London - My eldest is sitting on the sofa clutching a giant beaker of hot chocolate topped with swirls of squirts whipped cream.
She’s been to a Starbucks coffee shop round the corner from our house with her friend.
They’re both nearly 13, and this trip out together on a Saturday morning is another step along the road to adulthood.
The two of them sit peacefully side by side watching re-runs of Friends, slurping on straws. Their names are written on the side of the cups, as is Starbucks’ custom.
These beakers have become a badge of independence for any pre-teen growing up in a city. The local streets are awash with groups of them aimlessly wandering about like a tribe of little people clutching personalised paper cups.
I watch from the other side of the kitchen, mentally calculating that each one holds around 500 calories.
These are basically giant containers of sugar: expensive drinks with exotic names such as frappuccino and vanilla caramel macchiato. It strikes me that this is cradle-to-grave marketing. Snare them while they’re young, use their developing habit to trap them as forever consumers.
I don’t like it, but what can I do: be the only mom who says “No” to the Mocca-frappy-wotsit and make my child friend-free?
So I bite my tongue and watch from the sidelines while she spends her pocket money on the liquidy treats that are the status symbols of a generation.
I think access to these fast-food coffee shops is possibly the most dangerous thing about growing up in London, but I keep this thought to myself.
I’ve become adept at staying silent as I stand on the brink of a new dawn in my mothering career: teenagerdom. When it comes to potentially explosive subjects such as calorie intake, you will find me tiptoeing as delicately as I would in a room full of sleeping newborns.
There’s so much I want to say, but my greatest worry is setting off the invisible eating disorder alarm.
Sometimes, I just hang there metaphorically, like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, hovering above the criss-crossing infrared lights of every mom’s worst fear while my girls quaff on unhealthy sugary drinks.
I don’t want to be the food police and also I’m painfully aware that when you ban something it becomes infinitely more attractive to teenagers.
Besides, everyone knows young girls don’t like to be told what to do.
They certainly don’t want you to make the link between calorie consumption and expanding bodies.
It’s on the list of stuff never to say out loud. But this confusing blanket of nervous maternal silence makes me uneasy.
Starbucks and their like have hit the jackpot by becoming the cool meeting place for teenagers, making it difficult for me to remind my daughters that a giant daily hot chocolate is probably not the best dietary decision to make.
And I feel a bit of a failure for not being able to reduce her sugar intake during these hormonal teenage years where every study shows it’s bad for you.
Plus I’m no saint when it comes to a sweet tooth, either - though, unlike a teenage girl, I have finally found the willpower to moderate my intake of chocolate Hobnobs so I can just about keep the zip on my jeans shut.
When I discuss this with other moms, we are all as confused as each other.
Should we say something or should we hope this phase, like all the others, will pass?
It seems my only hope is if Taylor Swift somehow tells them for me because, right now, she is by far the most powerful female in our house.
* Lorraine Candy is the editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.
Daily Mail