Sparkplug, the same thing happens to me at work. If I ask who broke a tool, no one knows who did it. They just leave it there, broken, for the next person to find. Drives me nuts, too.
Hubert
Dumping Sodas
by Sparkplug 37 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
greendawn
Fruit juices are always better than sodas which are just water, sugar, and artificial colours and flavours with zero nutrition, I don't know why ppl buy them especially those that are imitating real fruit juices. In the UK there isn't much difference in their prices ie sodas (soft drinks) versus fruit juices.
-
luna2
Sparky, I was the kid who would lie through my teeth when my parents lined us kids up after finding some food item gone or an empty bowl of cereal sitting on the floor next to the couch. I don't exactly know why I lied about it...maybe because I hated their extremely long boring lectures once I'd been unmasked and hoped to somehow avoid listening to them go on and on and on; maybe because I was really ashamed that I ate my mother's "secret" giant candybar that she hid in the cupboard for the next time she went to the movies; maybe because I was resentful that I had no control over anything, not the food I ate or the time I ate it or whether I could watch television or invite friends over or a host of other things...but I could control whether I'd admit something to the parental gestapo or not (I'm sure you are nothing like that, but my parents...hoo boy!).
Love Frannie's advice about having a personal snack stash for your son as well as his possibly getting a job so he can contribute a bit to the family food budget.
-
La Capra
I teach high school. Teenaged boys (most, at least) eat nonstop. They sit in class when they are supposed to be working talking about food. One pair of boys, this year, has had the same conversation about sandwiches about a dozen times. Several years back, I had two boys in class that talked about what they watched on the cooking channel like it was porn.
When I lived with my older teenaged brother, my mom had to give me food to hide in my room so my brother would not find it and eat it. My parents did discover was that if it took a long time to prepare, it was less likely to disappear....So meat stayed frozen, as did pasta sauce, etc. "Good Dinners" consisted of small roasts (take an hour roast), rather than steaks that can be broiled in ten minutes. My brother was capable of eating two pounds of deli meat in a less than five minutes. There was always plenty of popcorn we could pop, a can of soup we could open, or the ever present Top Ramen.
And there was never soda in our house, not even juice (liquid candy, essentially). Water was fine, and if we wanted it flavored, there was unsweetened koolaid that we had to make (and mix in the sugar) ourselves.
What finally solved the problem was when my brother went to work at a restaurant that provided a full meal (and all the soda he could drink) for the shift. It was a match made in heaven. Your son is 16. Send him to work at a pasta restaurant. Make him eat there and fill up. He will also probably be working during the dinner hour, so it kills two roast chickens with one stone....
Good Luck!
Shoshana
-
GentlyFeral
freedomlover:
If he can work than he can contribute towards grocery money. Just my 2 cents.
Yes, but then there's still the issue of the inconvenience to YOU when your younger kids' lunch food is all gone when you need it.
OK, this reminds me of two incidents in my young motherhood when I deal with
- kids wanting stuff I couldn't afford
- lying about a misdeed
In the other incident, either my (7-year-old) daughter or her playmate had not flushed the toilet. I confronted them about it, they both denied it, and I simply said, "Whoever is lying has to go flush the toilet." The guilty party turned around and went straight to the bathroom to flush. I can't even remember which one it was now.
Sparkplug, If this were my voracious son, I would tell him that he could not eat his sisters' school lunches or the family's dinners, but remind him that he is perfectly free to buy extra food of any kind with his own money. If he does dip into the common food supply, "what you eat you must replace by the time we need to use it."
Just my 5ยข.
gently feral
-
freedomlover
Gently Feral -
Of course I realized the immediate inconvenience in not having your younger childrens food at hand for lunches. My suggestion was mostly an attempt to give long term solution rather than a band aid to the problem. Sparky works her tail off and in cases like that (which I understand, I was in a family like that) then you kind of all need to pull together and pull your weight. Her son may well be old enough to help out with this financial challenge. He may be able to have his own little stash of food that HE bought with his own money.
I think the suggestion of Bikerchic was awesome. Show what food is for the weekly menu and then that's off limits, but provide other healthy snacks for the kids that they can eat without limit. Popcorn (that they pop themselves), fruit, juice, water.....anything above and beyond that they buy with their own money.
Let us know how it turns out Sparkplug! -
GentlyFeral
My suggestion was mostly an attempt to give long term solution rather than a band aid to the problem.
Noted, freedomlover - please don't think I was looking down on your solution. There are a lot of good ideas in this thread. I particularly like bikerchic's menu suggestion, as a short-term object lesson. And La Capra's idea -
Your son is 16. Send him to work at a pasta restaurant. Make him eat there and fill up. He will also probably be working during the dinner hour, so it kills two roast chickens with one stone....
gently feral
-
lola28
(((Sparky)))
My sister did something like this to me this week, she went into my room used my lap top and left it on without bothering to charge the battery. When I got home the battery was dead, when I asked who had used the laptop she and my other sister said no one had. It made me so mad that they would not fess up to using it, but this is what made it worse: they tried to make me believe that *I* was the one that left it on. Now I was really mad, see I am not an idiot I know for a fact that after I checked my bank account online I turned off the computer, I would never leave it on for hours with out charging the battery. Also when I got home my sister was charging the ipod on my lap top, so I know they used it. I don't care that they use my stuff, I care that they don't take care of it and then lie to my face about it!
I know that the fact he lies is eating at you, that's always the worst, when you know someone is lying to you about something and shows no remorse for doing so. Honestly I think you should talk to both your kids about what is going on, explain to them that things are kinda tight now and that you need help from both of them to make things easier, explain that money is tight and you can't afford to go to the market three times a week. Maybe then he will see that you really are serious about this and that you do need him and his sister to help you out a bit, yeah maybe he won't get a part time job but maybe next time he will think twice before heading for the kitchen.
lola
-
daniel-p
"I took it from him which caused him to shriek "No no no I will be good" etc. etc. I then went into the parking lot, threw this mf-er as far as I could hurl it. (he was watching.) I then put him in the SUV with me, and we drove over it and flattened it into the thickness of a piece of paper. It took about 4 backing up and going forwards. His eyes looked like plates they were so big."
lol, awesome. -
delilah
maybe because I was resentful that I had no control over anything, not the food I ate or the time I ate it or whether I could watch television or invite friends over or a host of other things...but I could control whether I'd admit something to the parental gestapo or not
Excellent point!! I have a 14 year old son who will sneak pop in his lunches, after I've already given him a juice box to take. The thing is, he also takes his sister's pop, and this happened again the other day. And he denied it. Needless to say, his sister was FURIOUS, and yet he denied it. This has been going on since he was younger, he won't admit to anything. The above statement makes me wonder if this is what my son is also thinking.
I buy pop for the weekend only, and the boys are allowed one each, once a day. I buy cases of water, which my eldest son will drink like a camel, but I'd rather he drink that, than the pop.
I've taken to hiding extra treats, and school snacks, because if I don't they disappear. I'm going to try some of the good advice that Frannie and Bikerchic have given. Thanx.
Good luck, Sparkplug....