Parents/ILs and never ending dinner plans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has to eat together all, the, time. Unfortunately, in my experience, grandparents often think you do and take it as a slight if you dare go to a restaurant without them because you’re all in the same place and absolutely must eat with each other every day and caravan to restaurants. Just start the practice I’d saying we’re going here, leaving in a few minutes, if you’d like to pass on it today, that’s fine, we’ll catch you for lunch tomorrow. Or be slick snd make it a date night and say you’ll leave the grandkids with them and get them all take out before you go. 😉

This made my stomach clench. The idea of all meals together. And if we're caravaning to the restaurant, they insist on mixing up everyone between the two cars every time instead of everyone staying in their own.

God yes. So getting in cars becomes a prolonged negotiation and you have to move car seats because they stupidly told your toddler they can ride with them. Never again.

Jesus. You are just adamant about sucking the fun out of vacation for your parents and your kids huh

Riding in Grandpa's car is fun. Let them have it

It’s a car ride. Not a trip to Disney. When the kid doesn’t need a car seat anymore, then I don’t care. Why is riding in Grandpa’s car fun?

Oh please I'm not moving a car seat for a 10-minute drive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:They're probably keeping a much later schedule than you realize and can't adjust.

This.

I get along great with my ILs and my sister and her family and my parents. And our family vacations are always great.

Expect, we normally, as a family, eat dinner at 8:00. Others are used to dinner as early as 5:00. Others are anywhere in between.

I realize we are the outliers (just as much as my parents who like the 5:15 dinner). But its still tough to adjust when they start talking about dinner at 4:30, or suggest we need to get back so we can start cooking.

And on vacation, I'm even more cavalier about when we eat. If we're no duty to cook dinner that night at the beach house, but its a beautiful evening on the beach. I'm not packing up at 5:30 just to make sure dinner is on the table by 6:30. We can eat at 8:30 or 9:00

My kids wouldn’t wait until 830 or 9. It looks like you shirk your cooking duty when it’s your turn. We’d just leave and go eat out rather than wait for the spirit to move you when everyone is starving.

Okay. Cool, but we're still splitting the grocery bill for that meal.

And honestly, its a family vacation. Which, ya know, is meant to be spent with family. If you'll be too hungry to wait until 8:00, have a snack at 5:00.

Kinda like when the other folks cook, and serve dinner at 5:30. I don't skip it and go out to a later dinner bc I'm so stubborn and stuck in my ways. I eat at 5:30. And then, when I'm hungry again at 10:00, I'll have a snack. See how that works? That's called flexibility.

I'll add: I'm not shirking my duties. I'm not waiting for the spirit to move me. I'm enjoying the vacation.

And threads like this make me very very grateful for my family, which is filled with people that just go with the flow. Nobody would ever pull a stunt like just leaving before dinner because it wasnt served at their preferred time

That’s a lot of use of “I” for a family vacation. Me, I, etc. It’s all about you. Kids thrive on a schedule not chaotic meals which may happen at bedtime one day and their regular time the next day. Try to explain flexibility to a hangry 3 yr old.

Well, I raised 3 of them. So...I sort of did.

They're never too young to learn that its not all about them. And honestly, when a 3 year old is hangry, and you say "look, dinner isn't for another 2 hours. Have some goldfish and then go back in the pool", they are usually pretty cool with it

Oh sure now that your kids are grown. Please you’re out of touch and can’t relate to parents with young kids anymore. Throwing goldfish at hungry kids is weak parenting.

She’s probably too drunk to care and her kids quickly learned they won’t get fed until mommy is hungry. I bet they’ll parent their own kids differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I made reservations at Larlo’s pizza at 7. If you would like to ride with us we’re leaving at 6:30.

This. Tell them what you’re doing. They can join you or decline but they have a firm deadline to decide.

But don't restaurants get upset when you reserve for 6 and only 4 show up?

I've had to do that a couple of times. I didn't get a negative reaction from anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has to eat together all, the, time. Unfortunately, in my experience, grandparents often think you do and take it as a slight if you dare go to a restaurant without them because you’re all in the same place and absolutely must eat with each other every day and caravan to restaurants. Just start the practice I’d saying we’re going here, leaving in a few minutes, if you’d like to pass on it today, that’s fine, we’ll catch you for lunch tomorrow. Or be slick snd make it a date night and say you’ll leave the grandkids with them and get them all take out before you go. 😉

This made my stomach clench. The idea of all meals together. And if we're caravaning to the restaurant, they insist on mixing up everyone between the two cars every time instead of everyone staying in their own.

God yes. So getting in cars becomes a prolonged negotiation and you have to move car seats because they stupidly told your toddler they can ride with them. Never again.

Jesus. You are just adamant about sucking the fun out of vacation for your parents and your kids huh

Riding in Grandpa's car is fun. Let them have it

DP. My kids don't care about the grandparents' car. They're fine riding with us and seeing their grandparents 15 minutes later at the destination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I made reservations at Larlo’s pizza at 7. If you would like to ride with us we’re leaving at 6:30.

This. Tell them what you’re doing. They can join you or decline but they have a firm deadline to decide.

But don't restaurants get upset when you reserve for 6 and only 4 show up?

I've had to do that a couple of times. I didn't get a negative reaction from anyone.

I think restaurants don't like it, because they held a 6-top and are only getting paid for 4 entrees in the end. But oh well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has to eat together all, the, time. Unfortunately, in my experience, grandparents often think you do and take it as a slight if you dare go to a restaurant without them because you’re all in the same place and absolutely must eat with each other every day and caravan to restaurants. Just start the practice I’d saying we’re going here, leaving in a few minutes, if you’d like to pass on it today, that’s fine, we’ll catch you for lunch tomorrow. Or be slick snd make it a date night and say you’ll leave the grandkids with them and get them all take out before you go. 😉

This made my stomach clench. The idea of all meals together. And if we're caravaning to the restaurant, they insist on mixing up everyone between the two cars every time instead of everyone staying in their own.

God yes. So getting in cars becomes a prolonged negotiation and you have to move car seats because they stupidly told your toddler they can ride with them. Never again.

We just do not move car seats. If you want to sit with the toddler you get to squeeze in the backseat with them. Besides, you really do not want to sit in a chair where there has been a car seat if I haven't vacuumed it first and there's not really a nice Shop-Vac on vacation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TBH - No one wants to have dinner with your little kids because they suck the joy out of dining.

You should feed your children and put them to bed. Then come and join the grown ups if you want to, for dinner or for desserts.

Can you seeing how many smart people can't read? The issue is restaurants. I have no problem feeding my kids snacks or putting them to bed at a different time and joining up with the group later. That is not a big deal. The issue is trying to entertain kids for like an hour-long wait at a restaurant and then try to keep them from getting too squirrely during a long dinner with family. And in some beach towns you absolutely have to get there early or it's going to be an hour to 90 minute wait

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone has to eat together all, the, time. Unfortunately, in my experience, grandparents often think you do and take it as a slight if you dare go to a restaurant without them because you’re all in the same place and absolutely must eat with each other every day and caravan to restaurants. Just start the practice I’d saying we’re going here, leaving in a few minutes, if you’d like to pass on it today, that’s fine, we’ll catch you for lunch tomorrow. Or be slick snd make it a date night and say you’ll leave the grandkids with them and get them all take out before you go. 😉

This made my stomach clench. The idea of all meals together. And if we're caravaning to the restaurant, they insist on mixing up everyone between the two cars every time instead of everyone staying in their own.

God yes. So getting in cars becomes a prolonged negotiation and you have to move car seats because they stupidly told your toddler they can ride with them. Never again.

Jesus. You are just adamant about sucking the fun out of vacation for your parents and your kids huh

Riding in Grandpa's car is fun. Let them have it

It’s a car ride. Not a trip to Disney. When the kid doesn’t need a car seat anymore, then I don’t care. Why is riding in Grandpa’s car fun?

Oh please I'm not moving a car seat for a 10-minute drive.

You misread—I agree with you. There’s no “fun” about riding in Grandpa’s car (thus my comment about how it’s just a car ride) and no way am I moving a car seat for it. If a 10 year old wants to ride with Grandpa and it doesn’t inconvenience me, fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My MIL loves to research restaurants and discuss. It’s taken some time to train her to do it earlier in the day. I do think she gets a lot of enjoyment out of it though, so as long as it does not interfere with a decent dinner time it’s fine.

This is where the planner in the group takes on the thankless task. At breakfast, when the planner is asking “what should we do for dinner tonight” everyone moans that it’s too early in the day to think about dinner. But come 4pm everyone suddenly wants to know what the plan is and it would suck to find out the good restaurants are already booked because they couldn’t possibly think ahead. Someone has to be the one to take the reins and it would be nice if the others could be decisive and work with the planner so that dinner is stress free.

Ha! This is me. I am the person who gets the us out the door and makes sure the kids eat. I also get the groceries for the house and give everyone a chance to request anything they want and cook the majority of the meals. I do this because my kids have the most food restrictions and because the no one else will (now that the grandkids have their ADHD diagnoses it’s becoming apparent that the older generation has it too). I think they all think it’s like a little quirk I have but the couple times I’ve let things go “their way” have been disasters.

[Anonymous]

This entire family seems to be high maintenance and unable to use their words.