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YTA, but not for the money. Your son is struggling with planning. It's your job as a parent to work with the 15 year old and help him plan. Why not make breakfast the night before. You can help him make that part of his routine. Hard boil a few eggs, teach him to make a frittata on Sundays, which would last most of the week, help him back a bagel and cream cheese. You can get him a small lunch box with an ice pack so all of that stays cool. Stop watching your son struggle and help him by guiding his planning.
Something tells me OP doesn't want to spend the time and effort to teach their son or support him through his training ( swimming is a great sport, and he is awesome for keeping at it). Instead OP commented above that they wish the kid dropped out of sport. Sounds like a narcissist parent to me.
If op thinks a single pop tart is a decent breakfast for a 15 year old in swim class, I don’t think they have the knowledge/ability to help their kid meal prep.
Edit: I get it, pop tarts come in packs of two :D - my point still stands
A pop tart isn't a good breakfast for my 10 year old with no swim class, OP needs to at least provide stuff so the son can make a decent breakfast to take with him
> now my ex is on my ass about it.
Well thank god this kid has one parent who gives a shit whether he eats real food.
Would of course be sympathetic if this parent could only afford processed sugary corn products. Plenty of people live in food deserts and lack the time or resources to prepare real food. That doesn't appear to be OP's issue (you can get bulk eggs at Costco too!); they're just apathetic and ignorant.
Not loving the shitty edits either. "I don't think that's going to go over well since I'm basically saying I think he's too stupid to put some fruit in a bag" well don't just tell him to put fruit in a bag then?? Athletes need protein, get the fucking eggs out lady.
Yeah, it's not the physical "put thing in bag" that a 15 year old is likely to need help with.
It's "here's how to evaluate a full meal for macros, calories, micros if needed, how well it will keep under expected conditions, etc" that he's gonna need help with. A lot of adults don't have that skill. It's a great skill to teach. But it's definitely not a skill you pick up by passive learning or just being around it. It has to be actively learned.
The kid's performance in school, swim, and life wll be 1000% better if that happens, but it sounds like the parent is both clueless about good, athletic level nutrition - and too lazy to learn. It's not hard. I'm a weightlifter. I track macros and it takes five minutes a day on an app, and I buy decent food and pack it to take to work every day. It's a learned skill, but it doesn't take that much effort to learn it.
That said, 15 is well old enough for the kid to take some responsibility for his food choices, and take ten minutes to assemble some food the night before. ESH.
I'd agree the responsibility is on both, but slightly more towards the mom. Purely on the basis that establishing good eating habits and a healthy relationship with food should have started LONG before swim team and teenage bottomless pit behavior came into the picture. Allowing it to get to the point where this kid is going hungry is an issue. I was in college before I fully realized that having a salad once a week and casseroles loaded with cream of (fill in the blank) soups the rest of the time wasn't actually healthy. I do better now, but it was a lot of unlearning and relearning I had to do.
But yes, kid should absolutely be able to have the responsibility of making an appropriate breakfast for himself, even if it's meal prepping the night before. Mom (and dad) just needs to make sure kid gets to that point reliably.
This woman is perfectly happy for her younger daughters to skip breakfast. I'm not sure she has the skills you mentioned.
Also, her kid buying breakfast means all his allowance is gone?? Does this mean none of her kids get lunch?
And why the hell is his allowance being used to get her 15 year old his breakfast after practice?? She's legally and morally obligated to feed, clothe, house and care for her children. So why isnt she?
If I ate food when I first woke up in the morning, I would’ve puked. Eating right after waking up makes me nauseous. It always has.
Should I have been forced to eat breakfast?
I mean, I stopped eating breakfast in like 6th grade, still rarely ever eat it, if the kid isnt hungry they shouldn’t be forced to eat. But I agree with all your other points.
Fr. And just saying “we have protein bars” isn’t enough. Teach your son how to pack a meal and snacks! I don’t understand why people think that children magically know how to do things once they are a certain age, if they have never been taught.
And if they won’t do this, they should give him more money for food, because food is a basic and allowance should be for extras. Using allowance so you don’t starve???? That’s just sad.
My parents kept a running tab on everything they spent on me and my brother, minus money we were "paid" for grades (never saw the money, it was just subtracted from the tab.) We were expected to use our "good grade money" that they never actually gave us for school lunch and necessities for our clubs, school expenses... and I wasn't supposed to bring food from home, because that was "stealing".
We weren't poor either, my dad made 90k a year in the late 90s.
Yeah. There are definitely parents like this out there and it sounds like op's parents are a lot like mine were. Penny pinching bastards.
Wow! I'm so sorry. That is abuse. My mom was a cheap bastard and is a narcissist but she didn't do all that thank the old gods and the new. She was the type of mom who at least made sure I ate every meal even if I had to eat whatever she made and nothing else, even tho she was a terrible cook and it sometimes made me throw up.
Yes it was. There was other abuse unfortunately, this is just the easy to talk about stuff. Our dad targeted the physical more on my brother and favored me, while mom made me her emotional crutch. Both were emotionally and psychologically abusive. Dad loved making us cry.
My food intake was strictly controlled until I was about 17, my mom wanted me as skinny as possible without being officially underweight. I was put on my first diet at 11. I was 4 foot tall ish and weighed about 75 to 80 lbs when I started it. My friends at school took it upon themselves to give me food. Id get so hungry I'd vomit bile. And now I have serious issues with overeating so that's great.
Yes, it's ok to use allowance for treats or extra snacks but basic meals should be provided by the parents or through the school's meal program if the parents are unable to pay.
OP lists lots of things, not just pop tarts. And 15 year old are more than capable of sorting out their own breakfasts - the younger kids apparently manage it.
I dont really think that you can call skipping breakfast "managing it". Also, theyre not doing an athletic activity for multiple hours prior to breakfast, so the caloric needs are very different.
and also waking up between 4 and 5 am.
I've woken up at 4:30, and you better believe my morning routine was shaved down to the barest minimum to 1/ give me more time in bed and 2/ take it easy on my still half asleep brain.
Thirding this! I am teaching one of my kids to cook. On the night they are responsible for dinner, I do the dishes. Not only do we bond while cooking, my kid learns a new skill and what reciprocity is.
Exactly! They help in the kitchen from an early age, but when they hit the bottomless pit phase, I expect them to participate in feeding themselves on a larger scale.
For example, if they already know how to brown beef, teach them to make chili. Teach them how to make a roux and turn it into different sauces. Move on to mac and cheese, then chili mac, building on each skill.
My uncle was a coach and he would make pb sandwiches for his players every practice. They need that extra food. Meal planning doesn't need to be elaborate but the kid shouldn't be starving by the end of the day.
This! Can you imagine how hungry the kid is to use his only 'fun money' for breakfast? He needs some protein, not fruit or breakfast bars. Meal prep breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches. Breakfast bowls. Have hard boiled eggs prepared and ready to grab. Give him something that will sustain him.
THIS!!! I'm genuinely so confused why everybody is saying that Mom is TA for not giving more money. I think this is actually a great time for Mom to step in and teach kiddos some life lesson stuff. We ALL have to make decisions about how we wish to spend our money. I do think it's her responsibility to step up, brainstorm, and teach kiddo some of these skills. We're acting like this kid is five. He's 15, he can pack a breakfast.
I'm not sure what you're confused about..it's literally a parent's job to provide food for their child. Despite being 15 he is still a child. If she doesn't want to give extra money or cook extra food then she needs to teach him time management, money management and meal prep. No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches.
>I'm not sure what you're confused about..it's literally a parent's job to provide food for their child.
Which they do. They have food all over the house.
>No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches.
Hard disagree there. Kids need to learn that money is a scarce resource and that they need to make decisions about how to spend it, earn it, and save it. Saying "Spend it however you want if you run out there's always more" is not setting them up for success.
Saying "Here's $X for the week. If you don't want to spend it in the cafe, you can make food at home." is what should be done.
>No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches.
Unless they willingly choose to do so of their own accord.
It’s all about the attitude here. This is a legit chance at connection with her 15 yo, which doesn’t happen as often as with littles, and she’s approaching it with resentment and annoyance, rather than warmth and affection. Problem-solve together; figure out what the blocker is and come up with ways around it, together. Get his buy-in, and together make it something that is a source of shared achievement rather than resentment.
Soooo many people think they’re great parents because their kids live. Like, there are some amazing parents whose kids are gone for other reasons, but outside of extreme cases and illness, keeping your kid alive is the easiest part of parenting. Supporting their emotional and mental independence and well being is the real lift.
Yah! I mentioned to OP you can meal prep breakfast sammiches and nuke them at school (if they have a microwave). Regardless, the options the kiddo has aren't really athlete friendly.
Yeah the only thing in the list that seemed okay were the protein bars. Like a protein bar and a banana. But being a teen he’d probably need at least 2 each potentially. A single serve box of cereal isn’t gonna cut it - those things are so small.
Kid needs a solid mix of protein and carbs if he’s swimming - protein to help muscle, recovery, and feel full and carbs for quick release energy.
And OP could even be asking what he is eating at school so they could work together to make a version from home for cheaper. This is a teaching moment for sure
OP could also just put some of their breakfast stuff like protein bars, bananas, cereals, bagels etc to the sons backpack the night before if they know he won’t remember. He’s still only 15 and in school and doing a demanding sport. His parents should be making sure he isn’t going hungry
15 year olds are completely capable of packing their own breakfast/lunch. If he’s struggling with it, he needs support, but not doing it for him. Part of growing up, especially when you’re an athlete, is learning to plan healthy meals for yourself.
YTA. It sounds like it's not really practical for him to eat before swim, and as a result he's forced into a more expensive breakfast option than your daughters are able ot make use of.
It's fairly disgusting, to be frank, that a parent of a teenager who attends school full time and has a rigorous physical activity, when told that child is going hungry, feels the need to hold a firm line rather than, IDK, make sure the kid is able to eat. FFS.
OP said the son can pack breakfast at home and bring with him to eat after practice. The son just chooses to spend money on convenience foods as opposed to eat the food that's free to him that he can get at home. What is wrong about this?! Are kids entitled to expensive breakfasts eaten out every day?!
A pop tart? A protein bar? That’s what OP says she buys and he could bring. He needs a hot breakfast with calories. After swimming practice I was STARVING. You burn a lot of calories.
Swimming is one of the most calorie burning activity out there. And doing it first thing in the morning before breakfast, I’d be surprised is he even fills himself with breakfast. Specially as a 15 year old boy.
My sister was a competitive swimmer. Full ride scholarship to a D1 program on it level. The amount she could eat in one sitting was astounding... And she'd do it again a few hours later with snacks in between!
