Teaching your children to have healthy eating habits is important, though in today’s world, it is also very difficult.

What would you do if you packed a healthy lunch for your daughter every day, but she now wants to take money to school to buy her lunch because that is what the other kids are doing?

That is what the parents in this story are dealing with, and while they have no problem with her buying a healthy option at school, they know that she would end up getting junk food. Dad wants to give her limited options to buy junk food sometimes, but Mom is worried that they will cause an eating disorder.

At the end of the day, both parents just want what is best, but don’t know where to draw the line. Check out the details below and see what you think.

AITA for not giving my daughter money for school lunch?

My daughter is 12, and just started her last year of middle school. Already, even though she’s only been in school for a week and a half, we’re having an issue that we had last year as well.

A healthy lunch is an important meal for all kids.

I prepare all of my daughter’s lunches, or I will prep several ingredients for things and she can sort of assemble her own lunch.

They’re healthy, nutritious, and never made up of things she doesn’t like.

Buying lunch at school is the ‘cool’ thing to do.

But towards the end of last year and now she has been basically throwing a fit once a week about how she’s tired of having her own lunch and she wants to buy lunch.

I looked into the school’s lunch program, and while it’s not as good as a homemade meal, her school has many lunch programs you can sign your kid up for including one that is pretty dang diverse and healthy.

Giving kids unrestricted access to junk food is a horrible idea.

I told her I was fine with signing her up for the lunch program if she’d like.

Nope. She wants to have some extra money so she can buy junk and she claims that there is a huge culture of trading food and no one wants hers and she feels left out when everyone else has pizza.

Should schools even be offering junk food?

The school has little separate kiosks for junk food that are open at various points in the week, and I know if I gave her money for the whole week, she’d just eat that stuff or get candy from the school shop.

I told her if she wants a little extra money she can do some more around the house, then use that for pizza or something once or twice a week, but that if she does that *we probably won’t go out as a family for fast food on the weekends (not that we do much now already).

Dad seems to be trying to have a compromise without compromising her health.

She’d still be free to eat whatever snacks she buys, go out to eat with friends (which I usually pay for so she doesn’t spend her own money to be social), etc. No go.

She gets money for grade improvements or anytime she learns a new skill, and she also has a “snack allowance” if she goes to the store with her mother or me, where basically in exchange for being useful at the grocery store, she has a set amount of money out of the grocery budget for the week just for snacks for herself.

This seems like a great way to teach her about money and healthy eating habits.

We do “tax” unhealthy snacks a bit more so she doesn’t blow it all on candy or something. Point is, she COULD use her own money though I still wouldn’t allow it daily.

I also asked my older child who went to the same middle school and was there with her for his last year and her first if he’s ever noticed any bullying of her about this stuff.

Kids can feel awkward when they are doing something that others aren’t.

I don’t trust him to be observant enough to know if she’s being bullied, but he said no one cares what other people are eating and he doesn’t know of anyone getting bullied for snacks.

He also mentioned that when he was there, if she had a problem with someone, she came to him and she never mentioned anything about snacks.

She likely just feels out of place because of this.

Of course, that was only the first year, and she started complaining the second year so who knows.

*It’s also worth noting that my daughter does not LIKE fast food for the most part, and so this is very socially motivated for her and not food motivated for her.

The parents seem very involved and caring.

Since she is younger than her peers, we are careful to not indulge in peer pressure requests too freely as she is VERY susceptible to it and this is the primary issue, not what specifically she is eating (though yes, I do not want her eating fast food for lunch every day and don’t think she’s old enough to have total reign there).

Her mother disagrees with me and is worried I’m going to give her an eating disorder, but I feel like if the only eating disorder I give my kid is one where she know how to make healthy, nutritious meals, then I’m fine with that.

They have a very reasonable view on this topic.

Even if she pushes back and eats unhealthily in college or something, at least she’ll have good habits and the know how to get it back if she needs.

AITA?

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No, it is clear that both Mom and Dad just care about their daughter and want what is best. It is also easy to see that their daughter is just trying to fit in, which is completely normal. From what is written here, they are giving her plenty of options to consider, and it will all work out just fine.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about siblings who treat every social outing like a weird competition.

Check out what the people in the comments have to say about this situation.

Here is a commenter who says they are handling the situation well.

This is a simple compromise.

I agree with this commenter. They gave her a number of good options.

Here is someone who says it isn’t about wanting junk food.

This commenter says it is more about the social aspect of eating.

Finding the right balance between helping your child fit in and allowing them to make bad choices is difficult. When it comes to food, fitting in often means eating unhealthy meals. Unhealthy meals, of course, can cause a lifetime of problems.

She was given multiple different ways to get what she wanted, but she declined them all. At this point, if the daughter really wants to be able to buy snacks at school, she needs to pick one of the options her dad provided.