Ex won’t make food our daughter will eat

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, of course my daughter is capable of learning to cook. But when she's at her dad's house, she's still the child and he's the parent, so I think it's reasonable for him to make meals she'll actually eat. She shouldn’t have to make all her meals for herself at her age, I certainly didn’t.

She's 16, which is old enough to help in the kitchen, but she's still a kid. Her dad tends to cook a lot of fish (which she hates), salmon, and vegetable-heavy meals. Occasionally he'll make things like chicken, rice, burgers, or pizza, which she enjoys, but his diet is generally very different from hers.

My daughter isn’t a picky eater and eats a pretty wide range of foods. Sliders with mini beef or chicken burgers on sweet Hawaiian rolls, grilled chicken or steak skewers, Pasta dishes ( chicken Alfredo with fettuccine, lasagna, chicken Parmesan over marinara pasta, baked ziti with a cheesy mozzarella topping, penne alla vodka with chicken in a pink tomato-cream sauce, and chicken bacon ranch pasta bakes, etc). Tacos and burritos with beef or chicken and toppings she can add herself, chicken quesadillas, and chicken wraps. Teriyaki chicken over white rice, ramen with sliced chicken and egg, baked mac and cheese, beef and bean chili with cornbread, chicken noodle soup with thick egg noodles, and BBQ foods like ribs or grilled chicken served with fries. Overall, she’s pretty easy to feed and is happy with a variety of proteins, pastas, rice dishes, soups.

At this point, I think I just need to actually go and make meals for her once a week, and have her eat those meals throughout the week, or try my best to convince him to change up what he eats on the days she’s there, or ask him to make her something different.

You claim your daughter isn't picky yet she won't eat ANY fish and doesn't eat ANY vegetables. He's willing to provide perfectly reasonable, healthy meals and she's refusing them. It's not like he's sitting in front of the tv drinking beer and eating chips and she wants real food. Also, you keep saying "she's still a kid/child". You're infantilizing her. 16 really IS plenty old enough to cook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Clearly the 16 year old can learn to cook but the dad is an AH if he only has her half time and insists on making things she doesn’t like on his weeks. Every single human has food preferences — some more than others. When my oldest is home from school, I make the dinners I know she likes (quiche, shrimp scampi, etc) and avoid the things I know she hates (like pork chops and mashed potatoes). I do this because I love her and want her to be happy eating with me, and because I’m not an AH. It sounds like this girl is an only child so dad is cooking just for her and him — why is he going out of his way to make things she doesn’t like? He can eat those things the week she is with her mom.

She should learn how to cook and this is probably also an early lesson in “a man is not a plan.” This is the kind of girl that is gojng to think twice before getting married because why get saddled with a man when you’ll have to do all the work?

What’s going unsaid in this thread is the answer to the bolded: control. This is about him showing her that he’s going to parent on his terms and he’s in charge and she can take it or leave it. Except she can’t leave it because she has to be at his house.

The people chiming in about making a kid learn to cook and learning to eat different things are missing what’s really going on here.

This, exactly this. Sounds like dad is purposely cooking things he’s knows his daughter doesn’t like. OP is justifiably upset. I am not one to be a “short order cook” for my house but I’m also not going to make every dinner something my kid doesn’t care for.

Op, you shouldn’t have to do this but firstly send her over with some oatmeal and honey. Super easy to microwave oatmeal in the morning and maybe also throw some fruit in if dad bothers to stock fruit.
For dinners it would help us to know what she likes. I agree you can teach her to cook a few things and send her with ingredients or you premake something and send it. It’s far from ideal but a teenager needs to be adequately fed.

It "sounds like" that because OP is telling the story to paint her ex in the worst possible light. You're right that it's about control, but it's about her control, controlling how he parents and controlling the narrative here. You'd be a fool to believe anything she says.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, of course my daughter is capable of learning to cook. But when she's at her dad's house, she's still the child and he's the parent, so I think it's reasonable for him to make meals she'll actually eat. She shouldn’t have to make all her meals for herself at her age, I certainly didn’t.

