SIL Lunch nonsense, warning VERY trivial

[monkeynuts123]

Ok SIL is a pain in the arse, being tricky and controlling with everything. She has had lunch with us many times and knows the children eat lunch at 12.00 - 12.30, being very early risers and are starving by lunchtime and cannot wait a minute more. She knows this, this is something we all laugh about. She has made lots comments in past that we should generally feed kids before us so we can 'relax and eat' but we LIKE to eat with our kids as a family and they won't sit at teh table without food and are unlikely to play peacefully while we eat and enjoy adult time (being 11 months and 3 years).

Today for lunch she invites us for 1.00pm. I txt saying can we please make it lunch for 12.30 as kids crawl walls after that and seems silly to feed them first. She txts back oh come as planned and we'll feed kids first and we can eat after.

I'm just pissed right off with this. What sort of grown up can't eat frigging lunch half hour earlier so kids are ok. SO I said we'd come as planned and all eat together. Suppose I'll feed the hungry tigers before we go and put up with them being unsettled at the table but so irritated with sodding irritating and controlling SIL. AIBU? What would you do? p.s there is always some problem with this woman!

Just give them a proper snack at 11 (not rice cakes or cucumber, but like mentioned above a flapjack, or a ham sandwich, something a bit filling).

You should try to be a bit more flexible. It is good to have a routine, kids do well on that, but it should maybe be balanced with a bit of flexibility.

Your sil is not being U by the way.

Well done OP for seeing sense. I do see where you are coming from. My DC used to be ravenous by 12'ish too and I preferred not to give them snacks. That said I wouldn't have worried about the occasional later lunch and 1 o'clock is a much more normal time for Sunday lunch.

In not so many years you will have trouble getting your teenage DC's out of bed for 12 and will be asking SIL if you can have breakfast lunch at 2

You really need to keep check of yourself to make sure you don't start to stoop to SIL's level of pettiness. I would start by getting your DH/DP to deal with making arrangements with her.

So You Have Been Resonable about Being Unreasonable.

Hope you enjoy your lunch.

Yabu. Heaven help you ever end up in a situation where your children cannot be fed on the dot of whenever. I broke down once when my twins were 4 months old and on 4 hourly milk feeds. I'd got one extra feed each. But didn't count on it taking 9 hours from reporting breakdown to getting home. Unfortunately they had to manage until I got home.

Cut your sil some slack - she may prefer to eat later for her own reasons.

Unless there is a medical reason for your children having dinner at a set time - diabetes, dietary issues etc. in which case feed your children at their normal time and occupy them while everyone else eats. My 11 month old twins are quite happy sitting in their high chairs with a toy while everyone else eats. I might give them a snack if they start launching themselves at plates but it's not always possible to feed them and eat myself at the same time.

actually op i dont think there was any harm in you asking, particularly as she is fmaily -

but i think to ask on AIBU is always going to bring out the big guns.

hope your meal goes ok,

Is this a reverse AIBU?

How funny, OP you are being very unreasonable, relax a bit and you will enjoy life a lot more.

I wonder this a power struggle of the sort I had with my SIL, with the focus being food.

One of mine was very picky, almost food phobic. It was abig deal to my SIL how well hers ate, because she, like me, was anxious about it. So she gave my DCs massive portions of stuff the oldest didn't like, he wouldn't eat, had tantrums. She used to get stressed of hers didn't eat theirs, with comments of the sort " they usually eat this". Used to blame my son for making her DCs not eat properly .

Stressed me out, stressed my fussy child out, so he ate even less. Aaargh

So glad they are all older now.

So glad everyone agrees that yabu - give them a snack fgs

Will be interesting to see how they cope with school. Not all lunches are 12 - 12:30. More children, smaller lunch hall means for more than one lunch sitting.

Ihearsounds

They are not school age yet. Things change as children get older. Plus they get a mid morning snack at school

OP you are being very rude to the host. As many others have said this is taking place in her house so her rules. I should think she has similar conversations about you tbh!

What sort of child can't eat frigging lunch half hour later so adults are ok?

Monkeys nuts.

Yabu in a ridiculous fashion. Should be in flounders corner in feather boa.

Flouncers!

TBH it sounds like it's you who is a bit of a controlling PITA just by reading the OP!

Honestly, she probably hasn't noticed that your children cannot go a minute past 12.30 before they start climbing the walls, you know - believe it or not most people don't give a stuff about the day to day minutiae surrounding other people's children.

She has made it quite clear that she finds it easier to feed all the children first (I am inclined to agree with her in this sort of scenario) and I think it's quite cheeky of you to wilfully ignore that and to insist that your DCs sit at the table with the grow-ups. It's not your house, you are not cooking, it's not your call!

If they really can't wait then give them half a banana and a biscuit to tide them over mid-morning, or better still accept her offer to feed them first.

If you are not prepared to do either of those things then I suggest you stay in your own home for lunch every single day until your children are robust enough not to keel over or have a nervous breakdown if something throws out their routine by a half an hour.

I don't think it sends your children a very good message either. Inflexible, intransigent, self-centered people are a pain in the arse.

Children need routine. They also need to learn some coping strategies for when the routine gets disputed. You are doing them no favours if you can't see that.

I wonder how lunch is going for OP and all involved.

I do hope we get an update.

That's the trouble with making a knee-jerk post without reading the whole thread Hesterton. It's always a risk, but to be honest I'd sometimes rather do that and know that I am answering from the heart and saying what I really feel, rather than gauging the temperature of general opinion and tailoring my answer to fit that!

OP, if you have seen reason then good for you, and well done for being completely Reasonable in the end. Don't take it to heart if it seems like people are still 'piling in'. They aren't - they are just answering the original question.

Yes, Hesterton

Fell

But it's a conversation. You can't ignore what the other person is saying, later on. That's just rude.
Gets my goat

(and yes, I've been known to do it myself a few times)

Yabu, routines are one thing and can be great. But relax on the odd occasion, nothing bad is going to happen, breathe and relax!

You realise that some schools dont have lunchtime til 1, so they will obviously have to learn to wait.

YABU - you don't have to eat with them every single lunch time surely?

Your SIL dies sound a pain. If I was serving lunch to someone with very young dc, I would serve at a time to suit them

As SIL won't accommodate I would have fed the dc lunch before I went!