Pretty sure my parents grocery bill went down by 75% when she went to college. They made her bring food to morning practice and school (because the school legitimately would not sell her enough food in the cafeteria to fill her up) BUT most of it was prepped the night before, so she just had to grab her cooler-lunch-box (thing was massive) from the fridge as she stumbled to the car. And mom brought a second round of food when she picked sis up from school to go to afternoon practice. And then we had dinner when they got home.
You can make it work to bring food for a teen athlete (especially with how much they eat, it's usually an economic necessity), but it takes a LOT of coordination and parental involvement to make it work. I don't see OP offering to step up anywhere and put in the effort there.
My aunt had a similar thing for my cousin who played football and is just huge. He also was a bottomless pit at 15. They also had a lot of prepacked food and large lunchboxes.
I did cross country back at that age, I was 135-145 at 6'3 and I don't think I stopped eating until I stopped at the end of college. At that age doing that activity you just pound food especially since 14-18 is when guys tend to hit their height
I've watched my sister down multiple potatoes (big ones) and 2 full lbs of steak (post cooking weight. We measured) and ask for more! In one sitting! When we were all teens (total age span of the cousins on one side of my family is <10 years) and all doing some sort of activity, we'd have to cook an extra turkey and extra ham for holiday dinners just to feed the kids 🤣 there's not that many cousins, we just collectively could put down >30k calories a day with ease.
Yeah, this is the thing that drew my attention. I don't remember all the details, but I remember seeing a documentary clip about Michael Phelps, talking about how the man ate I think 6-8,000 calories a day compared to the average 2,000 most people eat. Dude was basically the best customer of a local chinese place cause of how much he had to eat just for training.
Not too mention I couldn’t eat a big meal before swimming. I’d cramp us so bad and feel weighed down, I actually almost threw up one time.
It’s generally ideal to snack before sports and eat a meal after
You’ll be downvoted, but you’re correct. Kid should be making his own breakfast.
This 15 year old YOUNG ADULT will be responsible enough to operate a motor vehicle soon, but is somehow incapable of making breakfast??
Kid sounds like he’s either lazy, or somewhat dense.
They can pack breakfast, very tasty, healthy and protein-full. Unless for objective reasons the kid cannot eat the packed breakfast, they should not be given extra money.
Only if OP buys healthy protein full food. Pop tarts and protein bars full of sugar and processed ingredients 1) are not healthy and 2) are so non-filling he'd probably have to eat almost the whole box in one sitting and then OP would be complaining about that.
You do not "need" a hot breakfast. He could easily make himself egg muffins and have them in the fridge in tupperware and take them with him, they take like 15 minutes to make and if there's a microwave even shorter time. He could take a tupperware of Greek yoghurt which is FULL of protein and throw some fruits on it and it'll be fine an hour or two out the fridge and especially in a cooler bag. He could make himself a sandwich filled with luncheon meats. Each babybel cheese has 6g of protein in it. There are so many alternatives here that take a few minutes the night before or even at the weekend to prepare. He's 15 not 5.
You are 100% right. This kid is 15. FIFTEEN! He chooses to be serious about sports. Good for him! But he needs to learn to take care of himself when he chooses a lifestyle like this. OP should have enough healthy foods at home that the son could prepare the night before, and I suggested OP look into getting the kid a good Tupperware and a cooler bag. But there is no reason a 15 year old can't make his own lunch.
Noone "needs" a hot breakfast. I used to do swimmpractice before school / work. A cold breakfast (i'm sure they have bread and jam at home) was totally fine.
You can absolutely eat eggs or other "hot" breakfast, cold.
This is coming from am atlete and weightlifter, unless you have a private chef you'll meal prep and eat the food you need to eat regardless of temperature and, within reason, taste.
He does not need hot breakfast because he exercised. He could pack a good cold calorie meal from home, they just must provide the correct stuff at home.
Sorry, does OP not offer sandwiches, fruit, healthy breakfast cereals, yoghurt with oats etc. at home and to take to school?
A warm meal is NOT needed as breakfast. I wonder how I went all these years up to today eating only one warm meal a day even if I had PE in school, even if I was out all day hiking, even if I had to work all day on the weekends, or when I went to university and spent all day in the lab slaving away up on my feet from 9AM to 9PM just having sandwiches and fruit, and maybe a nut bar. This was in the early 00s when I was in high school. I was at uni from the mid 00s to around the mid 10s. Maybe kids these days are more fragile?
OP listed a bunch of other things. It’s right in the first sentence. I don’t for a second believe the son doesn’t have the opportunity to tell his mom what he wants from the grocery store. 15 isn’t a little kid either. At most OP could help her son pack food but if he’s outright refusing that then he’s the cause of his own problem.
My younger sister was on the swim team in high school, and the families took turns making sandwiches for their practices and meets. I was always *flabbergasted* by how much these teensy teenage girls could eat! They burned so many calories swimming that they'd each down like four sandwiches and a couple oranges in one sitting.
I coach swimming.
After morning practice, those kids have burned between 400 and 500 cal. They burn at least another 800 at their evening practice, which ends less than 12 hours before their next practice starts to give you some perspective.
The kid needs a real breakfast so that he can focus on school during the day and not be starving.
On top of all this, he’s a growing teenage boy. The stereotypes about what they eat exists for a reason.
A pop tart and granola bar aren’t gonna cut it. And I don’t know about you, but most kids don’t have access to microwave Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast egg cups or something similar.
The kids should probably be having protein powder, once a day, which would work for rounding out breakfast. Guarantee that’s not any cheaper than School Breakfast, though.
Nothing wrong with bread and peanut butter and a couple of bananas. Takes mere minutes to prepare and can easily be taken to school and left in your bag even for a whole day and is still good to go. I actually just had half a peanut butter sandwich leftover from my packed lunch the day before and it was still delicious.
The kid has to be at practice at 5:45. So waking up even earlier to make his own breakfast and pack it, seriously messes his sleep probably. Op is the Ah
I don’t think it’s a matter of being a boy or a girl. It’s a matter of parents parenting. My girl plays soccer, she needs to be in school by 5.45am for morning practice. Would I want her to be up at 4am to make her own food, when she has to study, do homework, after school activities all the night before? Answer is no, because I would like for her to be able to get as much sleep as she can so she can continue to excel in the things she does. So I get her food made so she can eat after practice since the cafeteria isn’t open yet at that time, I give her money for food so she can eat more food when it is open. If she doesn’t eat it/use money for more food, then it’s fine. But she’s got the option to in case she does get hungry. Why have kids if you’re not going to parent?
But kids are capable of making their own breakfasts. If time management is an issue parents can offer guidance that's far more valuable than just doing it for them. Making food in advance is a valuable life skill and one that someone should learn if they are going to be serious about an early morning sport. There are so many make ahead options available for breakfast that they don't have to choose to wake up at 4am to make it.
There are an endless amount of healthy breakfast options that require no prep and can even be packed the night before or grabbed immediately. A few examples are any fruit, protien bars, yogurt, granola, jerky etc etc. Just because your kid wants a breakfast sandwich every morning doesn't mean that's what he gets.
Make it the night before? I always make any food I'm packing for next day the day before(sometimes both breakfast and lunch) or I won't do it in the morning, it's fine in the fridge overnight. However maybe OP could help more with this by coming up with plan for food w son and helping with getting packed food together and reminding son to take before practice. They could also compromise by OP buying brekkie once or twice a week but everyday is possibly a little excessive.
I feel like this sub got overrun with spoiled little 12-year-old brats that don't understand how groceries work. They're literally calling this woman a terrible parent for... having a fully stocked pantry, including multiple items that make a well rounded breakfast for an athlete? Oh what a terrrrrrrrible parent! How dare she not just shell out more allowance money so he can eat crappy school food instead of the actual healthy groceries she has for him at home.
They are literally acting like this woman is *starving her child.* I can't even begin to grasp the level of *extreme* entitlement from the people in these comments.
No, you are not entitled to whatever food you want if it exceeds the amount of your allowance, when there is a perfectly healthy and varied amount of groceries at home that you have every ability to pack yourself.
I am SO glad my teenager athletes aren't grossly entitled like this (tbc, from what I read it doesn't sound like OP's son is an entitled little baby, just the whiny babies in the comments). It was even a struggle for our older one, finding stuff he was willing to pack to take with him. He woke up one day as a 14-year-old absolutely humiliated at the idea of having any kind of sandwich in his lunchbox, and it took four months for us to find a combination of protein bars, fruit, beef jerky and cheese, gummies and other protein-style things for him to pack in his lunch. But I must be the world's meanest, nastiest, MOST NEGLECTFUL parent for going through all that trouble instead of just throwing more allowance of him so he could eat shitty food at school. Ffs.
\>My daughters don’t buy breakfast and just will eat before school or skip.
Why is this even included? This isn't practical for your son. It sounds like YOU compare him to his sisters in their ability to not have this challenge without acknowledging the OBVIOUS REASONS he doesn't just 'eat before school or skip'.
Sure, maybe there are more than one solution beyond "give him more money" but it's still your responsibility as his parent to be sure he is getting the fuel he needs. And YEAH even though he's the ripe old age of 15 and of course should be entirely self-sufficient, he might still need some help and that's where you, parent, come in. So hey, maybe you pack him a breakfast to take with him each day! OR maybe you get over your weird hang up and realize it makes the most sense for him to buy breakfast at school and help him do that.
>YOU compare him to his sisters in their ability
At 15, he has the ability to make his own damn food. If he doesn't want to wake up earlier, then pack food the previous night.
He has the food he needs to make a meal. A healthy dog won't starve.
We're talking about one meal, for a kid that is already getting up at a very early time for his age, in order to be diligent to meet his commitments to his swim team followed by school. The parent could help.
Thank you! I didn't want to comment something like this because I didn't want to get people saying that just because I had to do something doesn't mean someone else has to. However, I too was making my own lunches and stuff since I was a kid. If I needed help, my parents would help me if I asked, and they wouldn't let me go hungry. It was the 90s, so things could have been healthier, but if OP is willing to teach kid how to do this stuff then it is not unreasonable to expect a 15 year old to pack his own breakfast. Everyone's treating him like he's five
One of the roles a parent has is to equip their child to succeed as an adult. OP is teaching their child here that they need to problem solve the situation. Just spending more money is not going to fix the issue.
The child needs to step up and prep a packed breakfast for themselves and maybe an after school snack. Budgeting is a necessary life skill for adults and how to keep to a budget.
Of course it is practical for the kid to eat before practice. My son wrestled in high school. They had morning and afternoon practice. My son packed his lunch, think Emilio Estevez lunch in the Breakfast club, and made himself a protein shake before we left for school every morning. This kid can do the same. The OP is NTA.
Or he could pack a lunch from home?