She's 16, which is old enough to help in the kitchen, but she's still a kid. Her dad tends to cook a lot of fish (which she hates), salmon, and vegetable-heavy meals. Occasionally he'll make things like chicken, rice, burgers, or pizza, which she enjoys, but his diet is generally very different from hers.

My daughter isn’t a picky eater and eats a pretty wide range of foods. Sliders with mini beef or chicken burgers on sweet Hawaiian rolls, grilled chicken or steak skewers, Pasta dishes ( chicken Alfredo with fettuccine, lasagna, chicken Parmesan over marinara pasta, baked ziti with a cheesy mozzarella topping, penne alla vodka with chicken in a pink tomato-cream sauce, and chicken bacon ranch pasta bakes, etc). Tacos and burritos with beef or chicken and toppings she can add herself, chicken quesadillas, and chicken wraps. Teriyaki chicken over white rice, ramen with sliced chicken and egg, baked mac and cheese, beef and bean chili with cornbread, chicken noodle soup with thick egg noodles, and BBQ foods like ribs or grilled chicken served with fries. Overall, she’s pretty easy to feed and is happy with a variety of proteins, pastas, rice dishes, soups.

At this point, I think I just need to actually go and make meals for her once a week, and have her eat those meals throughout the week, or try my best to convince him to change up what he eats on the days she’s there, or ask him to make her something different.

You claim your daughter isn't picky yet she won't eat ANY fish and doesn't eat ANY vegetables. He's willing to provide perfectly reasonable, healthy meals and she's refusing them. It's not like he's sitting in front of the tv drinking beer and eating chips and she wants real food. Also, you keep saying "she's still a kid/child". You're infantilizing her. 16 really IS plenty old enough to cook.

After her showing the meals, I'm siding with the dad on this one. Vegetables are very important for nutrition and it sounds like the DD just wants carbs. There is zero way I'd be providing alternative meals if vegetables weren't being eaten. I likely would cook something other than the fish though if my kid hated fish. In my house you don't get to say you hate vegetables, you likely just didn't like how they were prepared.

[Anonymous]

Not liking fish is a pretty normal one even for adults. It would be kind of awful to be forced to live in a place where all they serve is fish and you hate fish. Agree that she should eat vegetables of course. The issue for me would be if the main ingredients are fish and vegetables then there's not a protein or fat she likes and she'd still be hungry.

While the dinners being offered by the dad are nutritious, the sandwich or granola bars are more carb heavy so I don't necessarily buy the dad is trying to get her to eat healthier. There are ways to work around the daughter's preferences and be healthy. Like another PP said, why can't he just grill a piece of chicken along with the fish? He can serve things that are more along the ones she likes with a bigger ratio of vegetables, lighter sauces, whole wheat breads or pasta, and less red meat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, of course my daughter is capable of learning to cook. But when she's at her dad's house, she's still the child and he's the parent, so I think it's reasonable for him to make meals she'll actually eat. She shouldn’t have to make all her meals for herself at her age, I certainly didn’t.

She's 16, which is old enough to help in the kitchen, but she's still a kid. Her dad tends to cook a lot of fish (which she hates), salmon, and vegetable-heavy meals. Occasionally he'll make things like chicken, rice, burgers, or pizza, which she enjoys, but his diet is generally very different from hers.

My daughter isn’t a picky eater and eats a pretty wide range of foods. Sliders with mini beef or chicken burgers on sweet Hawaiian rolls, grilled chicken or steak skewers, Pasta dishes ( chicken Alfredo with fettuccine, lasagna, chicken Parmesan over marinara pasta, baked ziti with a cheesy mozzarella topping, penne alla vodka with chicken in a pink tomato-cream sauce, and chicken bacon ranch pasta bakes, etc). Tacos and burritos with beef or chicken and toppings she can add herself, chicken quesadillas, and chicken wraps. Teriyaki chicken over white rice, ramen with sliced chicken and egg, baked mac and cheese, beef and bean chili with cornbread, chicken noodle soup with thick egg noodles, and BBQ foods like ribs or grilled chicken served with fries. Overall, she’s pretty easy to feed and is happy with a variety of proteins, pastas, rice dishes, soups.

At this point, I think I just need to actually go and make meals for her once a week, and have her eat those meals throughout the week, or try my best to convince him to change up what he eats on the days she’s there, or ask him to make her something different.

