Unreasonable 14 year old - or is it me ?

[TAMumof3]

My 14 year old son has just swanned in from Tae kwon do practice, ignored the steak bake I've warmed for him for lunch and started cooking bacon and eggs for himself without asking.

He regularly does this - just help himself to whatever food he likes.

I'm particularly pissed off today as I'm just back from a trip from hell to Lidl and have shopped, unpack and written menu and stuck it on the fridge for the week.

Have had a go at him but he refused to stop cooking, left the kitchen in a mess and has now stropped off to bedroom to play computer games .... I have no idea how to parent this.

On an average Saturday lunchtime, i would imagine there are millions of teenagers queuing up for fast food lunches of all descriptions. (Yes even those Mumsnet offspring, whose parents are gasping in horror at the thought of a calorific meatpie!) Teens have an affinity for the stuff.....this assumption that this particular DS didn't want to eat it - is frankly rubbish. If he was starving hungry after a "massive" session, he would have gobbled it down and then could have asked for something else. (Bacon is hardly high on the list of superfoods).

I would imagine, he's just being ride and contrary (another common pastime of the average teen) well accompanied by slinking off and leaving a mess behind. Probably had a bad session and this is how he gets it out of his system.

This isn't about judging OP's food choices though it's about his rudeness in using food without checking. I wouldn't ever do that in my parent's home and I would expect my kids to ask me in case I planned to use it for another meal. If everyone helped themselves I wouldn't know what was in the fridge/ cupboards. I think his manners were poor.

YellowFish123 so what does the rest of the family eat?

I'm assuming he likes steak bakes?
When you've hardly any money you don't risk buying something new, I've been there and it's shit.

This 'using good without asking' nonsense is ridiculous. It's his house, and at 14 he has as much right as anyone else living there to eat from it. It's abusive really and very reminiscent of Oliver Twist to make him ask permission for food in his own home.

Hell would freeze over before my DC ate Greggs 'food'

YellowFish123

His mother has already going without lunch today so he has something to eat. What happens now that he has ate his siblings' lunch for tomorrow?

YellowFish123 so what does everyone else eat? Does everyone else in the family have to make do and he can cherry pick what he fancies?

There are multiple issues here:

1. Son doesn't understand (or doesn't care) that food is carefully budgeted and that he shouldn't use ingredients that are allocated for meals as they can't just be replaced.
2. Son doesn't stop using said ingredients when asked to.
3. Son leaves dirty kitchen for mother to clean up.

(1) may not be a problem in all the affluent homes here, but I would hope that (2) and (3) would.

What’s a “steak bake”? Is it a pasty?

I wouldn’t be annoyed about the food, but the mess would be a no go!!! I’d turn off the internet.

Maybe look up some cheap recipes and batch cook those. Like homemade sausage rolls, soup, bread, ham/tomato/cheese quiche. All with a pile of broccoli or similar.

Is OP really going without ANY food (skipping lunch today)? I am not convinced OP said that (or even should be accused of saying that). I'd wager she's not underweight, too.

FWIW, my mother did veer towards underweight as an impoverished teenage mother of 2. I acknowledge such things can happen. If one unexpected meal blows OP's budget & makes OP go hungry then either she needs to avoid buying the expensive food altogether or to talk to CAB & benefits office.

Glass Castle, anyone? (Lots in it about hungry kids & teenagers scavenging for food, set in 1960s-70s).

I try to meal plan as a family (unless I get 'yeah whatever you want' type answers then I go ahead and do it myself). I then shop according to what I need and include things for lunches, snacks etc. My children don't need permission to eat but I'd be pissed off if they didn't check before hand just to make sure it wasn't for a dinner! We're on a budget and do just fine but surely it's common curtesy?

And yes it probably is that I'm focused on money - its very tight here which is 99% of the problem - including the reason for cooking less than healthy steak bakes - I know it is crap food healthwise but at 99p for two I can feed both kids and go without myself and have a treat of bacon and eggs altogether on a sunday - IF 14 year old doesn't scoff it all !

