

I’m one of the parents who lets their kids eat whatever they want, and as somebody whose stepmom had major food hangups (she was obese) and limited us to a bowl of cereal a day and put literal locks on lunch snack foods, I grew up really resenting restrictions. My kids blow through lunch snack stuff too but I just let it go because I don’t want the impacts of food restrictions in the house. When it comes to one of my kids eating the other kid’s snacks, I do have to put my foot down there.

I’m not saying you’ll give your kids hangups, I’m just saying that when I say we don’t have food restrictions, it’s not like my kids are immune to the temptations of easily accessible junk food. [/quote]

Step mom here.

Do you know how difficult it is for a kid who has grown up without any food restrictions to self regulate? SS17 is a disaster, because his mother has ZERO self control and never modeled it. If a bag/box of "treats" - pretzels, chips, fruit snacks, crackers, cookies what have you (read: sugar/fat/carbs) is available he will mow them down. Mindlessly. Fruit? Forget about it. Anything that requires effort? Forget about it.

DH and I have tried - to absolutely no avail - to manage this, but the bed was made a long time ago and the kid understandably is resistant to changing. We get NO support from his mother to try to manage change. And now that he is working and has his own money, it's a thousand times worse. He eats nothing but junk. It's horrible to witness, frankly.

OP, I appreciate you trying to steer your kids towards balanced choices. [/quote]

I NEVER had junk food or fast food growing up, and we were barely allowed to snack. As soon as I was able to earn my own money, I went CRAZY with the fast food and sweets all the time. Also...I'm pretty sure MOST teenage boys would choose an easy, quick, junky snack over fruit or something that they have to spend a lot of time making...[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics