To say 'make your own breakfast' to Husband

[OneThingAfterTheOther]

We do manage to share the load of chores as both work FT and one high schooler DC to drop/pick at times from activities.

But with DC home with school exams , I found myself doing all the cooking and washing straight for the past 4 days after a weekend that was equally busy with dinner out with friends of DH on a Sunday late night.

I think with DC home , it meant making 4 meals a day on time whilst normally we do late meals and easy meals while working. We were both worried about ordering out as DC had a bug just last week and we didnt want to chance it with exams with takeout food etc.

I was also tutoring DC as requested to by DH on a subject I am more familiar /expert in for his exam this week.

DC off to school this morning and I went for a mini lie down before logging into WFH. Was getting myself eggs and toast when DH goes ' Can I get some toast and eggs too' I had previously this morning told him I am exhausted after the past four days and do have work today just like he does. And can he make the lunch today, for which DC will be home for. To which he appeared to just smirk and laugh it off ' OH im in charge of lunch eh'

I snapped when he asked for breakfast and said get your own breakfast rudely. He was shocked as that is a rare for me to do. At worst I would say ' I am so sorry, no time, office call in two mins, here have half mine' etc

AIBU to lose it and snap ? I didnt feel I could snap when DC around on study leave the past week, but it building up a bit

DH said ' but I did car pool run this morning and groceries' I have said this a gazillion times but I can order from Asda/tesco the weekly shop and do a better job of it without picking only markdowns and almost expired items half the time. And the car pool drop is two minutes by car after I sorted DC ready to go.

This sounds like a massive “mountain out of a molehill” situation. I snapped at my husband this morning too. He was very annoying, but I shouldn’t have snapped. He apologised for what he did wrong, I apologised for snapping. Job done, move on.

To help reset your expectations, here' my timeline of learning to cook.

Age 5, responsible for making morning tea for my grandmother when she visited and taking it upstairs to her.

Age 7, making own breakfast; light help in the kitchen (mainly things like washing and chopping veg and washing up).

Age 9, able to make simple dishes alone - soup, quiche, pizza, macaroni cheese, rice pudding (from scratch, not ready meals and packets). Became homely responsible for pancake day dinner - savoury and sweet pancake courses.

Age 11 making own after school snacks, and lunches during school holidays, helped with cooking dinners. For my mum's birthday I made her a victoria sponge and decorated it with handmade sugar flowers as a surprise.

Age 13, my mum was a single parent doing shift work so I cooked my own dinners every other week. Learned to gut, fillet and cook whole fish. Allowed to work with boiling sugar - caramel, jam.

Age 16, would have friends round (or go to theirs) and cook multi-course 'dinner party' meals for 4-6 people or made-from scratch pizza parties. Equal share of family cooking. Started to get creative with things like elderflower sylabub, a cake I saw on Masterchef (which has become my signature cake), experimenting with ideas like deep frying herbs in beaten egg to make fancy croutons.

Age 18, catered my own 18th birthday party (cocktail snacks - blinis, mini filo parcels etc). Moved out to university and became fully self sufficient.

Age 20, catered own birthday dinner party,, 14 people, 3 courses, starter was individual souffles.

So yes - a mid teen can make their own lunch. And switch the washing machine on unsupervised. At 16 he's only a couple of years from university and having to fend for himself. He need to learn these skills, fast.

Maybe read the OP's posts?

You say I’m busy and I’m not the cook general. At 16 he should be able to make a curry himself, my sons had a wide repertoire of meals they could cook by that age and my 16 year old great nephew is the same. He brought a delicious home made pudding to Easter lunch.

I'm my DD's childcare. My 11 year old Granddaughter made lunches for her and her sister, because I'd managed to slip on their stairs, during the Easter break. Her and her 9 year old sister can make sausage rolls and use the airfryer/microwave. My generation were all cooking from 11, we did home education at school and were the latch key generation. My youngest DD, who has LDs and went to a SEN school started doing cookery and at 14 did work experience in Costa. At home she baked. At 16 she started on a catering course and in pizza hut. You do realise that 16 is an age to start in Macdonalds? At your son's age my DD could have quite easily batch cooked curry. She made roast dinners, cakes etc. Don't go part time to become chef cook and bottle washer. Start conversations, take time off over summer if you need to. Your son can learn to cook from YouTube etc.

You tell him as someone who works full time, you and his Dad don't have time to cook curry for lunch. But he could help you or your DH batch cook some tonight, to eventually take over cooking a couple of nights a week. He'll get to understand how labour intensive cooking everyday can be. Does he not even know how to do stir fries? You're doing him no favours.

Not sure autism is where I would go for this but I think plenty of posters have told you what they think on this matter. I'm inclined to agree with them. To more important matters - you. Having read your posts about feeling exhausted. It sounds like you are doing lions share of home stuff and have a demanding job. If you feel there is a change and this is worse than perhaps it was in the past definitely go and see your GP. Not sure your age but it could be thyroid, peri/menopause etc. The other thing I picked up on was you saying that you felt exhausted after socialising. Maybe you could be neurodiverse. Or alternatively an introvert. Speaking as an introvert there is no shame at all in feeling drained after being with people. Sounds like they were his friends as well not yours. Be kind to yourself, stand up to husband, do less and go and see your GP and tell them what you've told us. Also I would have said a lot worse to your husband if he was mine so anyone who said you were being petty really hadn't read your OP properly in my opinion. He needed pulling up. Some women are so programmed to be subservient to men they love telling other women off for not doing it. Mumsnet is full of misogynistic women. Its an actual crying shame!

