Lately, my five-year-old daughter had been acting strangely. She was always a smart, obedient child, never picky with food. But suddenly, she developed a habit that worried me deeply.

Every time I called her for lunch, she refused to sit at the table. Instead, she carried her plate into the bathroom, locked the door, and ate alone on a little chair she had placed there. When finished, she came out with an empty plate as if nothing unusual had happened. For a whole month this repeated, and I began to fear the worst.

Talking to her was useless—she stayed silent. So one morning, I set up a hidden camera in the bathroom. At lunchtime, she went in as usual, ate calmly at first… then suddenly exclaimed:
“—That’s it! Alex gets nothing!”

I froze. Alex is her older brother. Later, I questioned him:
“Do you know why your sister eats in the bathroom?”
“Yes,” he said casually. “She’s scared I’ll steal her food.”

It turned out he had taken bites from her plate before because “hers always tasted better.” All my worries disappeared in a second. I had imagined terrible scenarios, but the truth was simple: my daughter was just protecting her food from her mischievous brother—determined to guard every bite at all costs.