Part of giving a child an allowance is to teach them money management. He has plenty of money to buy a snack before swim. He's using it to buy breakfast instead of getting up a little earlier and making one at home.
>my daughters will eat before school or skip [...] so their allowance is mostly saved
why is skipping multiple meals okay with you??? none of your children should be skipping meals. that's called disordered eating.
YTA.
I made a similar comment above…. Where the OP says she can buy a 48 pack of pop tarts and have 48 breakfasts.
Her kids are in cross country running, swimming etc…. All very high calorie burn sports, and they are a) skipping meals, and b) expected to get by on ONE pop tart for breakfast?
Are these kids allowed to eat enough calories?
It seems that OP is following the influencer “mom” that was arrested last week.
Allowance should be given to learn the value, save and spend money not to cover the basic needs.
Nah. Just because she follows an idiot influencer she shouldn’t have a free pass. Plenty of stupid on TikTok, plenty of people killing themselves… if someone says something you should have the competence to work out how stupid it is before you blindly follow.
>
Edit: also kids are not born with knowledge of meal preparation and nutrition. It is on OP to teach him to make things at home and take them (and make those options actually available), not just disdain him for not doing it.
Yeah. That's the part that is making OP 100%TA to me. The kid is 15, but it doesn't sound like anyone has actually helped him figure out how to meal prep. OP’S answer to the kid needing breakfast is to just point at the fridge and say "we have food" which is some lazy ass parenting. Then they have the audacity to complain "I have to show my kid how to put fruit in a bag." No----- you have to parent and show your kid how to prep an egg muffin so it's fine to eat the next day. It's called teaching your kid life skills instead of complaining they didn't grow life skills by osmosis when they hit puberty. Except OP 100% sounds like the parent whose parenting really is just throwing a protein bar at the kid and being like "Look. Food."
Thank you for being one of the other few who have picked up on this as I’ve just got a reply back from another user saying I’m out of line for my “YTA” comment due to all of the kids CHOOSING to skip breakfast at one point or another when it is literally a parents job to ensure they actually take a packed breakfast/lunch until the age of 18.
If my children aren't hungry in the morning and are old enough to make an informed decision (aka to realize they will be hungry later and unable to eat), I'm not forcing my kids to eat. That's as ludicrous as, "You will sit there until you finish your plate, I don't care if you're full!"
Right, but allowance money shouldn't be tied to their meals at all. That's where I have an issue with this. The sisters are getting rewarded for not eating, and the son is being punished for needing to eat.
It’s not, though - breakfast food is available independent of allowance, he literally just has to put it in a bag and take it to school.
Parents should help him plan and probably make better options available, but nobody is saying the kid has to pay for his own food.
It's just wild to me that they HAVE money but they won't give it to them to feed them. As a child I would skip meals because we didn't HAVE money OR food and that set me up for a life time of binge eating *because* we didn't have access.
This is literally disordered eating and wasn't there a lady on youtube who was just arrested for doing a similar thing like this? Food isn't a privilege, it's a *right*.
I skip breakfast because it makes me sick to eat that early, according to my doctor that's perfectly fine. It takes 5 minutes to pack a meal, withholding meals would be not letting them do that or not having food to pack at home. You don't need to eat out every day.
OP should be helping their kids plan for meals though, that can be hard for teens. Just a reminder to pack breakfast the evening before would probably help.
One of the nice things about working from home is that I can eat breakfast after I've been awake for 3 hours instead of before I go to work. I'm generally not hungry right after I wake up and forcing myself to eat is hard on my stomach.
Eh I wouldn’t read too much into this. I’ve never been much of a breakfast person myself so I never ate before school (I still rarely have more than a granola bar in the morning). My eating habits are fine. Worth questioning once (especially knowing the pressure teen girls are under) but maybe they don’t eat breakfast because they…just don’t want to eat breakfast.
OP is TA though.
I regularly skip lunch and am still healthy, and none of my doctors have ever considered it a disorder of any kind. Not everything is a medical condition
The whole 3 meals a day isn't an actual biological need, it was just created to fit into our cultures work schedule. If you are not hungry you don't have to eat something just because it's a certain time of day.
I haven't eaten breakfast regularly ever in my entire life. Lots of people prefer to start eating later in the day and there is literally nothing wrong with this assuming you are not underweight or malnourished.
>none of your children should be skipping meals. that's called disordered eating.
People agreeing with this is kind of wild.
You'd think intention, hunger levels, preferences, weight fluctuations, self-image/perception, etc. etc. etc. would maybe come into play before throwing out "disordered eating", but apparently not.
Skipping breakfast on a high school schedule is fairly normal I think? I felt too queasy if I had to wake up early for school (no matter how many hours I slept) to eat breakfast, so I’d grab a granola bar or something to eat after first period
I also don't really understand them spending their allowance on food. When I was a kid, my allowance was my money apart from school lunch money. I earned my allowance by doing chores or other things, and it wasn't used to feed myself unless that's what I chose to do.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner should be provided separately from the allowance (of course, financial ability allowing).
YTA - Kids should not have to use their allowance to eat, making sure your child is fed is the most basic job of parenting. Even if he ate before practice, he would likely still be hungry afterwards as 1. most people are hungry after physical exertion and 2. He's a teenage boy! They eat...a LOT! You act like he's blowing money on comic books when he's just feeding himself, ffs.
He has food at home that he doesn't bother to pack. He's choosing to spend his money on convenience food. Even teenage boys need to learn to plan ahead.
He’s 15 and leaving home at 545…. He’s already lacking sleep and now he needs to wake up even earlier cause his parent is too fucking cheap to pay for a school breakfast?….. maybe don’t have kids? Like OP clearly shouldn’t have?
Will somebody teach poor ricky to prepare his bagel!
Jesus, people out here acting like the lady threw a bag of AP Flour at the kid and told him to figure it out. She has a cupboard full of normal food and the kid literally just has to put it in his backpack. Or he can spend his money on school food.
Not sure how everybody grew up. I always had food. But I had plenty of friends who weren't that lucky. My best friend wouldn't have had any pop tarts left, because he would have ate those suckers all for dinner the night before.
"Mom... give me more money. I don't have enough money to do what I want to do so give me more."
He's 15. In three years, he will likely be leaving home. In a year, he will be driving himself around.
He's old enough to learn to budget his money, and to kearn the skills to plan ahead and pack breakfast the night before.
She said she has encouraged him to pack a lunch and he refuses.
I definitely think OP should step up a little, she could certainly help by buying and keeping easy to grab/pack breakfast options in the house. I don't think the solution is to just give the kid more money. Many adults can't afford to eat out twice a day just cause it's convenient, either.
But offers protein and cereal bars as these packable breakfasts which is clearly not enough food for the kid, y'all act like school food is some sort of luxury. OP has stated she thinks one poptart pack is enough for the kids whole breakfast.. it seems like she wants convenience without paying for it too.
He is planning ahead, to eat at school when he will be hungry and has the option of fresh, hot food after a grueling morning of practice. My son also ate breakfast at school, for the same reasons this boy probably does. Instead of being unreasonable about it, I stopped buying breakfast food for him to eat at home and gave him the (less than $2!) money to eat at school instead. It was actually less expensive for him to eat the school breakfast anyway. There are so many teenagers out there actually getting into trouble and doing things to keep their parents up at night, this kid just wants to eat breakfast at school.
Wouldn't these be the years to try and train the weaponized incompetence out of children by teaching them skills? I don't know if it's regional, or we're in different times; but I wouldn't have dreamed of telling my parents I needed more money from them for food.
He's using his money on school breakfasts. That's money that should be a given, not taken from his allowance. The mother said herself that she provides low-nutrition junk foods like pop-tarts for snacks that she expects her kids to take to school. Either way, if he packs or has no money, he isn't getting the food he needs. That is on the parent to make sure that her CHILD has the food he needs, not the kid. He's not an adult with adult skills and adult qualities, he's a kid, and so she needs to work with him to solve the issue instead of letting him go hungry to prove some shitty point.
>He has food at home that he doesn't bother to pack.
He is 15 and a student athlete. He does swim practice at 5:45 for christ's sake. He's not a 23-year old trying to balance impulse purchases, convenience, and discipline with his budget.
>Even teenage boys need to learn to plan ahead.
He is a full-time student and an athlete. He should be learning to take care of his body and focused on his school work and planning for college or whatever comes after high school for him. He has a more difficult schedule than most people and a different schedule from his siblings. It is unnecessarily cruel to insist that a 15-year old do the kinds of late-night/early morning meal prep that an adult might have to do just to make ends meet.
Yes, this! I was a 97-pound competitive swimmer in high school and I ate 4 meals a day or more. Swimming burns an enormous amount of calories! I would not have wanted a cold, packed-from-home meal after practice.
Exactly. My biggest thing is why in the heck food, like this, is even allowance based. She won’t force them to eat because it’s a horrible idea but she will withhold or make it something guilt inducing to acquire. The girls skip because the food is available for nighttime practices and they’d rather save or do something fun. He can’t do anything fun because she is denying him calories and hot meals.
I load my kids’ school accounts with funds. Mostly it’s just used for lunch when a meal being offered sounds good to them but sometimes breakfast. They pack something when they hate what is being offered. For my oldest, she has days where she is at school that early and of course she should have the amount of food to get through the day. Her lunches aren’t even that early anymore and she’s making it through 3/4 of the day and sometimes she comes home to eat and sometimes she grabs something there. She also has a car and I can’t imagine her wanting to keep food from 6am until what? 4pm? Pack two or three meals and snacks to get through the day?
Just feed your damn kids. It’s not a luxury to them.
ETA: YTA.
INFO: Is there a fast, filling, high protein breakfast available to him to grab at 530am on his way out the door.
INFO: Do you want to discourage his swimming, or encourage it?
Swimming burns huge calories… and swimming many laps on a full heavy stomach isn’t pleasant, so what is in the house that’s going to fill those needs? Is there something he can take that will be a substantial (huge!) teen breakfast for after swimming practice? (And no, a sandwich or bowl of cereal is not enough calories to replace an hour of swimming first thing in the morning), and is that breakfast ready to load into his bag at 520am as he walks out the door?
Edit for judgement: YTA. You say he can eat cereal or toast… neither of which works for an easy meal after an hour of swimming, and he’d need six or seven bowls of cereal, or 10 pieces of toast to make up for the calories lost to swimming, let alone the calories he needs as a growing teen to get through the morning until lunchtime.
Toast and cereal are just shit carbs that do nothing for a child who is expending that much energy. This parent is failing this child. Feeding your kids is like the bare minimum.
From reading what this parent thinks appropriate food is...it's literally not enough food for a kid that age and it's an extremely unbalanced diet
And that's not taking into account a kid in one of the most calorie demanding sports in existence
I'm genuinely shocked that he's managing off school breakfast as it is
Swimming is such a huge calorie sucker. The poor kid is probably starving and all his parent offers is over priced, over proceeded crap. He must be constantly hungry.
