Fundie Kids and Sneaking Food

[TrueRebel1]

I was reading the blog of a fundie acquaintance of mine, and she mentioned how her kids (toddler ages to around 5 years old) sneak food, apparently on a regular basis. As in, she finds them hiding behind the couch or in a bedroom with a banana or honey jar, etc. (And from the way she referenced it, I took this to be a punishable offense in her book.)

I've had children in that same age range, and I honestly only remember ONE time that a child sneaked food and hid to eat it. That was because he found a candy bar, when he was on a no-sugar diet for allergies, and he knew he wasn't supposed to eat it. :-)

This made me wonder: Why does it seem that so many fundies have problems with their children sneaking food? I know one mother personally who put locks on certain kitchen cupboards! Do "normal" families have problems like this??? I know that many fundie families ration food; are the kids simply hungry???

[ILoveJellybeans]

I think its because fundies generally insist on having loads of kids on one income, with no possibility of going on welfare or the mom getting a job. They also dont allow for people to decide to stop having kids once theyre struggling to feed them, or decide "No more babies until you get a better job"

This means that all food has to be carefully rationed-feeding a large family is expensive, so they try and to it as cheaply as possible, and when they are barely putting food on the table for meals, there is no allowance for snacking. If there is too many children to feed, or kids who are being fed a very poor diet, theyre obviously going to be hungry, so more likely to go and steal food from the cupboards than kids who get a good diet and plenty to eat. Its also common for kids who have had times when they havent had enough to eat, to sneak food, because theyre insecure about when they are next going to be fed and feel the need to be prepared if food runs out.

Also lots of people turn to food when stressed, and it is a very stressful life being the average fundie kid, with the beatings, lack of fun, chores, being unable to express emotions and having to raise their buddies from being little. I imagine that contributes to it.

[church_of_dog]

I can give an anecdote from a decidedly non-fundie family (atheist). In the late '70s, my younger brother died in an accident. He was 12 at the time. In cleaning out his room, my parents found a shoebox containing several candy bars. We were baffled -- apparently they were his stash for sugar cravings. He hadn't stolen them from the house; we didn't have candy bars on hand except right after halloween -- he'd either bought them or gotten them from friends, etc (or maybe even stole them, who knows?)

As kids we were fairly restricted in terms of the magnitude of junk food, candy and sodas we were allowed, even though those things were becoming ubiquitous at that point in time, but we were by no means deprived, either of enough food in general, or of the occasional dessert, candy, soda, etc. As kids we certainly felt it was unfair to not get soda and junk as regularly as our friends did, but as an adult looking back it seems no different than not being allowed to watch afternoon TV, or stay up late, or, (in my case), wear those gawdawful platform shoes that were popular at the time -- a mild restriction of some of the trends of the day, mostly patently unhealthy stuff -- but with enough exceptions and special occasions that no one could say we were being deprived.

I did notice that as a young adult I had limited resistance to junk food and candy, though, and I had a hard time during the first few years on my own, not going overboard on that stuff. Fortunately I was able to keep a handle on it.

Anyway, the whole story of my brother's candy stash will never be known, but it does make an argument that maybe this is something that some kids just do.

[Feberin]

My son has snuck marshmallows before. Not super sneaky like hiding behind the couch but helping himself to a bunch while I was busy with his sister and I think he put the bag behind his back when I came into the kitchen. I put them farther back in the cabinet and gave him a more appropriate snack of an apple. I think that's the only time he's somewhat snuck food. Now he does help himself to a snack fairly frequently but it's normally a snack that I approve of such as fruit, cheese, yogurt or a granola bar. I don't see that as an issue just him being independent. There have been times right before a meal that he's helped himself and I've made him put it back because we're about to eat dinner or something.

[AddieBelle]

When we were kids my sister would get up at 4 or 5 am and sneak popsicles, icecream, cookies, etc. We had plenty to eat and snack.on but it was something she did almost every morning.

[Ridiculous]

I've snuck food my entire life but that's down to the fucked up attitudes about food I was inundated with as a kid :-/

My oldest used to "sneak" food in that I'd turn around and the box of crackers would be missing and I'd find it in her room, but she was really young (about a year, year and a half) at the time so I think it was just her being silly. She did the same thing with the remote.

