Were your friends parents ever mean to you?

[funnyonion1]

I was born in the late 80s / childhood in the 90s just for context as I hope these days this doesn't happen.

When I was about 8 years old I went for a sleepover at a good friends house (had been on multiple sleepovers before but this one stands out the most). In the morning we had Rice Krispies with milk for breakfast. I said I didn't eat my cereal with milk but she forced me to eat it. I remember crying and gagging over the cereal bowl and she wouldn't let me leave without eating it. I managed a couple of spoonfuls before she gave up.

Then when my mum came to pick me up and I told her what happened, she didn't take my side or defend me (which is for a whole other thread!).

As a mum of two, I can't imagine doing anything like this to my own DC let alone other children!

@Hiccupiscal yes you are being too harsh and setting your child up for major anxiety around food. And what if he’s not hungry? Don’t you want him to learn to self regulate?

Bloody hell name change 84!!

It's utter Maddness isn't it!! Who would do that

My bf mum left me 3 miles from home at midnight. She picked her dd up, I was a bit stranded and of course no phones back then and we didn't have a phone. 16 and she left me instead of dropping me.

Unless I was feeling drastically ill or something, I would never leave one of dd friends in town at midnight with no way of knowing if they got home! At the least I'd drop them or ask them to sleep over. How could you live with yourself if something happened?!

They also told me to take me to our mutual drama lesson , we would have to pay petrol because my body weight caused petrol usage.

So very mean.

My dm would bring in cups of tea and biscuits, constantly, if I had friends over. She'd make them sandwiches and if it was tea time they were included in the meal.
We weren't well off and I had much younger siblings she was running around after. (Most of my friends were only children or the 'baby' of the family and better off than us)
When I visited their homes I was never offered anything to eat or drink. There was the one time I was told to wait on the stairs and given a kitkat whilst the family ate! On another occasion, aged 14, my friend had spent the day with us. We went to the cinema and had lots of snacks paid for by my dd. I was staying the night at hers. Her mother sent us out for fish and chips and as she was dishing it out asked me if I wanted a round of toast. It dawned on me that I was being fed.
Another time similar age, another friend invited me to dinner and asked me to bring an egg and a round of bread.

I was super slim in those days probably weighed 7 stone

@sweltering that reminds me, my own dd on numerous occasions has been walking home from school with friends and one of the girl's df has picked up his dc and the other dc but left mine. They had to drive down our street to get home. One time it was really stormy. She walked in like a drowned rat having walked 2 miles home in the dark and she just sobbed asking why a grown man would do that to a 13 year old. She was also left alone in town after a concert late at night by the same friend's dm.

Early 2000s, I was about 6 and a bit chubby. Friend's dad and grandad oinked at me and called me a pig for finishing my dinner.

Clearing my plate had been drilled into me by my abusive mother...

When I was a very timid, shy ten year old, my friend's mother asked me if |I would like to go to Whipsnade Zoo with my friend. Her mum was lovely, and I was really pleased. When I arrived at their house I found that her Grandmother was taking us, and she was obviously not happy that I was going. When we got to the zoo, she made me ask for my own ticket, despite seeing how upset I was at having to do that. I offered her the money so she could get the 3 tickets together, but she refused, and then she spent the whole day making me feel as if I wasn't wanted. 61 years later I still can feel how I felt that day.

Hiccup I think there is a balance to be struck. I insist on us eating the same thing at the table and I think it's good to offer a wide variety of adult foods to your own child, as you do, and encourage them to get it. Also, if people help themselves then it's good manners to eat what you have put on your own plate I think more or less but I wouldn't insist on clean plates all round, especially if I had served it. I think the most important thing is not to have an air of tension over the dinner table. Don't take refusal personally or get upset. Offer the food, give it 20 mins, talk about other interesting things, make it a happy experience, then quietly take it away without fuss if it's not eaten. Then try again next time. Getting your DC involved in cooking might help too if he is suspicious of new things.

It's lovely to hear you are still friends with the girl your mother didn't like btw!

@LightDrizzle

“ My friends Dad called me the ‘biscuit barrel’ which did not feel very kind.”

Lol! I do note a theme with your current username though Ilovesausages

😂😂😂

I came from a large family, we were poor. We never went on holiday so I never bought gifts from the seaside for my friends or sent postcards.

Once at a sleepover I heard my friends mum complaining about me because I never bought any gifts for her daughter.

I worried about this incessantly, to the point of scouring the house to see what I could possibly give my friend, even though logically I knew it wasn't my personal fault. As I had so little, naturally I couldn't find anything.

I disliked going round to my friends after that and realised adults besides my parents could be unreasonable and mean.

Don’t make your child clear their plate hiccup it’s a really bad thing to do to your child and like others said, sets them up for problems in the future around food. Try not to be too controlling around food...food hiding is quite worrying and it is likely to do with your own behaviours towards your child around food.

Mmmm..deviating slightly but no.I wouldn't expect a child to eat something that made them gag.Kids' fears/discomforts might seem irrrational to adults but I don't see why that makes them any less real jist because they are young .

I was a very fussy child, I only ate about 5 meals on rotation and very plain meals they were.My parents ignored it,never made a drama and just told me I was amazing whenever I tried something new.

Meanwhile, the school I was at demanded every single lunch plate was cleared.Remember that spam circle with the egg in the middle?And lumps of cheddar cheese in a roll, when I hated cheese.Tomato soup...which I thought was blood (I was 4-5 and not the brightest).When I couldn't bear to eat it,I was sent to the headmistress' office and told to stand there for an hour.I almost always wet myself.

I never told my parents because I thought I was naughty. I developed an ED at a scarily young age.

My eldest has HF ASD and gagged on everything until he was about 6.I've never forced him to eat any type/amount of food and now he eats salads, chilli, curries..pretty much anything you throw at him!I'm a big believer that the less stress you make about food, the more kids will explore.

Back to original point - all my friends' parents were friends with mine, and knew to offer me toast, tuna and plain spaghetti, fish fingers but dear god no ketchup So I was very lucky in that respect.

I eat everything (in scary quantities) now except sea food.

DS1 is now 8 I should say

@squanderedcore

Hiccup I think there is a balance to be struck. I insist on us eating the same thing at the table and I think it's good to offer a wide variety of adult foods to your own child, as you do, and encourage them to get it. Also, if people help themselves then it's good manners to eat what you have put on your own plate I think more or less but I wouldn't insist on clean plates all round, especially if I had served it. I think the most important thing is not to have an air of tension over the dinner table. Don't take refusal personally or get upset. Offer the food, give it 20 mins, talk about other interesting things, make it a happy experience, then quietly take it away without fuss if it's not eaten. Then try again next time. Getting your DC involved in cooking might help too if he is suspicious of new things.

It's lovely to hear you are still friends with the girl your mother didn't like btw!

Thank you for this helpful reply,

and all the other shorter, more direct replies..

I was actually going to start a thread about food etc, i have been parenting on my own since DC was 2, and have no other mum friends to gauge what's 'normal' behaviour, i shall certainly take on the advice given, especially the helpful advice from @squanderedcore, my son is with his dad this week, but next week I'll try a more gentle tactic at mealtimes. I dont want my DC to feel he has to hide anything or make meal times a sad, scary time.
It doesn't help that we haven't had much luck financially lately and have been very breadline, so wanting my son to eat his food that has cost us good money has prehaps been colouring things for me.

Don't want to de-rail Ops orignal thread, so thank you for the replies! I actually genuinely didn't know I was doing something so "awful" until seeing some stories involving meal times and "meaness" here!

Thanks again all!