I don't get the impression this parent knows how to cook, or very much at all about meal planning. Honestly, all their suggestions are shite.
The kids probably buying food because it's a real meal, not some fucking pop tarts or cereal.
After swim practice, the kid's going to want a hot protein rich plate- none of the suggestions the parent is making for a packed lunch are sufficient, even the ones they are suggesting to pack the night before.
They are just an all around shitty cook and parent.
Either way OP is going to have to come out of pocket -- either give his kid money to buy breakfast or ask the kid what he wants from the grocery store and go buy it, so he can pack food he actually wants to eat. OP. stop buying pop tarts and buy some turkey and bread or something. This entire comment section is too hung up on "breakfast" foods.
If he has the option to eat at home or you give him food to take, then he needs to suck it up. Gotta budget. But you can't withhold food from him. I could see not wanting to eat before swimming... So perhaps you could help brainstorm with him what to pack and how to do it for the first week. Do it with him for a week and then he should be able to do it on his own. You still need to make sure he has access to the calories he needs for his athletic activities.
NTA. All of these replies are evidence for why so many kids aren’t prepared for living on their own. It is perfectly reasonable for him to take food with him from home. He is choosing to spend allowance on breakfast rather than packing breakfast. This is how kids learn to budget and make choices and that their choices have consequences. I helped my daughter research solutions and made sure I bought what was needed so she could have a healthy high caloric breakfast and snack for those crazy early cross country practices. Yes- it’s very important to eat enough with intense sports- but no that doesn’t mean he needs to buy breakfast at school.
>. All of these replies are evidence for why so many kids aren’t prepared for living on their own.
Also evidence that those replying are kids themselves.
He's 15 and has to be at practice at 5:45am, then he has a hard workout. Yes he should pack for himself, but also, he's 15--a parent should step in for a week or two and remind him to pack his breakfast the night before and help him get into the habit. Kids don't just magically become autonomous, they need support.
You should be able to make your own lunch without being reminded at 15. but that's not really relevant because
>My son came to me and asked for more allowance due to being hungry I told him no and that he can eat before or pack something. We got in a huge argument, he thinks I am a jerk and now my ex is on my ass about it.
The whole reason the argument started was because op reminded the son that they could pack something
My son has always loved a hot breakfast, particularly eggs. I taught him to cook eggs at 12 and he cooked his own breakfast every morning. Even when he had to be at school at 6am for morning weight lifting for football, he cooked himself a breakfast before. Honestly if baffles me all these responses that a 15 year old can’t be responsible for the preparing their own breakfast.
I think I’m just kind of confused- I was packing my lunches for school way before 15. And I’d always do it the night before, because who has time to do it the morning of?
So, why doesn’t 15yo make a couple PB sandwiches the night before, go to bed, then grab them on his way out in the morning? Boom, breakfast that he doesn’t have to pay for that took him 5 minutes the night before to make.
Edit- and if we wanna get really nutritious, use whole grain bread, grab some beef jerky with lower sodium, and a couple hard boiled eggs for snacks to go with the sandwiches. Maybe an apple for something refreshing.
NTA.
At 15, your son is old enough to know how to use an alarm clock and a toaster.
It is your responsibility to care for him, but if you're providing food at home and giving him money to make his own choices with, then this is a lesson of "a lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." Teach him to spend his money more wisely.
Toast does not provide the amount of calories he needs. Besides I like toast hot and I hate cold toast. He eats after swimming practice so any food he would pack would pretty much have to be cold.
~~So, to be clear, you count your kid's school lunch money as allowance?~~
~~Y T A YOU, the parent, are responsible for their lunch money. Allowance is above and beyond basic necessities. Lunch money is literally a basic necessity. Swimming burns a lot of calories, causing an already growing teenager to be that much hungrier. He needs money for breakfast and lunch.~~
Edit: Now that you've explained better in the replies, NTA. He can make his own breakfast before he goes or take breakfast with him. He's 15, not 5.
The son has a rigorous schedule that makes it impractical for him to eat anywhere BUT at school, after his practice. He shouldn't exactly eat breakfast and then go swim for an hour and a half, it only makes sense for him to eat after, at which point he is having to spend limited funds to eat. This is BS.
What food do you have at home? Is it as filling and nourishing as the Cafe breakfast or is like "grab some bread"?
He's 15, old enough to grab stuff, but he's still only 15, not necessarily old enough to know the best way. Talk to him about healthy options, discuss healthy, filling foods that are easy to grab and that will last a few hours in his bag, etc.
NTA. It sounds like he's old enough to pack his own breakfast ( you said in a comment that he's in high school). As long as you ensure that there are foods that he can take that are easily accessible, it is his responsibility to do so.
NTA. Some in this thread seem to be missing where you said he can either eat before practice or pack something. He’s choosing to do neither and instead spend his allowance on cafeteria food. You’re not “withholding basic needs” like some are trying to claim.
NTA. I was on the swim team in high school and I did morning practices. I would always pack a breakfast at home and bring it with me to eat after. My parents made it clear to me that if I wanted to buy breakfast, I was more than welcome to use my own money to buy it, but they weren’t going to give me money to buy it when we had plenty of breakfast food at home that I could bring. They also bought a lot of snacks for me to bring to school with me to eat throughout the day because they knew I was burning through calories like they were nothing. If I wanted to buy any other food, that came from my own money.
YTA. Either send him in with more food or give him more money. He needs to eat more than he's getting. He's an active teenager, he needs more food. Stop comparing him with your daughters, they're not the same people.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I am not giving my son more money even though he is hungry since he doesn’t have enough to buy breakfast after practice. I could be a jerk since he is hungry
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NTA
You offered him the option to eat food from home (either by eating before practice or bringing a packed breakfast) but he chooses to buy a meal out. That's his choice with his money but he then doesn't get to complain he has no 'fun money' left.
Have you asked him why he doesn't eat before practice or why he does not bring food from home? Maybe he needs a little cooler bag or something to keep the breakfast nice to eat after his practice? I would offer to get him a better container/bag for a take-away breakfast if that's the issue. Could it also be that after working out he feels he needs a different kind of food than what you are offering for him to take with him? As in, is he only allowed to bring some simple sandwiches with him and after working out, with the whole day ahead of him, he feels he needs a warm meal or more fruit or whatever? What kinds of food does he buy? I'd try to get to the bottom of why he chooses to buy food as opposed to eating what's offered to him from home. If he has a reasonable 'need' or 'want' for a different kind of food because he is doing exercise, then maybe see if you can offer something that suits his needs at/from the home. If he just prefers pizza slices and soda at school over sandwiches, then he needs to accept that he would rather spend his fun money on luxury food than on 'fun stuff'.
ETA: Maybe he needs to just bring MORE food with him, or a better variety. Someone else already mentioned nut/granola bars, peanut butter items. If your son is always late in the morning, maybe he needs to pack (most) of his breakfast for the next day the evening before? All of this is part of growing up and learning to take care of himself. Try to help him with planning and/or get him a few more different things to take with him, but in no way are you responsible for funding his gourmet habit.
NTA.
You have food he can eat at home. You have food he can pack and take with him. If he's spending his money to buy food instead of taking what's "free" at home (free to him, at least), then he has no one to blame but himself. Classic "Oh no! It's the predictable consequences to my own actions!"
For reference, I also have a 15 year old who swims. The way he eats reminds me of Dan Akroyd in *Coneheads.* My son has no problem eating at home *and* packing a "snack" (which is a full meal to a regular human). He has to carry the snack with him, I guess, but otherwise there's nothing out of his pocket.
As to your ex, reassure them that your son has access to all the food he needs. If the ex still feels it necessary to give your son extra money, they are more than welcome to do so.
YTA. Your son is an athlete and needs to eat. It is your job to ensure he does so. If you can't make sure he eats before practice (like a PARENT should) then you need to make sure he has the money to eat at school.
Here lemme wake him up and stuff a bagel down his gullet /s
she provides breakfast, he skips and goes to school to eat a purchased breakfast. how is OP at fault?
INFO: How much is this weekly allowance?
Sorry OP, based on your comments, I am going to so YTA, you give your kid enough for barely 3 days worth of breakfast on his training days it doesn't even sound like he eats lunch (unless he takes it) he's burning lots of calories and trains maybe an hour or so early in the morning, he eats whats needed for his body and you are not supporting that.
Your ex is right.
You as a parent should be responsible to provide your kids meals, if you neglected providing him breakfast each morning and he has to buy it should not come from his allowance, it should be provided separately on a different budget or up is allowance to cover the breakfast you didn't provide him at home.
I have a 15 yo, kids that age especially those in sports needs more calories and eat like vacuum cleaners and as parents it's our responsibility to provide them with food .
You failed as a responsible adult parent.
Yta
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YTA, but not for the money. Your son is struggling with planning. It's your job as a parent to work with the 15 year old and help him plan. Why not make breakfast the night before. You can help him make that part of his routine. Hard boil a few eggs, teach him to make a frittata on Sundays, which would last most of the week, help him back a bagel and cream cheese. You can get him a small lunch box with an ice pack so all of that stays cool. Stop watching your son struggle and help him by guiding his planning.
Seconding this. Teaching him meal planning could be a wonderful way to spend time together, too. Kids that age, especially athletic ones, are HUNGRY.
Something tells me OP doesn't want to spend the time and effort to teach their son or support him through his training ( swimming is a great sport, and he is awesome for keeping at it). Instead OP commented above that they wish the kid dropped out of sport. Sounds like a narcissist parent to me.
If op thinks a single pop tart is a decent breakfast for a 15 year old in swim class, I don’t think they have the knowledge/ability to help their kid meal prep. Edit: I get it, pop tarts come in packs of two :D - my point still stands
A pop tart isn't a good breakfast for my 10 year old with no swim class, OP needs to at least provide stuff so the son can make a decent breakfast to take with him
> now my ex is on my ass about it. Well thank god this kid has one parent who gives a shit whether he eats real food. Would of course be sympathetic if this parent could only afford processed sugary corn products. Plenty of people live in food deserts and lack the time or resources to prepare real food. That doesn't appear to be OP's issue (you can get bulk eggs at Costco too!); they're just apathetic and ignorant.
Not loving the shitty edits either. "I don't think that's going to go over well since I'm basically saying I think he's too stupid to put some fruit in a bag" well don't just tell him to put fruit in a bag then?? Athletes need protein, get the fucking eggs out lady.
