To expect DD15 to feed herself?

[SteveHarringtonsChestHair]

Went on a lunch date today. DCs are all older teens. DD (15) is outraged that I didn’t sort out something for her to eat when I got home at 2.30pm

I told her there is bread for toast, wraps, crumpets, leftover chicken in the fridge, noodles/pasta etc and that she can make herself something. She thinks it is selfish of me to feed myself and not her.

WIBU?

YABU she needs lunch and you are mean not to provide her with this before you left or after you came home

YANBU she is 15 with no additional needs, perfectly capable of fending for herself and needs to grow the F up.

I thank you.

Tell her you've still got the old high chair in the attic - you'd be more than willing to dust it down for her, and you'll do her up a nice rusk and a Tommee Tippee cup for dinner. 😉

OP's DD- you should 'have' to because you're nearly an adult, and part of that is learning to take responsibility for yourself. When you were a small child your mum was responsible for feeding you, because if you did you'd eat chocolate for lunch/sever a finger/burn the house down etc.

Now you're 15, you're capable, mature and responsible. If you can't be arsed making or eating lunch then don't. But it's not your mum's job to make sure you're fed- you're not a kid any more.

If you want to learn some more skills why don't you find some accounts to follow on TikTok/Instagram/YouTube/insert social media of your choice? Mob is one that does really good recipes, we had their ultimate hot dogs the other night.

P.S- leftover spaghetti bolognese is delicious! Anything that's cooked in a sauce always tastes better the next day because the flavours are allowed to sit and magnify. You're missing out!

Quite.

I also stopped making lunch for everyone as a matter of course on day one of lockdown as a pre-emptive sanity-saving move. The DCs were 11 and 13 then, and this has continued into weekdays in the school holidays now, we all free-range/forage until dinner. They get input into the weekly shopping order and there's a list of suggestions for simple lunches on the wall as a reminder. If me or their dad are around and can take a break from work one of us might make something for everyone, but since they are getting up late and eating breakfast at 11 they wouldn't be hungry at 1/2 anyway. It does sound like she was just having a moment of "I need to feel looked after by my mum" and that's completely fine, but being expected to provide lunch when you are not even in the house is a little unreasonable ;-)

Omg! Save us from the almighty, wise, know it all teenager! 😅 She'll look back and cringe in a few yrs!

She thinks it is selfish of me to feed myself and not her. 👀

Classic inept teenage manipulation OP.
Tell her how selfish she is not to menu plan, shop for, pay for & cook meals for her mother. Two can play at this ridiculous game!

Hope you had a fab lunch out.

Ooh I love a rusk! I used to work in Boots as a teen and would buy a pack of Rusks to eat for my lunch

No, you are raising empathetic children who will do things for others 'just because'.

As long as they ARE able to do things for themselves doesn't mean they always have to... when you are out they should be making their own lunch at 15 though lol.

Oh oh oh the TRIALS of young people these days?

Whilst I am sure she will roll her eyes and its probably too long for her to read because teenagers can only read the length of a tweet 'these days'..

At 13 my alcoholic mother had stopped buying food, she bought sherry, vodka and sweeties, that was all she could eat.

I managed to get the child allowance out of her each week and she would take me to the supermarket (not drunk driving, she didn't drink til after 7pm)... and I had 25 minutes to get food and get back to the car or she would leave me. And did once or twice when the queue was longer than I'd calculated for, leaving me to get the bus by myself.

I had to buy all I needed from the child allowance, this was 1993, kids did not do their own shopping, this was in KwikSave or Netto, do explain how vile they were. I used to get shoved out of the queue by other adults who assumed I was just place holding for a parent.

Then I had to cook all my own food, every single bit. And sometimes she would randomly decide it was too late/early/the wrong time to be cooking and she'd take the pan or oven tray and chuck it in the bin.

Sometimes she'd decide I was making 'too much food' and 'no one can possibly need that much' (because she ate next to nothing of course or she'd throw up) and would throw it away or bin half of it - this happened whether I was making just a normal sized meal, a larger meal or something that would last two or three days.

Sometimes she'd decide I wasn't allowed to eat whatever it was because I was too fat (I was too fat but still..) so she would throw away a whole weeks cheese or butter or whatever she'd decided was awfully bad for me that week.

Sometimes, I wouldn't get the child allowance off her at all, she'd have spent it already on fags and booze. So I'd eat sweets, steal a bottle of milk off someones doorstep, get a loaf of bread on tick from the shop if I was lucky until I could catch her asleep and pinch it out of her purse.

So yeah, the trials of young people eh, I bet they have it FAR worse now-a-days.

Used to use rusks as the base in trifle when the girls were little.

When I was on maternity OH used to start a meal in the slow cooker and make lunch for me and put it in the fridge before he went go work. Just trying to make it a little easier for me I was surprised when other mums said it wasn't what everyone's partner did.

It's the cries of 'there was nothing to eat' when the cupboards are fully stocked.
The reality is there is loads to eat but not a dominoes pizza.
Drives me mad!!!!

They have stood the test of time. Someone brought some into work not that long ago and we all partook. Good biscuits for dipping, hehe

OP can you tell your DD I've visited nephews and nieces, and from age 7 they offered me food they could grab then make.

The food has got progressively more sophisticated from biscuits and crisps to by the time they were 13/14 home cooked meals. Yes they cooked the meals all themselves.

@WiddlinDiddlin in amongst all the laughs, that was a humbling read.

I’m sure there are children these days whose lives are similarly chaotic and I’m so thankful that DD isn’t one of them. I hope you’re doing ok after such a tough start in life.

The fact she thinks she shouldn't have to feed herself is a bit worrying

My 14 year old makes his own lunch even if I am in the house why wouldn't they

Is this a joke? Your 15-year-old is pretending she can't feed herself?

Utter minx. Just laugh in her face and let her go and sulk in her room.

My teens are much older than yours and they’ve been sorting out their own lunch for years. I only cook one meal a day, in the evening.

Fyi I have asked my 16 year old dd. The appalled look of disgust on her face 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

She wants to know if you accidentally had a typo and meant 15 months

I have a similar issue. DS 1 is 17 and has been feeding himself since v small, quite often knocks up a meal and feeds his brother. DS 2 is 15, and if I go out, even if I tell him what food there is and where to find it, mostly doesn't eat. He doesn't seem to feel hunger and/or can't be bothered. Drives me crazy.

I do this. DS can make his own!

DH is nicer than I am, and if making sandwiches for himself, also makes them for DS. But DS likes things like tuna and red meat, which I do not like, and don't want to handle. I sometimes butter the bread for him when doing my own and then leave it for him to decide what he wants to have with it.

She'll learn, she's just a self-indulgent teenager!

To be honest, at the time I knew no different and now, well I have excellent cooking and budgeting skills! :D I can take the view that my mother was very very ill and unhappy and it wasn't exactly 'personal' she couldn't look after herself never mind anyone else.

It is nice to read a thread where parent and teenager do clearly get on, despite differing opinions and actually I had come back to ask MN to delete my post as its not really in keeping and your DD doesn't actually need to know that other people have had or may have a shittier time of things, because that doesn't make anything she genuinely finds difficult to deal with, any LESS difficult!

Well I am clearly a neglectful mother, but even I wouldn’t leave a 15 month old home alone!

My 19yo who has been sorting their own lunches from age 12 and getting their own snacks too is not impressed and tells your DD she needs to shape up and grow up.

15. Fucking hell. I would be a very bad parent in that scenario and mock her for being such a little baby.