@lljkk

OP's 3rd post

Abusive to expect kids to ask before helping themselves to full meal ingredients out of the fridge? What crap! I would never have done this as a teenager - how do people plan meals/budget if every time they come to cook, half the ingredients have already been eaten? I certainly don't consider myself to have been abused by my parents because I had to ask before cooking!

Poverty still exists. I don't know why people are so surprised.

My mother used to skip meals so my brother and I could eat. Chips, cheese, gravy and bread n butter. Nasty and cheap, but it was food. I would fake feeling full so there were leftovers for her to eat.

I didn't go raid the fridge, make a mess and stress out someone who was just trying her best.

If money is really that tight that it needs to be watched that carefully, then has the 14 year old fully bought into the choice an extra 10-20quid a week on food and no martial art would likely be one that anyone would take.

The split doesn't actually seem to be about money tightness - it's about attitude to control over the food in the house - does one person gatekeep it for everyone, or are people free to take (and responsible to ensure that others can still eat.) There's nothing wrong with a gatekeeper, it's just different, but it does mean everyone in the family agrees with it, which I suspect is difficult with teenagers and their variable appetites.

Which at ASDA means another £2.50 whereas a steak bake is 50p.

Except you can get bacon at Asda cheaper than £2.50, that's the asda larger packs, there is similar quality ones cheaper. and lidls meat is cheaper.

2 steak bakes for 99p sounds like a good deal, as its 2 meals. Except its not because it's 1 unlikely to fill a 14 year old boy who has been exercising.

Ops first and main point was that it was rude. The budget might be tight, but wasnt her point until others suggested it as her reason for being annoyed.

I am a single parent. Sometimes the kids have to go without. So I get what the OP is saying, no point stopping it for sandwiches, because a sandwich is more filling.

If my son didn't want the steak bake but wanted bacon and eggs. That's fine but it would mean he didn't have some when it was planned for. He would have to have ceral or toast the morning bacon and eggs were planned.

YellowFish123 I can just imagine your kids being pressured into having a bite of a Gregg's sausage roll behind the bike sheds at school like some kind of class A drug 😂

I grew up poor and all you posters who didn't - in your comfortable bubble - just don't have a bloody clue

It's not "controlling" to forbid kids from helping themselves without asking if it means there is insufficient food for other family members
and insufficient money to buy more

I cooked meals for mum and me sometimes from age 11, but always asked first
1 egg and 1 rasher bacon was the normal portion for a fryup, even in my teens
I'd fill up on toast
I suspect that teen cooking his own ate a lot more than that

If money is short for food, better to stop his sport if it costs money
The OP skipping meals is not a good option here

The OP has planned to feed 2 kids for 99p and go without herself

The boy cooking food meant for the weekend probably means the OP doing without again - and maybe he ate his sibling's share too.

I had no idea what a steak bake was so looked it up
It looks like Henry VIII’s shoe!?

Op I think it was very kind of you to make your son lunch. My dd makes her own breakfast, lunch and has done since she was thirteen. She never knows so nor do I what she will feel like. So she takes care of it. I don’t get involved. We cook a family supper and even with that she add salads or extra vegetables etc. Buy lots of eggs and if you stretch to it bacon and cereal. Ditch expensive steaks and let him be independent.

I think it was rude to ignore your lunch though, and I would tell him you expect better manners going forward. Kitchen has to be as he found it.

It's not kind though is it. It's a parent being a parent. And since she doesn't want him 'helping himself' if she didn't make it he would starve, or like we have seen here, get an earful for using his initiative.

Even at age 11, I knew that I couldn't just take whatever I fancied from the frig
If something had been cooked for me, I either had to eat it, or fill up on toast
That's what growing up poor is like

Mum and I had adequate food, but wouldn't have if there had been a sibling helping himself to what he fancied

He's getting an earful, not for using his initiative, but for taking food the family were going to eat another day

That's selfish and thoughtless in a family where money is so tight

Why can't some posters understand that one person hogging the nice food means less for the other family members