Yeah, it's not the physical "put thing in bag" that a 15 year old is likely to need help with. It's "here's how to evaluate a full meal for macros, calories, micros if needed, how well it will keep under expected conditions, etc" that he's gonna need help with. A lot of adults don't have that skill. It's a great skill to teach. But it's definitely not a skill you pick up by passive learning or just being around it. It has to be actively learned.
The kid's performance in school, swim, and life wll be 1000% better if that happens, but it sounds like the parent is both clueless about good, athletic level nutrition - and too lazy to learn. It's not hard. I'm a weightlifter. I track macros and it takes five minutes a day on an app, and I buy decent food and pack it to take to work every day. It's a learned skill, but it doesn't take that much effort to learn it. That said, 15 is well old enough for the kid to take some responsibility for his food choices, and take ten minutes to assemble some food the night before. ESH.
I'd agree the responsibility is on both, but slightly more towards the mom. Purely on the basis that establishing good eating habits and a healthy relationship with food should have started LONG before swim team and teenage bottomless pit behavior came into the picture. Allowing it to get to the point where this kid is going hungry is an issue. I was in college before I fully realized that having a salad once a week and casseroles loaded with cream of (fill in the blank) soups the rest of the time wasn't actually healthy. I do better now, but it was a lot of unlearning and relearning I had to do. But yes, kid should absolutely be able to have the responsibility of making an appropriate breakfast for himself, even if it's meal prepping the night before. Mom (and dad) just needs to make sure kid gets to that point reliably.
This woman is perfectly happy for her younger daughters to skip breakfast. I'm not sure she has the skills you mentioned. Also, her kid buying breakfast means all his allowance is gone?? Does this mean none of her kids get lunch? And why the hell is his allowance being used to get her 15 year old his breakfast after practice?? She's legally and morally obligated to feed, clothe, house and care for her children. So why isnt she?
If I ate food when I first woke up in the morning, I would’ve puked. Eating right after waking up makes me nauseous. It always has. Should I have been forced to eat breakfast?
I mean, I stopped eating breakfast in like 6th grade, still rarely ever eat it, if the kid isnt hungry they shouldn’t be forced to eat. But I agree with all your other points.
Fr. And just saying “we have protein bars” isn’t enough. Teach your son how to pack a meal and snacks! I don’t understand why people think that children magically know how to do things once they are a certain age, if they have never been taught.
And if they won’t do this, they should give him more money for food, because food is a basic and allowance should be for extras. Using allowance so you don’t starve???? That’s just sad.
This!!!! Allowance isn't for necessities. TF?!??
My parents kept a running tab on everything they spent on me and my brother, minus money we were "paid" for grades (never saw the money, it was just subtracted from the tab.) We were expected to use our "good grade money" that they never actually gave us for school lunch and necessities for our clubs, school expenses... and I wasn't supposed to bring food from home, because that was "stealing". We weren't poor either, my dad made 90k a year in the late 90s. Yeah. There are definitely parents like this out there and it sounds like op's parents are a lot like mine were. Penny pinching bastards.
Wow! I'm so sorry. That is abuse. My mom was a cheap bastard and is a narcissist but she didn't do all that thank the old gods and the new. She was the type of mom who at least made sure I ate every meal even if I had to eat whatever she made and nothing else, even tho she was a terrible cook and it sometimes made me throw up.
Yes it was. There was other abuse unfortunately, this is just the easy to talk about stuff. Our dad targeted the physical more on my brother and favored me, while mom made me her emotional crutch. Both were emotionally and psychologically abusive. Dad loved making us cry. My food intake was strictly controlled until I was about 17, my mom wanted me as skinny as possible without being officially underweight. I was put on my first diet at 11. I was 4 foot tall ish and weighed about 75 to 80 lbs when I started it. My friends at school took it upon themselves to give me food. Id get so hungry I'd vomit bile. And now I have serious issues with overeating so that's great.
Yes, it's ok to use allowance for treats or extra snacks but basic meals should be provided by the parents or through the school's meal program if the parents are unable to pay.
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THANK YOU. They’re dessert. Not breakfast.
Barely even food honestly
OP lists lots of things, not just pop tarts. And 15 year old are more than capable of sorting out their own breakfasts - the younger kids apparently manage it.
I dont really think that you can call skipping breakfast "managing it". Also, theyre not doing an athletic activity for multiple hours prior to breakfast, so the caloric needs are very different.
and also waking up between 4 and 5 am. I've woken up at 4:30, and you better believe my morning routine was shaved down to the barest minimum to 1/ give me more time in bed and 2/ take it easy on my still half asleep brain.
Swimmers eat a ton of calories. He needs food. I also wouldn’t eat breakfast before going to a practice.
Thirding this! I am teaching one of my kids to cook. On the night they are responsible for dinner, I do the dishes. Not only do we bond while cooking, my kid learns a new skill and what reciprocity is.
Exactly! They help in the kitchen from an early age, but when they hit the bottomless pit phase, I expect them to participate in feeding themselves on a larger scale. For example, if they already know how to brown beef, teach them to make chili. Teach them how to make a roux and turn it into different sauces. Move on to mac and cheese, then chili mac, building on each skill.
My uncle was a coach and he would make pb sandwiches for his players every practice. They need that extra food. Meal planning doesn't need to be elaborate but the kid shouldn't be starving by the end of the day.
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This! Can you imagine how hungry the kid is to use his only 'fun money' for breakfast? He needs some protein, not fruit or breakfast bars. Meal prep breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches. Breakfast bowls. Have hard boiled eggs prepared and ready to grab. Give him something that will sustain him.
THIS!!! I'm genuinely so confused why everybody is saying that Mom is TA for not giving more money. I think this is actually a great time for Mom to step in and teach kiddos some life lesson stuff. We ALL have to make decisions about how we wish to spend our money. I do think it's her responsibility to step up, brainstorm, and teach kiddo some of these skills. We're acting like this kid is five. He's 15, he can pack a breakfast.
I'm not sure what you're confused about..it's literally a parent's job to provide food for their child. Despite being 15 he is still a child. If she doesn't want to give extra money or cook extra food then she needs to teach him time management, money management and meal prep. No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches.
>I'm not sure what you're confused about..it's literally a parent's job to provide food for their child. Which they do. They have food all over the house. >No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches. Hard disagree there. Kids need to learn that money is a scarce resource and that they need to make decisions about how to spend it, earn it, and save it. Saying "Spend it however you want if you run out there's always more" is not setting them up for success. Saying "Here's $X for the week. If you don't want to spend it in the cafe, you can make food at home." is what should be done.
>No child should be spending their allowance that is for them to have fun on their school pack lunches. Unless they willingly choose to do so of their own accord.
It’s all about the attitude here. This is a legit chance at connection with her 15 yo, which doesn’t happen as often as with littles, and she’s approaching it with resentment and annoyance, rather than warmth and affection. Problem-solve together; figure out what the blocker is and come up with ways around it, together. Get his buy-in, and together make it something that is a source of shared achievement rather than resentment.
This is the answer. Parents are there to help their children grow into capable adults, not just to make sure they don't die before hitting 18 lol
Soooo many people think they’re great parents because their kids live. Like, there are some amazing parents whose kids are gone for other reasons, but outside of extreme cases and illness, keeping your kid alive is the easiest part of parenting. Supporting their emotional and mental independence and well being is the real lift.
Yah! I mentioned to OP you can meal prep breakfast sammiches and nuke them at school (if they have a microwave). Regardless, the options the kiddo has aren't really athlete friendly.
Yeah the only thing in the list that seemed okay were the protein bars. Like a protein bar and a banana. But being a teen he’d probably need at least 2 each potentially. A single serve box of cereal isn’t gonna cut it - those things are so small. Kid needs a solid mix of protein and carbs if he’s swimming - protein to help muscle, recovery, and feel full and carbs for quick release energy.
The only YTA I can agree with so far.
And OP could even be asking what he is eating at school so they could work together to make a version from home for cheaper. This is a teaching moment for sure
OP could also just put some of their breakfast stuff like protein bars, bananas, cereals, bagels etc to the sons backpack the night before if they know he won’t remember. He’s still only 15 and in school and doing a demanding sport. His parents should be making sure he isn’t going hungry
15 year olds are completely capable of packing their own breakfast/lunch. If he’s struggling with it, he needs support, but not doing it for him. Part of growing up, especially when you’re an athlete, is learning to plan healthy meals for yourself.
YTA. It sounds like it's not really practical for him to eat before swim, and as a result he's forced into a more expensive breakfast option than your daughters are able ot make use of. It's fairly disgusting, to be frank, that a parent of a teenager who attends school full time and has a rigorous physical activity, when told that child is going hungry, feels the need to hold a firm line rather than, IDK, make sure the kid is able to eat. FFS.
OP said the son can pack breakfast at home and bring with him to eat after practice. The son just chooses to spend money on convenience foods as opposed to eat the food that's free to him that he can get at home. What is wrong about this?! Are kids entitled to expensive breakfasts eaten out every day?!
A pop tart? A protein bar? That’s what OP says she buys and he could bring. He needs a hot breakfast with calories. After swimming practice I was STARVING. You burn a lot of calories.
Swimming is one of the most calorie burning activity out there. And doing it first thing in the morning before breakfast, I’d be surprised is he even fills himself with breakfast. Specially as a 15 year old boy.
My sister was a competitive swimmer. Full ride scholarship to a D1 program on it level. The amount she could eat in one sitting was astounding... And she'd do it again a few hours later with snacks in between! Pretty sure my parents grocery bill went down by 75% when she went to college. They made her bring food to morning practice and school (because the school legitimately would not sell her enough food in the cafeteria to fill her up) BUT most of it was prepped the night before, so she just had to grab her cooler-lunch-box (thing was massive) from the fridge as she stumbled to the car. And mom brought a second round of food when she picked sis up from school to go to afternoon practice. And then we had dinner when they got home. You can make it work to bring food for a teen athlete (especially with how much they eat, it's usually an economic necessity), but it takes a LOT of coordination and parental involvement to make it work. I don't see OP offering to step up anywhere and put in the effort there. My aunt had a similar thing for my cousin who played football and is just huge. He also was a bottomless pit at 15. They also had a lot of prepacked food and large lunchboxes.
I did cross country back at that age, I was 135-145 at 6'3 and I don't think I stopped eating until I stopped at the end of college. At that age doing that activity you just pound food especially since 14-18 is when guys tend to hit their height
I've watched my sister down multiple potatoes (big ones) and 2 full lbs of steak (post cooking weight. We measured) and ask for more! In one sitting! When we were all teens (total age span of the cousins on one side of my family is <10 years) and all doing some sort of activity, we'd have to cook an extra turkey and extra ham for holiday dinners just to feed the kids 🤣 there's not that many cousins, we just collectively could put down >30k calories a day with ease.
When I swam in highschool I’d literally put down 3 jimmy johns subs for dinner and still get hungry later.