You claim your daughter isn't picky yet she won't eat ANY fish and doesn't eat ANY vegetables. He's willing to provide perfectly reasonable, healthy meals and she's refusing them. It's not like he's sitting in front of the tv drinking beer and eating chips and she wants real food. Also, you keep saying "she's still a kid/child". You're infantilizing her. 16 really IS plenty old enough to cook.

The whole "she needs a large cooked breakfast" is just bizarre. I ran track in high school and my go to was peanut butter banana toast.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not liking fish is a pretty normal one even for adults. It would be kind of awful to be forced to live in a place where all they serve is fish and you hate fish. Agree that she should eat vegetables of course. The issue for me would be if the main ingredients are fish and vegetables then there's not a protein or fat she likes and she'd still be hungry.

While the dinners being offered by the dad are nutritious, the sandwich or granola bars are more carb heavy so I don't necessarily buy the dad is trying to get her to eat healthier. There are ways to work around the daughter's preferences and be healthy. Like another PP said, why can't he just grill a piece of chicken along with the fish? He can serve things that are more along the ones she likes with a bigger ratio of vegetables, lighter sauces, whole wheat breads or pasta, and less red meat.

yep, dad sounds like an A hole. I like salmon. My 9 year old does not, so instead of serving salmon when I know my kid won't eat it, if Im feeling like salmon, I'll make salmon and chicken, each of us eat our protein and the same sides. Making a different protein is definitely not the same as making a whole different meal. And then whatever leftovers I have from making chicken becomes dinner the next night as well. It's really not that hard. The dad here is REPEATEDLY making food that his child doesn't like, over and over. No one needs to have fish every single night of the week.

How would you guys like to be served food you don't like for dinner every night of the week? Some of these responses are so odd. But in this case maybe OP can batch cook some protein and send it over with DD and she can microwave her chicken or whatever and eat it with the rest of the meal. unless dad insists on mixing the fish into the whole meal which I"m guessing he might be doing....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

It's not! some people here seem to really hate their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

It's a choice you make as a parent. That's fine, but that's different from it being a requirement to be a fit parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

Is this how you justify being a SAHM to a 17 year old?

You can do that if you want but actually just providing food to your kid isn't your job as a parent as your kid is going to be moving out in a year and needs to learn to feed themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

It's not! some people here seem to really hate their kids.

Some of us are raising successful, independent kids. The rest of you are desperately trying to hold onto them and keep them from growing up. I'd venture to say YOU hate your kids and not us.

[Anonymous]

OP, My daughter is an athlete and plays multiple sports, so she needs her carbs. Going to bed hungry also isn’t very beneficial and is quite harmful for her as an athlete. He isn’t prioritising her needs. She’s a very healthy weight, and eats vegetables, just not as the main dish. She finds vegetable dishes disgusting. He’s choosing to make this harder for everyone. Now I might have to go to his house and make her meals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

Is this how you justify being a SAHM to a 17 year old?

You can do that if you want but actually just providing food to your kid isn't your job as a parent as your kid is going to be moving out in a year and needs to learn to feed themselves.

I’m not a SAHM. My child is still a dependent child, so it’s my job to feed them, while they’re still a child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, My daughter is an athlete and plays multiple sports, so she needs her carbs. Going to bed hungry also isn’t very beneficial and is quite harmful for her as an athlete. He isn’t prioritising her needs. She’s a very healthy weight, and eats vegetables, just not as the main dish. She finds vegetable dishes disgusting. He’s choosing to make this harder for everyone. Now I might have to go to his house and make her meals.

No. Now you might CHOOSE to go to his house and make her meals, because you're insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know what’s so odd and weird about making your minor child meals everyday. I make my 17 year old a hot breakfast lunch, and dinner every single day. That’s my job as a parent.

Is this how you justify being a SAHM to a 17 year old?

You can do that if you want but actually just providing food to your kid isn't your job as a parent as your kid is going to be moving out in a year and needs to learn to feed themselves.

I’m not a SAHM. My child is still a dependent child, so it’s my job to feed them, while they’re still a child.

A child who will be on his own in less than a year who will be completely unprepared because you have made him an imbecile.