Both my kids (1.5 years and 2.5 years) tend to hide food, though. I'll find one of them munching on a secret stash of cheerios in the rocking chair's pocket, or find half a granola bar stashed under a pillow. I don't know why they do that... neither of them has EVER gone hungry and we have been very careful not to make food or eating a "thing," if that makes any sense. I work really hard to avoid passing on my own issues.

[GeoBQn]

When I was in elementary school, my mom used to buy boxes of frozen Mrs. Fields cookie dough balls. I used to secretly take them from the box and eat them raw, straight from the freezer, and call them "crumpets." One day, my mom saw that the box was empty and said, in a bewildered manner, "How is this empty already? I haven't even used it yet!"

Needless to say, I was very disappointed the first time I encountered a real crumpet.

[jenny_islander]

My older daughters (not the preschool son, who will ask for seconds even if he doesn't plan to eat them, because three) get unlimited desserts every day, with the understanding that they are to eat slowly, stop and listen to their stomachs, and have something solid before dessert. But the middle girl still sneaks cookies and candy. She has confessed that she can't seem to make herself stop. Her big sister did the same thing at her age. I think children raised in the tense atmosphere of fundamentalist homes probably self-medicate with food more than other kids, but there is also a tendency to be a nibblemouse at a certain age.

[tigerchild]

Might be a control issue.

My parents were fundie-lite in my early years (they got more and more conservative), but my dad was always EXTREMELY controlling with food. Obessed. Most of the time it was not directed at me, but at controlling/mocking his wife/my mom. Perhaps in part because of that, but I don't deny there might be some genetic component, I started binge eating as a child. I'd sneak food/hide wrappers. Like...abnormal amounts of stuff. It didn't catch up with me weight wise until my 20s. But for me it was the one way I could secretly say fuck you to my dad, and I knew I was doing something that he would find horrifying, if he knew. I'm sure my mom had to have known, but honestly? I believe she was probably doing the same thing.

[Cheetah]

My kids sneak treats. They're not very good about hiding the evidence. They ate most of a package of Ghiradelli chocolates in 2 days. I find wrappers in my daughter's room. I'm not especially strict about sweets, either.. (clearly, since we have it in the house a lot of the time). And I not strict at all about other snacking. I think they enjoy the thrill of getting away with something :-).

[lawlifelgbt]

I think it is control. Sneaking is obviously from hunger if the food is very strictly rationed and there are no snacks. However, a parent even having an attitude about food or weight can impart that to a kid. My mom played tennis a lot, and worked out on the days she didn't. Never one day off. When we'd go out to eat, she'd usually eat half or order a small plate, even at places like Chipotle where one burrito bowl isn't even that many calories if you make it right. Then, if it was lunch we'd gone out for, she'd say, "Now, we ate big at lunch, so I'm not cooking dinner," and just serve a salad or one hamburger each or have us eat cereal. It felt like we were punished or shamed for "bad" food. She would also nag/threaten me into working out 4 days a week or more (threaten to take my computer and iPod away for weeks if I refused to go even once). She would also glare at me when I took seconds.

So I guess the combination of shame/guilt and pressure not to have all the food I needed or wanted when I was hungry made me persistently sneak food for a really long time. I think if you outright ban things, like candy or soda, too, that becomes what kids really want, because they weren't allowed and that's mostly what I would sneak.

[Full enough quiver]

I'm sure some kids just do it because they can, although typically, I'd say its a symptom of either food insecurity, or an overly controlling parent. For example, I have a friend that doesn't allow her son to eat anything without asking. He also can't have sugar, gluten, dairy, or eggs. She also homeschools, and harps on him constantly. That kid sneaks food all day long. I think it's a way to have some control over his life, something I'm sure fundie kids can relate to.

My mother had major body image issues. The worst thing ever for her was getting fat. She put all of us girls on strict diets from birth on. We had to keep food diaries in elementary school. All of us snuck food, and all of us are overweight adults. The extreme focus on appearance for females would cause fundie girls to hoard food.

Obviously food insecurity is a biggie. Large, poor families with never enough to go around, and always a new mouth to feed would make a growing child want to sneak food.