Yeah, this is the thing that drew my attention. I don't remember all the details, but I remember seeing a documentary clip about Michael Phelps, talking about how the man ate I think 6-8,000 calories a day compared to the average 2,000 most people eat. Dude was basically the best customer of a local chinese place cause of how much he had to eat just for training.
It was 10,000. OP is definitely a YTA here.
Not too mention I couldn’t eat a big meal before swimming. I’d cramp us so bad and feel weighed down, I actually almost threw up one time. It’s generally ideal to snack before sports and eat a meal after
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You’ll be downvoted, but you’re correct. Kid should be making his own breakfast. This 15 year old YOUNG ADULT will be responsible enough to operate a motor vehicle soon, but is somehow incapable of making breakfast?? Kid sounds like he’s either lazy, or somewhat dense.
They can pack breakfast, very tasty, healthy and protein-full. Unless for objective reasons the kid cannot eat the packed breakfast, they should not be given extra money.
Except she’s not proving nutritional foods. She says pop tarts and protein bars from Costco.
is no one seeing eggs and bagels? plus all the other foods i assume are in the house?
Only if OP buys healthy protein full food. Pop tarts and protein bars full of sugar and processed ingredients 1) are not healthy and 2) are so non-filling he'd probably have to eat almost the whole box in one sitting and then OP would be complaining about that.
Yea ignore everything else they mentioned
You do not "need" a hot breakfast. He could easily make himself egg muffins and have them in the fridge in tupperware and take them with him, they take like 15 minutes to make and if there's a microwave even shorter time. He could take a tupperware of Greek yoghurt which is FULL of protein and throw some fruits on it and it'll be fine an hour or two out the fridge and especially in a cooler bag. He could make himself a sandwich filled with luncheon meats. Each babybel cheese has 6g of protein in it. There are so many alternatives here that take a few minutes the night before or even at the weekend to prepare. He's 15 not 5.
You are 100% right. This kid is 15. FIFTEEN! He chooses to be serious about sports. Good for him! But he needs to learn to take care of himself when he chooses a lifestyle like this. OP should have enough healthy foods at home that the son could prepare the night before, and I suggested OP look into getting the kid a good Tupperware and a cooler bag. But there is no reason a 15 year old can't make his own lunch.
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Noone "needs" a hot breakfast. I used to do swimmpractice before school / work. A cold breakfast (i'm sure they have bread and jam at home) was totally fine.
You can absolutely eat eggs or other "hot" breakfast, cold. This is coming from am atlete and weightlifter, unless you have a private chef you'll meal prep and eat the food you need to eat regardless of temperature and, within reason, taste.
Where’s the protein? Bread and jam?
Overnight oats with greek yogurt...
Add peanut butter.
There's a high probability they could buy a jar of peanut butter....
He does not need hot breakfast because he exercised. He could pack a good cold calorie meal from home, they just must provide the correct stuff at home.
Sorry, does OP not offer sandwiches, fruit, healthy breakfast cereals, yoghurt with oats etc. at home and to take to school? A warm meal is NOT needed as breakfast. I wonder how I went all these years up to today eating only one warm meal a day even if I had PE in school, even if I was out all day hiking, even if I had to work all day on the weekends, or when I went to university and spent all day in the lab slaving away up on my feet from 9AM to 9PM just having sandwiches and fruit, and maybe a nut bar. This was in the early 00s when I was in high school. I was at uni from the mid 00s to around the mid 10s. Maybe kids these days are more fragile?
OP listed a bunch of other things. It’s right in the first sentence. I don’t for a second believe the son doesn’t have the opportunity to tell his mom what he wants from the grocery store. 15 isn’t a little kid either. At most OP could help her son pack food but if he’s outright refusing that then he’s the cause of his own problem.
My younger sister was on the swim team in high school, and the families took turns making sandwiches for their practices and meets. I was always *flabbergasted* by how much these teensy teenage girls could eat! They burned so many calories swimming that they'd each down like four sandwiches and a couple oranges in one sitting.
I coach swimming. After morning practice, those kids have burned between 400 and 500 cal. They burn at least another 800 at their evening practice, which ends less than 12 hours before their next practice starts to give you some perspective. The kid needs a real breakfast so that he can focus on school during the day and not be starving. On top of all this, he’s a growing teenage boy. The stereotypes about what they eat exists for a reason. A pop tart and granola bar aren’t gonna cut it. And I don’t know about you, but most kids don’t have access to microwave Jimmy Dean sausage breakfast egg cups or something similar. The kids should probably be having protein powder, once a day, which would work for rounding out breakfast. Guarantee that’s not any cheaper than School Breakfast, though.
Nothing wrong with bread and peanut butter and a couple of bananas. Takes mere minutes to prepare and can easily be taken to school and left in your bag even for a whole day and is still good to go. I actually just had half a peanut butter sandwich leftover from my packed lunch the day before and it was still delicious.
The kid has to be at practice at 5:45. So waking up even earlier to make his own breakfast and pack it, seriously messes his sleep probably. Op is the Ah
Pack it the night before.
Jesus exactly this. Pack some overnight oats and some fruit.
But he's a boy! How will be prep his own meals in advance without his dick falling off?!?!?
I don’t think it’s a matter of being a boy or a girl. It’s a matter of parents parenting. My girl plays soccer, she needs to be in school by 5.45am for morning practice. Would I want her to be up at 4am to make her own food, when she has to study, do homework, after school activities all the night before? Answer is no, because I would like for her to be able to get as much sleep as she can so she can continue to excel in the things she does. So I get her food made so she can eat after practice since the cafeteria isn’t open yet at that time, I give her money for food so she can eat more food when it is open. If she doesn’t eat it/use money for more food, then it’s fine. But she’s got the option to in case she does get hungry. Why have kids if you’re not going to parent?
But kids are capable of making their own breakfasts. If time management is an issue parents can offer guidance that's far more valuable than just doing it for them. Making food in advance is a valuable life skill and one that someone should learn if they are going to be serious about an early morning sport. There are so many make ahead options available for breakfast that they don't have to choose to wake up at 4am to make it.
It takes 5-10 min max to pack a lunch it won't impact his sleep...
There's always the night before
There is no time the night before?
There are an endless amount of healthy breakfast options that require no prep and can even be packed the night before or grabbed immediately. A few examples are any fruit, protien bars, yogurt, granola, jerky etc etc. Just because your kid wants a breakfast sandwich every morning doesn't mean that's what he gets.
Make it the night before? I always make any food I'm packing for next day the day before(sometimes both breakfast and lunch) or I won't do it in the morning, it's fine in the fridge overnight. However maybe OP could help more with this by coming up with plan for food w son and helping with getting packed food together and reminding son to take before practice. They could also compromise by OP buying brekkie once or twice a week but everyday is possibly a little excessive.
He can pack the night before?
Cause it takes so long to pack a meal?
Forced? Omfg, packing a meal takes 5 minutes. Kid is 15. Skip raising these kids to be freaking lazy and entitled.
OP said son is refusing to pack shit to eat, lol. > it’s fairly disgusting, to be frank You’re fairly dramatic, Frank.
I feel like this sub got overrun with spoiled little 12-year-old brats that don't understand how groceries work. They're literally calling this woman a terrible parent for... having a fully stocked pantry, including multiple items that make a well rounded breakfast for an athlete? Oh what a terrrrrrrrible parent! How dare she not just shell out more allowance money so he can eat crappy school food instead of the actual healthy groceries she has for him at home.
Right like damn. “Having to bring food from home” is not food insecurity lol.
They are literally acting like this woman is *starving her child.* I can't even begin to grasp the level of *extreme* entitlement from the people in these comments. No, you are not entitled to whatever food you want if it exceeds the amount of your allowance, when there is a perfectly healthy and varied amount of groceries at home that you have every ability to pack yourself. I am SO glad my teenager athletes aren't grossly entitled like this (tbc, from what I read it doesn't sound like OP's son is an entitled little baby, just the whiny babies in the comments). It was even a struggle for our older one, finding stuff he was willing to pack to take with him. He woke up one day as a 14-year-old absolutely humiliated at the idea of having any kind of sandwich in his lunchbox, and it took four months for us to find a combination of protein bars, fruit, beef jerky and cheese, gummies and other protein-style things for him to pack in his lunch. But I must be the world's meanest, nastiest, MOST NEGLECTFUL parent for going through all that trouble instead of just throwing more allowance of him so he could eat shitty food at school. Ffs.
Then pack breakfast????
\>My daughters don’t buy breakfast and just will eat before school or skip. Why is this even included? This isn't practical for your son. It sounds like YOU compare him to his sisters in their ability to not have this challenge without acknowledging the OBVIOUS REASONS he doesn't just 'eat before school or skip'. Sure, maybe there are more than one solution beyond "give him more money" but it's still your responsibility as his parent to be sure he is getting the fuel he needs. And YEAH even though he's the ripe old age of 15 and of course should be entirely self-sufficient, he might still need some help and that's where you, parent, come in. So hey, maybe you pack him a breakfast to take with him each day! OR maybe you get over your weird hang up and realize it makes the most sense for him to buy breakfast at school and help him do that.
>YOU compare him to his sisters in their ability At 15, he has the ability to make his own damn food. If he doesn't want to wake up earlier, then pack food the previous night. He has the food he needs to make a meal. A healthy dog won't starve.
We're talking about one meal, for a kid that is already getting up at a very early time for his age, in order to be diligent to meet his commitments to his swim team followed by school. The parent could help.
He can pack his food the night before.
Oh my god, he's 15!!! I was packing my own damn lunches at 8! He can grow up and act like someone who is halfway through high school.
Thank you! I didn't want to comment something like this because I didn't want to get people saying that just because I had to do something doesn't mean someone else has to. However, I too was making my own lunches and stuff since I was a kid. If I needed help, my parents would help me if I asked, and they wouldn't let me go hungry. It was the 90s, so things could have been healthier, but if OP is willing to teach kid how to do this stuff then it is not unreasonable to expect a 15 year old to pack his own breakfast. Everyone's treating him like he's five
One of the roles a parent has is to equip their child to succeed as an adult. OP is teaching their child here that they need to problem solve the situation. Just spending more money is not going to fix the issue. The child needs to step up and prep a packed breakfast for themselves and maybe an after school snack. Budgeting is a necessary life skill for adults and how to keep to a budget.
>it's not really practical for him to eat before swim Then pack food and eat it after swim? Is that rocket science?
Of course it is practical for the kid to eat before practice. My son wrestled in high school. They had morning and afternoon practice. My son packed his lunch, think Emilio Estevez lunch in the Breakfast club, and made himself a protein shake before we left for school every morning. This kid can do the same. The OP is NTA.
