Aibu - it really can’t be that hard?

[wiw212]

Title: Is this weaponised incompetence or am I being unfair?

Asked DH to make pizzas with our toddler – something LO has been asking for for five days. Also (selfishly!) meant to be a bit of a break for me as they’ve both been off school/nursery all week and I’ve been on duty 24/7.

I’d already made the dough, so it literally just needed rolling out. Gave very simple instructions: pick up pepperoni and mozzarella.

He gets back, immediately comments on the mess 🙄 and then announces he forgot the mozzarella. Takes eldest back out to get it.

They come back, I finally sit down thinking great, 5 mins peace. Nope.

I’ve now been called in FOUR times:
– “Do I take the baking paper off the dough?”
– “Which tray do I use?”
– “Is the oven hot enough?”
– etc etc

At this point our toddler is basically supervising him.

Genuine question – is this weaponised incompetence or am I expecting too much? Because I’m struggling to believe an adult can’t manage basic pizza assembly without this level of input…

all sounds pretty unhappy to me

BS about a low bar.
Of course he ought to be a parent after work,
but getting yapped at and pulled immediately as he walks in is not on.
It's about emotional maturity. Let him have ten minutes or whatever he needs to unwind, before he goes from work mode to daddy mode.

And given the long weekend coming up… surely tomorrow better anyway

I’m an experienced cook; questions about the paper, wax butchers or parchment, oiled or not. Rolling pin or hands, on a pan or a different dish (we have specific ceramic for pizza). oven setting cue me checking each time is it really 450F (seems to high).
I think you sabotaged him unless he’s done it before.

Has he done this before?

Would be logical.

With a view of starting a mumsnet thread straight after

I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I used a recipe off chatgtp. I made it with my toddler. It didn’t seem that hard and the recipe didn’t tell me any of this

But it’s not peace and quiet if he’s asking her for help every five minutes.
Do you know what I, and I bet most women would do in this situation? Check on my phone. The internet is full of recipes .

But OP had found a recipe. If my DH found a recipe, told me to cook it with DC, and then got arsey when I asked for recipe details, I’d think he was being a dick

really? If the instructions were roll out the dough, spread on passata, rip up mozzarella and put it on, then do the same with the pepperoni?

Look it’s the start of the long weekend . You obviously got some time to yourself atm, so kick back and enjoy mumsnetting (about your husband)

My DH is like this about everything.

In his case it’s largely because he’s autistic, and will only willingly do something if it was totally his idea in the first place, and if he has researched the shit out of it and had several practice runs to hone his technique and optimise the process to its fullest (by which point he’s solved the problem of how to do it and no longer has any interest in actually getting it done - and immediately forgets everything he just learned about how to do it, because he can only retain information he finds personally interesting).

If he doesn’t already know everything about exactly how to do something, he becomes totally overwhelmed and really fucking grumpy.

He also can never find anything, because he doesn’t know how to look for things. If something isn’t where he expected it would be - or if he doesn’t know where to expect to an object of its type to be - there is, to his mind, literally no way to find it. So he asks me where it is, because the only way he can imagine I can find things is that I must be memorising the location of every individual object we own on a rolling basis.

This is the only way he imagines people navigate the world - through already knowing things, or memorising them.

He has no mental model for working something out as you go along, or generalizing from experience. To him, every new task is specific, and has a whole unique body of knowledge around it that he must master before he can even think about attempting it.

He struggles to follow basic instructions and recipes because he never finds them specific enough, and just freezes or panics when something is too vague or he’s not 100% certain about what it means. And if he tried then to seek clarity in the internet, he will find several different suggestions and recipes, and he won’t know which one is ‘correct’ and he’ll get really pissed off and anxious.

So he would ask me all these same questions about the pizza because he imagines I must have some comprehensive, detailed, highly specialised knowledge of exactly how to make this particular pizza. If I don’t tell him what to do when he asks, and invite him to find out for himself, he thinks I’m telling him off or sabotaging him or withholding my pizza wisdom just to be an arsehole and a bully.

It is, frankly, a massive problem in our relationship and causes me immense frustration and resentment.

You made the dough, but are complaining that he asked about the temp of the oven. Different dough recipes will have different timings & temps (especially if it came from chatGPT!). So no, I don’t think that was an unreasonable question.

But as I said upthread, I don’t think this is about the pizza, and that you wouldn’t care about these questions if you felt he generally pulled his weight.

It is what I told him. I cook with her every day so he thinks it’s easy but it’s so stressful. She wants to learn so I let her. I kept saying tomorrow when daddy is off work. Then this morning he tells her dinner tonight and I know there’s no way he’s going to be able to make a decent dough

YANBU.

Leave him to do it all next time. Do not help him. He owns the activity he says/promises toddler he will do with her start to finish and at the time he promises. Whatever happens, happens. Leave the house and go do something for yourself in the meantime. He can’t ask questions if you’re not there and if he messages you and it’s not an emergency , ignore the messages.

Google is free. I’m more inclined to Google something so I know for sure and have more than one opinion and a more thorough answer vs asking someone else. Nothing stopping him from being proactive.

I’m the one in our house who cannot cook without very clear instructions, whereas DH is more throw it all together and hope it works ( he may be on to something as he’s actually a very good cook). This has caused issues when I keep asking him questions, but he has now learnt I will cook anything so long as he actually gives me the recipe.

How old is this toddler who rules the roost?!

No idea why you're getting such a lot of flack here OP or why so many people are pretending that slapping toppings onto pre-made dough is such a Michelin-level activity that any fucking idiot couldn't be expected do it, or at least work out how. 🤦

Whose emotional maturity is being called into question here?

He sounds like mine! So you don’t think this is on purpose then?

Why not buy a pizza base and then he can put toppings on and shove in the oven. Does sound a bit like you’ve set him up for failure in the kitchen

How is that any different to me making the base myself for him to do the same thing?

@wiw212 really a premade base isn’t soft and doughy needing rolling out. It’s also half to fully cooked. Dough is fussy to work with.

It’s so middle class performative though. Most people just take the pizza out of the box and heat it up following the instructions on said box.

Does he own a smart phone?

What do women do when they're doing something for the first time and unsure of something?