Personally, I dont believe a child can steal food in their own home. The food in my home is for everyone. My nephews have been with me since June, and those boys would eat like its about to be outlawed. My sister didn't consistently keep food in the house, so they would eat while the eating was good. So now I keep the crisper drawer in the fridge filled with veggies and fruit that can be eaten by anyone, any time without asking. The boys also have a clear plastic shoebox sized box that they can keep in their room full of healthy, non perishable food like nuts, fruit cups, raisins, etc. Now that they know they'll always have food, they're feeling a lot more secure, they don't sneak or hide food, and the overeating has gotten much better. I guess I just don't get making a big deal out of it. If a kid feels like they need to have a stash of food, what do I care, as long as the food is healthy, non perishable, and properly stored to prevent bugs.

[lawlifelgbt]

@Full enough quiver: Exactly! I felt much more secure about food when I was living in college. Even though I wouldn't snack in front of my roommate, just being able to SEE on a shelf what food I had and, you know, that it was there, made me feel much better and actually eat less. I was 18/19 at the time, so I imagine kids would be even more benefitted by this, since they may not know that food can always be bought or had.

[Mama Mia]

When I was a kid my mom was very health conscious, we'd get candy on special occasions, or soda on the occasional visit to Mc Donald's, but overall it was whole grain bread, organic peanut butter and unfiltered apple juice while all our friends had twinkles and kool aide. Whenever I'd go to my best friends I would squirrel away the fluffy white wonder bread, cover it in butter and sugar and roll it into balls. Loved it. Or any other gooey junk I could get my hands on.

At least there weren't any of those horrible body image issue messages coming from my mom, it was more about avoiding all the artificial crap.

[Full enough quiver]

I know having a certain amount of food that they control has been huge for the boys. I knew my sister had some problems, but I didn't know how bad it was. Now I'm hearing tales of mc Donald's once a day, and keeping some of the fries for if they got hungry at night, and I'm horrified. The boys feel safe knowing they have a food supply. Why would I punish or shame them for behaviors that are a survival mechanism?

[Miggy]

When I trained as I foster parent I was warned to expect food hoarding in kids. It didn't necessarily mean they had been starved. It was about being able to control one thing in their lives.

[Arete]

My first thought is that if these are fundie kids, they are most likely just hungry. Too many mouths to feed, not enough food to go around.

If fundie parents who can't feed their kids adequately but continue to have them don't deserve plumbing line, no one does.

[browngrl]

I think that many people sneak treats. There is the allure of "forbidden fruit" and many (?most) people love treats. However, I think there are many degrees of difference between the normal child who takes some candy or a child that eats more when going through a growth spurt and the fundie children who live in a house where all food has to be locked up.

I think that there are many reasons for this difference. Some are:

1. In many fundie homes food is a highly controlled substance. It is much more of a forbidden fruit than it would be in homes where food is plentiful and readily available. In regular families - candy/desserts/junk food might be forbidden(except on special occasions) but in fundie families it seems that ALL food is forbidden (unless it fits into the family budget/meal plan).

2. Many people who have been through a period of starvation in their lives are forever after hoarding food or anxious about food. I think many fundie children are just starving. Who wouldn't be if they lived at Kelly "I feed my gazillion children with two chicken breasts" house? So I think many sneak food because they are hungry.

3. The control issue is also a perfect set up to create an eating disorder in children who then grow up to be adults with eating issues which (unless they take care to change to something healthy) gets visited on the next generation.

4. Food sneaking followed by punishment leads to a vicious cycle of creating stress - which creates more need to stress eat - which leads to sneaking food - which leads to even more punishment.

[wayward]

Hmmm... I grew up Catholic. I remember my mother saying no to a bunch of young adult books I wanted to check out of the public library once, and food was regulated too. So sneaking a forbidden book and a big bag of candy into my room seemed like the ultimate pleasure. Looking back, it probably was a form of self-medicating that wasn't really very healthy. Today, the idea of stuffing myself with candy sounds disgusting.

As far as the kid getting up very early in the morning to sneak food, is there any possibility that the kid's genuinely hungry? I remember one summer where my mother decreed that we weren't allowed to go downstairs until she got out of bed, and I'd get so hungry that I felt almost sick.

[snarktastic]

My kids were always pinching food when they were tiny. I'd come down for breakfast and they'd be hiding under the table with a whole tub of ice-cream or giant bag of crisps :lol: I wasn't starving them, honest. I think they just knew their Mum wouldn't let them have ice-cream for breakfast.