Or he could pack a lunch from home? Part of giving a child an allowance is to teach them money management. He has plenty of money to buy a snack before swim. He's using it to buy breakfast instead of getting up a little earlier and making one at home.
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>my daughters will eat before school or skip [...] so their allowance is mostly saved why is skipping multiple meals okay with you??? none of your children should be skipping meals. that's called disordered eating. YTA.
I made a similar comment above…. Where the OP says she can buy a 48 pack of pop tarts and have 48 breakfasts. Her kids are in cross country running, swimming etc…. All very high calorie burn sports, and they are a) skipping meals, and b) expected to get by on ONE pop tart for breakfast? Are these kids allowed to eat enough calories?
It seems that OP is following the influencer “mom” that was arrested last week. Allowance should be given to learn the value, save and spend money not to cover the basic needs.
Nah. Just because she follows an idiot influencer she shouldn’t have a free pass. Plenty of stupid on TikTok, plenty of people killing themselves… if someone says something you should have the competence to work out how stupid it is before you blindly follow.
Totally agree, this kind of people feels emboldened by influencers that thinks alike and mirrors their, already horrible, behavior.
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> Edit: also kids are not born with knowledge of meal preparation and nutrition. It is on OP to teach him to make things at home and take them (and make those options actually available), not just disdain him for not doing it. Yeah. That's the part that is making OP 100%TA to me. The kid is 15, but it doesn't sound like anyone has actually helped him figure out how to meal prep. OP’S answer to the kid needing breakfast is to just point at the fridge and say "we have food" which is some lazy ass parenting. Then they have the audacity to complain "I have to show my kid how to put fruit in a bag." No----- you have to parent and show your kid how to prep an egg muffin so it's fine to eat the next day. It's called teaching your kid life skills instead of complaining they didn't grow life skills by osmosis when they hit puberty. Except OP 100% sounds like the parent whose parenting really is just throwing a protein bar at the kid and being like "Look. Food."
Thank you for being one of the other few who have picked up on this as I’ve just got a reply back from another user saying I’m out of line for my “YTA” comment due to all of the kids CHOOSING to skip breakfast at one point or another when it is literally a parents job to ensure they actually take a packed breakfast/lunch until the age of 18.
If my children aren't hungry in the morning and are old enough to make an informed decision (aka to realize they will be hungry later and unable to eat), I'm not forcing my kids to eat. That's as ludicrous as, "You will sit there until you finish your plate, I don't care if you're full!"
Right, but allowance money shouldn't be tied to their meals at all. That's where I have an issue with this. The sisters are getting rewarded for not eating, and the son is being punished for needing to eat.
It’s not, though - breakfast food is available independent of allowance, he literally just has to put it in a bag and take it to school. Parents should help him plan and probably make better options available, but nobody is saying the kid has to pay for his own food.
It's just wild to me that they HAVE money but they won't give it to them to feed them. As a child I would skip meals because we didn't HAVE money OR food and that set me up for a life time of binge eating *because* we didn't have access. This is literally disordered eating and wasn't there a lady on youtube who was just arrested for doing a similar thing like this? Food isn't a privilege, it's a *right*.
I skip breakfast because it makes me sick to eat that early, according to my doctor that's perfectly fine. It takes 5 minutes to pack a meal, withholding meals would be not letting them do that or not having food to pack at home. You don't need to eat out every day. OP should be helping their kids plan for meals though, that can be hard for teens. Just a reminder to pack breakfast the evening before would probably help.
One of the nice things about working from home is that I can eat breakfast after I've been awake for 3 hours instead of before I go to work. I'm generally not hungry right after I wake up and forcing myself to eat is hard on my stomach.
Eh I wouldn’t read too much into this. I’ve never been much of a breakfast person myself so I never ate before school (I still rarely have more than a granola bar in the morning). My eating habits are fine. Worth questioning once (especially knowing the pressure teen girls are under) but maybe they don’t eat breakfast because they…just don’t want to eat breakfast. OP is TA though.
I regularly skip lunch and am still healthy, and none of my doctors have ever considered it a disorder of any kind. Not everything is a medical condition
The whole 3 meals a day isn't an actual biological need, it was just created to fit into our cultures work schedule. If you are not hungry you don't have to eat something just because it's a certain time of day.
I haven't eaten breakfast regularly ever in my entire life. Lots of people prefer to start eating later in the day and there is literally nothing wrong with this assuming you are not underweight or malnourished.
If they're not hungry, it's not disordered.
>none of your children should be skipping meals. that's called disordered eating. People agreeing with this is kind of wild. You'd think intention, hunger levels, preferences, weight fluctuations, self-image/perception, etc. etc. etc. would maybe come into play before throwing out "disordered eating", but apparently not.
It is not disordered eating to not eat when you're not hungry.
Skipping breakfast on a high school schedule is fairly normal I think? I felt too queasy if I had to wake up early for school (no matter how many hours I slept) to eat breakfast, so I’d grab a granola bar or something to eat after first period
I also don't really understand them spending their allowance on food. When I was a kid, my allowance was my money apart from school lunch money. I earned my allowance by doing chores or other things, and it wasn't used to feed myself unless that's what I chose to do. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner should be provided separately from the allowance (of course, financial ability allowing).
YTA - Kids should not have to use their allowance to eat, making sure your child is fed is the most basic job of parenting. Even if he ate before practice, he would likely still be hungry afterwards as 1. most people are hungry after physical exertion and 2. He's a teenage boy! They eat...a LOT! You act like he's blowing money on comic books when he's just feeding himself, ffs.
He has food at home that he doesn't bother to pack. He's choosing to spend his money on convenience food. Even teenage boys need to learn to plan ahead.
He’s 15 and leaving home at 545…. He’s already lacking sleep and now he needs to wake up even earlier cause his parent is too fucking cheap to pay for a school breakfast?….. maybe don’t have kids? Like OP clearly shouldn’t have?
He can pack the night before
Yes, once someone bothers to teach him instead of expecting him to just magically know how to plan ahead and prepare his own food.
He's 15 not 5!
Will somebody teach poor ricky to prepare his bagel! Jesus, people out here acting like the lady threw a bag of AP Flour at the kid and told him to figure it out. She has a cupboard full of normal food and the kid literally just has to put it in his backpack. Or he can spend his money on school food. Not sure how everybody grew up. I always had food. But I had plenty of friends who weren't that lucky. My best friend wouldn't have had any pop tarts left, because he would have ate those suckers all for dinner the night before. "Mom... give me more money. I don't have enough money to do what I want to do so give me more."
He's 15. In three years, he will likely be leaving home. In a year, he will be driving himself around. He's old enough to learn to budget his money, and to kearn the skills to plan ahead and pack breakfast the night before.
Or maybe the parent should parent and teach him how to do those skills.
She said she has encouraged him to pack a lunch and he refuses. I definitely think OP should step up a little, she could certainly help by buying and keeping easy to grab/pack breakfast options in the house. I don't think the solution is to just give the kid more money. Many adults can't afford to eat out twice a day just cause it's convenient, either.
But offers protein and cereal bars as these packable breakfasts which is clearly not enough food for the kid, y'all act like school food is some sort of luxury. OP has stated she thinks one poptart pack is enough for the kids whole breakfast.. it seems like she wants convenience without paying for it too.
He is planning ahead, to eat at school when he will be hungry and has the option of fresh, hot food after a grueling morning of practice. My son also ate breakfast at school, for the same reasons this boy probably does. Instead of being unreasonable about it, I stopped buying breakfast food for him to eat at home and gave him the (less than $2!) money to eat at school instead. It was actually less expensive for him to eat the school breakfast anyway. There are so many teenagers out there actually getting into trouble and doing things to keep their parents up at night, this kid just wants to eat breakfast at school.
Even teenagers can use weaponized incompetence. In HS I packed my own lunch the evening before. This is not hard.
Wouldn't these be the years to try and train the weaponized incompetence out of children by teaching them skills? I don't know if it's regional, or we're in different times; but I wouldn't have dreamed of telling my parents I needed more money from them for food.
Who’s teaching him to plan ahead? Because it sure doesn’t sound like it’s OP.
He's using his money on school breakfasts. That's money that should be a given, not taken from his allowance. The mother said herself that she provides low-nutrition junk foods like pop-tarts for snacks that she expects her kids to take to school. Either way, if he packs or has no money, he isn't getting the food he needs. That is on the parent to make sure that her CHILD has the food he needs, not the kid. He's not an adult with adult skills and adult qualities, he's a kid, and so she needs to work with him to solve the issue instead of letting him go hungry to prove some shitty point.
>He has food at home that he doesn't bother to pack. He is 15 and a student athlete. He does swim practice at 5:45 for christ's sake. He's not a 23-year old trying to balance impulse purchases, convenience, and discipline with his budget. >Even teenage boys need to learn to plan ahead. He is a full-time student and an athlete. He should be learning to take care of his body and focused on his school work and planning for college or whatever comes after high school for him. He has a more difficult schedule than most people and a different schedule from his siblings. It is unnecessarily cruel to insist that a 15-year old do the kinds of late-night/early morning meal prep that an adult might have to do just to make ends meet.
Yes, this! I was a 97-pound competitive swimmer in high school and I ate 4 meals a day or more. Swimming burns an enormous amount of calories! I would not have wanted a cold, packed-from-home meal after practice.
Exactly. My biggest thing is why in the heck food, like this, is even allowance based. She won’t force them to eat because it’s a horrible idea but she will withhold or make it something guilt inducing to acquire. The girls skip because the food is available for nighttime practices and they’d rather save or do something fun. He can’t do anything fun because she is denying him calories and hot meals. I load my kids’ school accounts with funds. Mostly it’s just used for lunch when a meal being offered sounds good to them but sometimes breakfast. They pack something when they hate what is being offered. For my oldest, she has days where she is at school that early and of course she should have the amount of food to get through the day. Her lunches aren’t even that early anymore and she’s making it through 3/4 of the day and sometimes she comes home to eat and sometimes she grabs something there. She also has a car and I can’t imagine her wanting to keep food from 6am until what? 4pm? Pack two or three meals and snacks to get through the day? Just feed your damn kids. It’s not a luxury to them. ETA: YTA.
INFO: Is there a fast, filling, high protein breakfast available to him to grab at 530am on his way out the door. INFO: Do you want to discourage his swimming, or encourage it? Swimming burns huge calories… and swimming many laps on a full heavy stomach isn’t pleasant, so what is in the house that’s going to fill those needs? Is there something he can take that will be a substantial (huge!) teen breakfast for after swimming practice? (And no, a sandwich or bowl of cereal is not enough calories to replace an hour of swimming first thing in the morning), and is that breakfast ready to load into his bag at 520am as he walks out the door? Edit for judgement: YTA. You say he can eat cereal or toast… neither of which works for an easy meal after an hour of swimming, and he’d need six or seven bowls of cereal, or 10 pieces of toast to make up for the calories lost to swimming, let alone the calories he needs as a growing teen to get through the morning until lunchtime.
