my son steals food

Going by my experience with my 16 year old daughter........your son is 12. He is going to go through stages of ravenous hunger, followed by growth spurt and tiredness. Be normal for a bit, and the cycle repeats itself. The hunger he feels is not what we feel, it's the "i gotta eat something NOW cause I'm dy'n..." lol. Instead of having junk available, have fruit and things like good bread and lunch meat. They just want to fill that hole of hunger they feel. Pre-making some pasta and meat such as chicken or beef that can be heated up in the microwave will satisfy his hunger. Hope this helps, I feel your pain. Just keep in mind that he's 12-and his body is going into overdrive for growing.

You're going to make the problem so much worse by attempting to force him to change his habits. Up until two years ago, I used to sneak food all the time. I would hoard snacks in my room and binge when no one was looking. It's been a problem that I've been dealing with since I was about 9 (I'm 22 now). When it first started, my parents would hide junk food from me, and I would become obsessed with finding it and eating it. I had to ask permission before I ate anything. They even went as far as to lock up all of the junk food into a cabinet, but then I would eventually find the key after compulsively looking everywhere for it. In the long run, it made the problem so much worse. When my parents stopped buying junk food, it helped for a while, but then every time I went to a restaurant or to someone's house to eat, I would always eat way more than I should and I always made extremely unhealthy choices. It eventually got to the point where I would go buy my own junk food at the store in secret and eat it all.

In my case, I'm fairly certain that I can attribute my eating disorder to my parent's obsessive desire to stop me from having an eating disorder. I don't blame them, because I know they were just trying to help me. Honestly, I have no idea what I would have done if I were in their shoes, but I do know that what they did just made the problem worse. I would suggest leaving junk food out and telling your son that it's okay for him to have some. Hopefully having it readily available will help keep him from binging.

EDIT: Also, my parents frequently called attention to my sneak eating... my mom would find empty packages in my room and would put them all on my bed. It made me feel so much worse. I knew EXACTLY that what I was doing and that it was not normal. I always felt guilty/embarrassed about my eating habits. My mom calling me out on my binges did not help in the slightest.

My brother ate quite a bit growing up, and he was never overweight. I think the real issue is making sure your son is physically active. Present only "healthy" options in the home and make sure the two of you make time for physical activity. It seems to me that being ravenous is pretty normal for a soon-to-be teenage boy. My son is 16 and he eats like a horse, but he is thin and very active. As long as he is active, your son will be fine. Try not to assume he will have the same relationship to food as you have/had.

Not to be harsh but perhaps you are projecting your emtoional issues with food and weight onto him.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

I think your own history of disordered eating may (may) be making the situation a little skewed for you, if you don't mind my honesty. If his weight is normal, I would simply make sure you only have healthy foods in the house and just monitor. Getting up and eating food at night is not "stealing" unless he breaks a lock or something to get on it.

And you say you didn't "get on him" about it, but showing him your stuff, talking about it and crying with him about it? That IS getting on him about it, just in a round about way.

Model good behaviours and don't stress out. Kids eat, a LOT. It could very well be he already knows eating is a sore point for you and so is waiting until you are sleeping to e\at the food he normally would during the day, or the kid is just hungry, or it could be the start of something worse, but I am not sure you would be the best judge of that, to be honest, as it is too close to home with you.

If *you* went to talk to a therapist about your own past issues and discussed your concerns about your son, I am sure you would get some wonderful advice. the last thing you want to do is pass on a preoccupation with food simply by OVERthinking this (aversion is sometimes attraction)

You can tell you are just worried about your child, and that is commendable. But you may want to step back a bit, talk to a professional trained in these areas, and approach it rather impartially. These are moments where emotions and concern tend to complicate our best intentions.

Good luck!

Your son's sneak eating is symptomatic of a greater issuer. Eliminating the sneak eating will only be solving the symptom, but not treating the problem. There is obviously something greater at play than his eating. You need to figure out WHY he is doing this and focus on treating that issue and then you can treat the eating disorder.

I used to do this. My mom would buy groceries for the week, and put the meat in the freezer. She wouldn't get home until about 6pm and by that time i would already have binged on porkchops, made some chicken (ya, I was a good cook and ended up becoming a chef later)...This started when I was about the same age. She would go to make dinner, open the freezer and be like, "um..didn't I buy a whole pack of porkchops?" i would lie as much as I could to hide the fact that I had cooked and ate them all, but she knew what was going on and my fat was the proof. I would strongly suggest trying to figure out what kind of stress or emotional turmoil your child is under and try to get it under control now, because i know for me, 20+ years later, emotional/binge/secret eating is still a huge problem for me. The triggers for me at the early age was mental and physical abuse from schoolkids, parents divorcing, mental and physical torment from my sister and self-hatred. Something external is causing your son to do this, and it's affecting the way in which he deals with his emotions. Please go to a doctor, psychologist and nutritionist and find the underlying reason for him doing this.

It really is a tough call. I would suggest not having junk food in the house if your worried about him devouring it. I can tell you that at that age, boys can EAT!!! They will eat everything in sight. You need to keep him moving though. Make sure he is outside playing not just sitting inside playing video games or watching tv. Good luck!

My mom tried this, but all I ended up doing was taking money from her wallet to buy the junk I wanted. If he wants the junk bad enough to ease whatever pain he is in, he will find a way to get it.

is it possible that your eating disorders are affecting your son?

i ask because my mom had an eating disorder (anorexia). she underate regularly and consequently pressured me into undereating.

kids need lots of calories because their bodies are growing and because (hopefully) they are playing. i ended up doing a lot more binge eating than i probably would have normally done had my mom not set up such an environment of "lack" when i was at home.

so if i know at home i'm going to get shamed out of eating any food that doesnt fit on a teacup saucer (that was the plate size she fed me) and shamed out of getting seconds, then heck yeah i'm going to binge eat whenever i get a chance.


if you're concerned, then just make sure there are healthy foods for him to eat. make sure he's getting plenty of exercise and just let him be