I once aged around 9, wore my ( not dirty) trainers upstairs in my friends house and got a right bollocking off her mum and chased down the street 😅😆 how to make your kids friends feel welcome eh? Mind you she was renowned for daily brushing of pavements in front of her house.
Disclaimer, we remove our shoes in our house but I don’t think it was the done thing in the 70’s......she probably started the trend 😂

Good luck Hiccup and I can totally understand your frustration about food waste when you are trying to economise

I remember being at a sleepover when I was a teenager - late 80’s ish
The very religious dad absolutely lost his temper with their oldest child and chased her through the house with a stick trying to beat her with it Same dad also burst into the room I was changing in - apparently as it was his house he ‘had every right to’
It’s only years later that I wonder exactly what was going on in that family

Some of theses stories are awful !!

I was born in the mid 60s and some of my mums neighbours were horrible also.cant believe some women could be so mean to a small child. men were no better that belittling either,how sad!!

I would have been about 6 when this happened. We were moving house and the removal men were in the house taking boxes out to the lorry. One of the removal men called me a 'little porker' when he knew my mum wasn't listening. I can still remember the burning tears of embarrassment brimming in my eyes, plus the anger. I waited until mum was making cups of tea and her back was turned and slipped a spoonful of salt into his cup. I ran off before I saw the consequences but he cornered me again later and called me 'a little bitch' and I smiled to myself. I knew there was no point telling my mum as she would have brushed it off. I'm much more of a tiger mum with my children.

When I was 14, a friend's dad made it obvious that he didn't like me. He was always whispering with other parents. Maybe it was because I had joined a sports group and wasn't at their level, I was very shy but the leader was very inclusive.

Anyway, my dad had driven us to school to catch a coach to be taken to a sporting event and friend's dad was to meet us afterwards and take us home. It was winter, raining, very late and and our school was a couple of miles from home. When he arrived to pick us up, he parked quite far from the school and we ran excitedly to his car to get in the warm and dry. He said there was no room in his car for me so I would have to walk. Of course there was room. So, he took the others home and left me. I felt it was a double betrayal because my friends were cold, they really wanted a lift so as they got in they mouthed how sorry they were. I should have returned to school and told a teacher but I think I was so shocked, I walked home, in the dark, in tears, I was terrified and felt really vulnerable in a PE kit.

I didn't tell my parents because I was so ashamed of his actions.

I can't believe how inhospitable these people are!
We put on a spread when people came to us... Rustled something up, always!
Amazing what people's values are.
Dh dp

In the early days took us out for a meal with his ds and her bf.
I was looking at the menu when his dad did strange apologetic laugh and said '' I think I'll be ordering for everyone and we will all share ''. It was peculiar. Dh said, he wasn't sharing. So I was left muted. I've been able to order my own food with other people since a young child!! Ie they let me.

I was shocked at this patriarchal action. Dh of course when taken out by my dp could also order any bloody food he liked.

@Hiccupiscal

You really aren't harming your child by asking them to eat what they are given. to a reasonable extent. Over time you learn that if your child doesnt like x vegetable repeatedly, then you give them y & z vegetable instead. It would be very unhealthy for that child to eat no vegetables at all, and perhaps the family budget can't include vegetable z. The current pandering to children today is very unhealthy. For their future.

I do agree that adding extra chilli, above and beyond any other person, is not acceptable. But did that person see that, or is that perception, based around a new food? My DC insist that foods are spicy - they really are not.

I follow a certain diet but never insisted that my DC follow this. They have their own food preferences, but my aim that they be comfortable eating food in anyone's home seems to have worked. My philosophy seems to have worked with my DCs friends too - apparently, according to their parents, they eat food at mine that they would never touch at home. I think no fuss, expectation that DC eat with the family, plays a large part in this.

#caveat clear allergies, etc this wont apply. But have allergies really got so much worse over the last 30 years? (No!)

Why would anyone ever take offence at a visiting child not clearing their plate? They're in an unfamiliar house with potentially different food than they're used to and they may have very little appetite if they're nervous. Why not just offer what you're having and they can take it or leave it? You're not their parent... Seems an odd thing to get wound up over.

There are some vile adults around. I would never assume anyone would always eat whatever I have given them, I would always check first.

@Whattheworldneedsnowislove

That is so awful, what a horrible man. I'm sure all those children also thought, what cruel thing to do, even if they were too scared to verbalise it. 😞