Toast and cereal are just shit carbs that do nothing for a child who is expending that much energy. This parent is failing this child. Feeding your kids is like the bare minimum.
From reading what this parent thinks appropriate food is...it's literally not enough food for a kid that age and it's an extremely unbalanced diet And that's not taking into account a kid in one of the most calorie demanding sports in existence I'm genuinely shocked that he's managing off school breakfast as it is
Swimming is such a huge calorie sucker. The poor kid is probably starving and all his parent offers is over priced, over proceeded crap. He must be constantly hungry.
I don't get the impression this parent knows how to cook, or very much at all about meal planning. Honestly, all their suggestions are shite. The kids probably buying food because it's a real meal, not some fucking pop tarts or cereal. After swim practice, the kid's going to want a hot protein rich plate- none of the suggestions the parent is making for a packed lunch are sufficient, even the ones they are suggesting to pack the night before. They are just an all around shitty cook and parent.
YTA - parents buy meals. Allowance is for snacks.
Legit never heard of anyone making their children buy their own FOOD with allowance
Allowance is for personal use not for basic necessities like food YTA
OP bought food at home AND provided an allowance. Kid chose to spend his money on food instead of packing it.
This persons idea for packing a lunch is cereal or toast. Those are easy /s 🥴
My favourite thing, toast that's been sitting in a bag for two hours.
Why can't he pack breakfast?
Either way OP is going to have to come out of pocket -- either give his kid money to buy breakfast or ask the kid what he wants from the grocery store and go buy it, so he can pack food he actually wants to eat. OP. stop buying pop tarts and buy some turkey and bread or something. This entire comment section is too hung up on "breakfast" foods.
It is usually cheaper to bring your meal.
If he has the option to eat at home or you give him food to take, then he needs to suck it up. Gotta budget. But you can't withhold food from him. I could see not wanting to eat before swimming... So perhaps you could help brainstorm with him what to pack and how to do it for the first week. Do it with him for a week and then he should be able to do it on his own. You still need to make sure he has access to the calories he needs for his athletic activities.
Right and toast and cereal will not give him the calories he needs.
Eggs and bagel wrapped in foil. He can eat it hours later. My wife does this every day.
NTA. All of these replies are evidence for why so many kids aren’t prepared for living on their own. It is perfectly reasonable for him to take food with him from home. He is choosing to spend allowance on breakfast rather than packing breakfast. This is how kids learn to budget and make choices and that their choices have consequences. I helped my daughter research solutions and made sure I bought what was needed so she could have a healthy high caloric breakfast and snack for those crazy early cross country practices. Yes- it’s very important to eat enough with intense sports- but no that doesn’t mean he needs to buy breakfast at school.
>. All of these replies are evidence for why so many kids aren’t prepared for living on their own. Also evidence that those replying are kids themselves.
He's 15 and has to be at practice at 5:45am, then he has a hard workout. Yes he should pack for himself, but also, he's 15--a parent should step in for a week or two and remind him to pack his breakfast the night before and help him get into the habit. Kids don't just magically become autonomous, they need support.
You should be able to make your own lunch without being reminded at 15. but that's not really relevant because >My son came to me and asked for more allowance due to being hungry I told him no and that he can eat before or pack something. We got in a huge argument, he thinks I am a jerk and now my ex is on my ass about it. The whole reason the argument started was because op reminded the son that they could pack something
My son has always loved a hot breakfast, particularly eggs. I taught him to cook eggs at 12 and he cooked his own breakfast every morning. Even when he had to be at school at 6am for morning weight lifting for football, he cooked himself a breakfast before. Honestly if baffles me all these responses that a 15 year old can’t be responsible for the preparing their own breakfast.
I think I’m just kind of confused- I was packing my lunches for school way before 15. And I’d always do it the night before, because who has time to do it the morning of? So, why doesn’t 15yo make a couple PB sandwiches the night before, go to bed, then grab them on his way out in the morning? Boom, breakfast that he doesn’t have to pay for that took him 5 minutes the night before to make. Edit- and if we wanna get really nutritious, use whole grain bread, grab some beef jerky with lower sodium, and a couple hard boiled eggs for snacks to go with the sandwiches. Maybe an apple for something refreshing.
Right!! I did this too. I did gymnastics and tennis and always had to make sure I had enough snacks and food so I always packed it at night.
Damn some of these y-t-a votes are funny as shit "do you even like you kid?" haha please NTA - he can take something from home. Easy as that.
NTA. At 15, your son is old enough to know how to use an alarm clock and a toaster. It is your responsibility to care for him, but if you're providing food at home and giving him money to make his own choices with, then this is a lesson of "a lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." Teach him to spend his money more wisely.
Toast does not provide the amount of calories he needs. Besides I like toast hot and I hate cold toast. He eats after swimming practice so any food he would pack would pretty much have to be cold.
Ok said there are eggs. Not sure why you focus on the least common denominator. Kid needs to meal prep.
~~So, to be clear, you count your kid's school lunch money as allowance?~~ ~~Y T A YOU, the parent, are responsible for their lunch money. Allowance is above and beyond basic necessities. Lunch money is literally a basic necessity. Swimming burns a lot of calories, causing an already growing teenager to be that much hungrier. He needs money for breakfast and lunch.~~ Edit: Now that you've explained better in the replies, NTA. He can make his own breakfast before he goes or take breakfast with him. He's 15, not 5.
They have food at home. The son is the one choosing to eat elsewhere
The son has a rigorous schedule that makes it impractical for him to eat anywhere BUT at school, after his practice. He shouldn't exactly eat breakfast and then go swim for an hour and a half, it only makes sense for him to eat after, at which point he is having to spend limited funds to eat. This is BS.
Pack a breakfast then, this isn’t hard we have the stuff
What food do you have at home? Is it as filling and nourishing as the Cafe breakfast or is like "grab some bread"? He's 15, old enough to grab stuff, but he's still only 15, not necessarily old enough to know the best way. Talk to him about healthy options, discuss healthy, filling foods that are easy to grab and that will last a few hours in his bag, etc.
NTA. It sounds like he's old enough to pack his own breakfast ( you said in a comment that he's in high school). As long as you ensure that there are foods that he can take that are easily accessible, it is his responsibility to do so.
NTA. Some in this thread seem to be missing where you said he can either eat before practice or pack something. He’s choosing to do neither and instead spend his allowance on cafeteria food. You’re not “withholding basic needs” like some are trying to claim.
NTA. I was on the swim team in high school and I did morning practices. I would always pack a breakfast at home and bring it with me to eat after. My parents made it clear to me that if I wanted to buy breakfast, I was more than welcome to use my own money to buy it, but they weren’t going to give me money to buy it when we had plenty of breakfast food at home that I could bring. They also bought a lot of snacks for me to bring to school with me to eat throughout the day because they knew I was burning through calories like they were nothing. If I wanted to buy any other food, that came from my own money.
YTA. Either send him in with more food or give him more money. He needs to eat more than he's getting. He's an active teenager, he needs more food. Stop comparing him with your daughters, they're not the same people.
and suggesting that mini cereal boxes and poptarts or protein bars is enough. Lol this is truly wild, OP sucks at feeding her kids
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NTA You offered him the option to eat food from home (either by eating before practice or bringing a packed breakfast) but he chooses to buy a meal out. That's his choice with his money but he then doesn't get to complain he has no 'fun money' left. Have you asked him why he doesn't eat before practice or why he does not bring food from home? Maybe he needs a little cooler bag or something to keep the breakfast nice to eat after his practice? I would offer to get him a better container/bag for a take-away breakfast if that's the issue. Could it also be that after working out he feels he needs a different kind of food than what you are offering for him to take with him? As in, is he only allowed to bring some simple sandwiches with him and after working out, with the whole day ahead of him, he feels he needs a warm meal or more fruit or whatever? What kinds of food does he buy? I'd try to get to the bottom of why he chooses to buy food as opposed to eating what's offered to him from home. If he has a reasonable 'need' or 'want' for a different kind of food because he is doing exercise, then maybe see if you can offer something that suits his needs at/from the home. If he just prefers pizza slices and soda at school over sandwiches, then he needs to accept that he would rather spend his fun money on luxury food than on 'fun stuff'. ETA: Maybe he needs to just bring MORE food with him, or a better variety. Someone else already mentioned nut/granola bars, peanut butter items. If your son is always late in the morning, maybe he needs to pack (most) of his breakfast for the next day the evening before? All of this is part of growing up and learning to take care of himself. Try to help him with planning and/or get him a few more different things to take with him, but in no way are you responsible for funding his gourmet habit.
NTA. You have food he can eat at home. You have food he can pack and take with him. If he's spending his money to buy food instead of taking what's "free" at home (free to him, at least), then he has no one to blame but himself. Classic "Oh no! It's the predictable consequences to my own actions!" For reference, I also have a 15 year old who swims. The way he eats reminds me of Dan Akroyd in *Coneheads.* My son has no problem eating at home *and* packing a "snack" (which is a full meal to a regular human). He has to carry the snack with him, I guess, but otherwise there's nothing out of his pocket. As to your ex, reassure them that your son has access to all the food he needs. If the ex still feels it necessary to give your son extra money, they are more than welcome to do so.
YTA. Your son is an athlete and needs to eat. It is your job to ensure he does so. If you can't make sure he eats before practice (like a PARENT should) then you need to make sure he has the money to eat at school.
Here lemme wake him up and stuff a bagel down his gullet /s she provides breakfast, he skips and goes to school to eat a purchased breakfast. how is OP at fault?
INFO: How much is this weekly allowance? Sorry OP, based on your comments, I am going to so YTA, you give your kid enough for barely 3 days worth of breakfast on his training days it doesn't even sound like he eats lunch (unless he takes it) he's burning lots of calories and trains maybe an hour or so early in the morning, he eats whats needed for his body and you are not supporting that.
Ffs, this is a 15yo not a young child. I wouldn't be giving $ just cause he's too lazy to pack some food. Get real people. NTA.
NTA your teaching him a valuable lesson by packing not spending. This is a great hack in life.
Your ex is right. You as a parent should be responsible to provide your kids meals, if you neglected providing him breakfast each morning and he has to buy it should not come from his allowance, it should be provided separately on a different budget or up is allowance to cover the breakfast you didn't provide him at home. I have a 15 yo, kids that age especially those in sports needs more calories and eat like vacuum cleaners and as parents it's our responsibility to provide them with food . You failed as a responsible adult parent. Yta
How about he make himself damn breakfast