[wtylcf]

I think, as so many people have expressed, that sneaking food is super common behaviour for many kids. I snuck food all the time as a kid, and it was just something I did either because I was hungry or I wanted some control over what I could eat. I was a really sturdy, solid kid, and my mom was continually trying to use a combination of logic and shame to get me to eat less. If I wanted a second helping, I was either denied it or shamed. I usually didn't give a crap about the shaming and would just eat the portion regardless of being made to feel guilty about it. If I wanted an afternoon snack, I had to drink a glass of water first to see if I was still hungry (and I always was). I was put on a regimen of having to do a certain number of sit-ups and push-ups before breakfast. I had to be given limits upon how many pieces of pizza I was allowed to eat, for example, or else I would eat what my parents thought was an unreasonable amount.

I learned early in life that if I ate in front of my parents, the amount of food would always be an issue, but if I snuck snacks in private, I wouldn't have to hear about it. So I commonly ate peanut butter, chip-its, crackers, and cheese in secret. To their credit, they never locked up food or purged the house of any "bad" food. My parents only cooled it with the shaming behaviour when I started a very strict diet as a teen where I would eat half-portions of everything and never eat sweets. When I refused to eat more than half a hamburger, I started to scare them, because obviously this is classic eating-disorder-type behaviour.

It's really a miracle I don't have a more messed-up relationship with food as an adult. I certainly don't eat in secret now, nor am I embarrassed to eat certain things. I don't know if I would still have have snuck food if I hadn't been routinely criticized for my appetite. I probably would have, but it probably wouldn't have been as thrilling an activity, either.

[MamaJunebug]

Control and rebellion. Even if the rebellion isn't made obvious (sneaking food, hiding it).

I've seen this in non-fundies, from late adolescents through young adults (up to 35 or so) for years.

[fundiefun]

Growing up our freezer was locked because two of my sisters would eat and gorge to the point of throwing up like their brain couldn't tell the difference between hungry and full. They would eat anything and everything even an entire frozen pizza or weeks worth of food. Thankfully it tapered off and stopped as they got older, but the amount of food they would eat even cold was shocking I couldn't imagine sucking down an entire frozen pizza not even heating it up. We all had regular meals throughout the day and snacks so we weren't going hungry it was just the strangest thing and I remember one time one of them ate pieces of dry wall like non stop hunger that even food wouldn't fix.

[paganhomeschooler]

My kids sneak food. Usually candy because we do ration that. We don't like the kids to eat too many sweets. We have sweets in the house, they just can't have free reign. I found candy wrappers in my linen closet one day. My 2nd daughter is the worst about sneaking food. She has done it since she was tiny, probably 1-1/2 to 2. We found her sitting in her bed eating out of a tub of butter once when she was around that age! She still sneaks. We don't ration food, but the kids are supposed to ask before they get food. It's hard enough keeping track of what my husband eats that I don't see. If the 4 kids would do it, too, I'd never be able to make dinner because all of my ingredients would be gone! lol They never go for the stuff I have for them to snack. The stuff I need for dinner always seems to be more interesting. So, I do make them ask before they take a snack. I look at it as a way for me to keep tabs on things so I don't go to make dinner and have nothing and we have to get carry out as well as respect for our home and family. Their tae kwon do class is very big on respect and manners, and we try to carry that over into teachable moments at home as well.

[fundiefun]

My kids sneak food. Usually candy because we do ration that. We don't like the kids to eat too many sweets. We have sweets in the house, they just can't have free reign. I found candy wrappers in my linen closet one day. My 2nd daughter is the worst about sneaking food. She has done it since she was tiny, probably 1-1/2 to 2. We found her sitting in her bed eating out of a tub of butter once when she was around that age! She still sneaks. We don't ration food, but the kids are supposed to ask before they get food. It's hard enough keeping track of what my husband eats that I don't see. If the 4 kids would do it, too, I'd never be able to make dinner because all of my ingredients would be gone! lol They never go for the stuff I have for them to snack. The stuff I need for dinner always seems to be more interesting. So, I do make them ask before they take a snack. I look at it as a way for me to keep tabs on things so I don't go to make dinner and have nothing and we have to get carry out as well as respect for our home and family. Their tae kwon do class is very big on respect and manners, and we try to carry that over into teachable moments at home as well.

The butter thing is what my sisters would do like anything they could get their hands on things I wouldn't think of even eating like non stop like nothing will fill them up.