Do your teens expect you to cook meals for them over the summer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel so sorry for all these kids whose parents don’t feed them dinner! OMG.

I feel sorry for all the women who are stuck in traditional roles. I find it shocking among this educated cohort

Educated people can't cook? WTH?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread explains so well why my white American MIL is such a horrible and ungenerous host.

Well how did your DH turn out? Does he know how to cook since presumably his mother didn’t do it for him?

No, he doesn't know how to cook. He got accustomed to eating canned vegetables and boiled chicken. Just low expectations and standards passed on through the generations.

Sounds like my family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread explains so well why my white American MIL is such a horrible and ungenerous host.

Well how did your DH turn out? Does he know how to cook since presumably his mother didn’t do it for him?

My MIL doesn’t cook/ is pretty bad if she tries. Consequently dh is a great cook and he loves it. His dad is also a great cook so he modeled it and I love that dh models a man cooking at home for ds. My mom was the best cook (and taught hs FT’!) and I do t enjoy it that much. Kids are okay, can make stuff but aren’t artisans. But they can do the basics and are only teens.

[Anonymous]

Don’t conflate feeding your children with misogyny.

This is a parental responsibility. Either parent. Those saying it’s not their job to feed their teens, do you at least buy all the food ingredients they need to feed themselves, or do you make them grocery shop too? Do they have to pay? Did you teach them how to cook nutritious and tasty foods or they just eat hot pockets? I’m so baffled by this whole thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t conflate feeding your children with misogyny.

This is a parental responsibility. Either parent. Those saying it’s not their job to feed their teens, do you at least buy all the food ingredients they need to feed themselves, or do you make them grocery shop too? Do they have to pay? Did you teach them how to cook nutritious and tasty foods or they just eat hot pockets? I’m so baffled by this whole thread.

The years after camps end and teens can legally get a job is when I really taught mine how to shop and cook. Don’t send your kids out into the work without basic skills like how to cook and clean up after themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t conflate feeding your children with misogyny.

This is a parental responsibility. Either parent. Those saying it’s not their job to feed their teens, do you at least buy all the food ingredients they need to feed themselves, or do you make them grocery shop too? Do they have to pay? Did you teach them how to cook nutritious and tasty foods or they just eat hot pockets? I’m so baffled by this whole thread.

The years after camps end and teens can legally get a job is when I really taught mine how to shop and cook. Don’t send your kids out into the work without basic skills like how to cook and clean up after themselves.

Agree. But none of this precludes you (or your spouse) from making and serving a family dinner if you are home. Which is what OP is objecting to. Needing to cook for her teen at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t conflate feeding your children with misogyny.

This is a parental responsibility. Either parent. Those saying it’s not their job to feed their teens, do you at least buy all the food ingredients they need to feed themselves, or do you make them grocery shop too? Do they have to pay? Did you teach them how to cook nutritious and tasty foods or they just eat hot pockets? I’m so baffled by this whole thread.

The years after camps end and teens can legally get a job is when I really taught mine how to shop and cook. Don’t send your kids out into the work without basic skills like how to cook and clean up after themselves.

Agree. But none of this precludes you (or your spouse) from making and serving a family dinner if you are home. Which is what OP is objecting to. Needing to cook for her teen at all.

My kids took 2 days per week in the summers. They went to the store with me and picked out the ingredients. The other nights were leftovers, me cooking, or takeout. If they having nothing to do all day, they can cook dinner.

[Anonymous]

Food is love.

[Anonymous]

I feel as though there is a big difference between making a plan where your tween or teen learns to cooks healthy meals and prepares them for the family, while you still provide the structure and eat together, and deciding you resent the effort to feed your kid, and suddenly just dropping your responsibilities, and telling your teenager to fend for himself. The OP reads like the latter, but maybe I am wrong.

The thing is, teaching your kid to cooks healthy meals, and to shop, and to budget is work. It also involves eating some subpar food when you could be eating your own cooking. It’s not some time saving method.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Food is love.

Careful with that.

[Anonymous]

Healthy meals is such a strange phrase. Healthy is pretty subjective. There’s plenty of vegans even in Hollywood who are technically overweight and even obese for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Food is love.

Careful with that.

No worries. We're all skinny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel as though there is a big difference between making a plan where your tween or teen learns to cooks healthy meals and prepares them for the family, while you still provide the structure and eat together, and deciding you resent the effort to feed your kid, and suddenly just dropping your responsibilities, and telling your teenager to fend for himself. The OP reads like the latter, but maybe I am wrong.

The thing is, teaching your kid to cooks healthy meals, and to shop, and to budget is work. It also involves eating some subpar food when you could be eating your own cooking. It’s not some time saving method.

THIS.

[Anonymous]

We meal plan and shop on weekends and serve family dinners on weeknights. The summer schedule is a lot looser than the school year but the framework is still there. During summer we lean on things the kids can cook themselves or reheat if they are coming home late from work or hangouts..

[Anonymous]

Ummm, of course you cook for your kid.

....OR, if you know they have a free day, you ask them to make the meal for the whole family, not just for themselves....you have the ingredients and you or you and they together decide something that they are able to make independently, and you you set the expectation.

but never cooking for your kid just bc it's summer - that is just weird and why American families are falling apart.