I’ll preface this with my DD (aged 10, almost 11, school year 6) has SN and a disability so we tend to try to keep things the same.
Went to a pub for Sunday lunch after an event for my dads social group. Decided on a pub DD and I go to regularly – Dads been once before and enjoyed it.
I paid for the meals but dad moaned and moaned saying it was expensive for what it was, and it was only good last time because it was a novelty for him. He says he gets fed up of going to the same places time and again and can we try somewhere new.
I said next time he can book and choose but can he warn me in advance so I can check the menu and make sure there’s something DD can/will eat (she has a few allergies of uncommon foods but also when she’s somewhere new has safe foods she eats until she feels safe – usually off the kids menu – nuggets/fish fingers/sausages and then when we’ve been a few times she’ll try something off the main/adult menu but alongside her safe meal and we build up from there – some resturants we’ve been to for years and she still orders the same thing off the menu everytime, I don’t care as long as she’s calm and eating!) to which he said “If she’s going to eat off the kids menu I won’t bother taking her we go to experience the new food not the chicken f**king nuggets especially as once we’ve been I won’t go again” and stomped off to the car.
In the car on the way back he says he gets fed up of the same places all the time, in an ideal world he’d go once or twice to a restaurant then try somewhere else and in his day DD would have just had to put up with eating what she was told where she was told to eat it. Which resulted in a meltdown from DD and her kicking the back of my chair as I was driving. Dad called her a spoilt brat and said “No wonder your dad doesn’t want you” – ExH sees DD eowend for 2 nights but lives less than 5 minutes’ walk from us, he refuses extra contact and told me via a solicitor that he’d prefer me not to remind of our marriage by forcing him to have DD more (a whole other thread)
He's since text me to tell me I undermined him to my DD, we could of gone somewhere else for a change and I could of made her eat whatever I wanted her to but I pander to her. Apparently I spoilt a lovely day out by spoiling my DD. He says at DDs age I would have just eaten whatever - I'm NT and not fussy at all (there's 3 foods I don't eat) so it was ok when I was DDs age if we changed the plan or went somewhere new.
Do I spoil DD? And did I spoil DD by not insisting we go somewhere else or forcing her to try something else?