I don't think people are winding you up - my son had a kids kitchen tower (they're a thing, you can google) as a toddler, and was chopping up vegetables to 'help' with the cooking. It sounds like you've been your kids' skivvy all their lives (and your husband's?), and now you're paying the price.

I won’t repeat what everybody else has said already OP, but I do agree your son will greatly benefit from learning life skills such as sorting meals on his own ASAP. I moved abroad at 16 for my studies (not to a boarding school, I was in student accommodation) and had to suddenly learn how to fix ALL my meals every day. Cook, wash, clean and prepare “life” for the next day, even if I was tired after an exam. Would your son be capable of this if he were to leave home this summer (or in 2)?

On the other hand, there’s been a lot of fixation on the hot lunch by (presumably) British / northwestern posters. I am from a Mediterranean culture where our main, hot meal is always eaten at lunchtime. I cannot get on board with just a sandwich halfway through my day, sorry.

What happens, though, is that you prep and plan accordingly so that you’re not by the stove for an hour and a half in the middle of your working day. You either cook the day before and take a box to work, or if you are working from home, you (aka the rice-and-curry-lover-DH) coordinate throughout the morning and cook parts of the meal progressively so that it’s all ready to eat when you take your break. I don’t spend my lunch breaks cooking my hot lunches - I spend that time eating them. Eg at 11am (or even before logging in for work) peel veg / prep spices or whatever. Put on a load of rice an hour later. Half an hour before eating, if not on a call, someone chucks the veg in the pan and lets it cook. 1pm the break arrives, you plate up and spend the actual break eating your hot lunch. Not slaving by the stove. Not catering to Mr Bread-makes-me-bloated.

That's a mad amount of food to have in a day! I'm guessing you all eat by the clock rather than when you're hungry?!

Please tell your son thank you, @Balloonhearts! It sounds delicious.

And the comments definitely brought back the teenage years with my dses!

Please don't send him out into the world like this. My DD is currently having to uni flatshare with one of these boys. He expects to be cleared up after and has an attitude about it, cocks up the washer, can't work the dryer. His Dad expects him to have more than his fair share of freezer space for all the meals his Mum preps for him. He won't share the communal jobs.
His flatmates are utterly sick of him.

Can’t say for other people but when I was 11 my mother went back to school and I took over cooking for the house ( four of us). I tested a new cookbook written by some friends and cooked the entire repertoire of szechuanese dishes including chilled kidneys in sesame paste and stir fried snails. I did the exotic grocery shopping with my father’s help but the rest I did via phone at a local shop thst delivered do I didn’t handle any money. I am 65 now. Both my daughters learned to be self sufficient in the kitchen by age 12.

I would have been utterly ashamed if I had sent any of my dses out into the world this useless and helpless, @ItsaFairWind. I don’t blame your dd or his other flatmates for being totally fed up with this man baby.

Yes, she posted that while I was writing my post, which I commented on in a later post

She offered him before she started cooking. By your reasoning she should then let her food go cold while she cooks separately for her husband as he declined breakfast when she was cooking hers

@OneThingAfterTheOther

If I were you I would do the following:

Everyone fixes their own breakfast and lunch - have on hand an agreed selection of healthy options everyone likes. Occasionally on weekends if you have the energy and time you could batch cook some of those mini egg muffin things and have them ready to heat up during the week.

Have a good selection of healthy 'grab and go' snacks for the teen - fruit, power bars, cheese sticks etc so that he knows that it's on him to manage his own snacks - this is a good time to talk budgets and show him that there's a week's supply of snacks in his allowance and he needs to make it last the week.

Dinners:

You cook four nights a week. On one of the nights, you cook WITH your son and teach him how to make the dish - make double portions and show him how to decant and separate half of the dish to put away in the fridge/freezer.

Either the next night (if you don't mind having the same dish twice in a row or the day after that) your son is responsible for reheating the dish, setting the table and preparing dinner for the rest of the family.

This way, he's learning to cook, learning to portion. learning how to be the one responsible for making dinner happen all at the same time.

That takes care of five nights of dinner.

Tell DH he is responsible for the other two nights a week - up to him if he wants to cook, eat out, or provide a takeaway.

Well I would not have said it so rudely but YANBU to ask him to make his own breakfast. DH and I will often sort out just our own lunches and breakfasts and if your DC is 16 surely he can sort out his lunch? Certainly I would not be cooking 4 meals during the day. I think I would knock this on the head that you are the default cook and make sure both your DS and DH know you aren’t their slave.

Why should OP do the lion’s share of any of that?

She said she was happy to cook five dinners a week. So this means she's going from cooking four times a day, seven days a week to cooking four nights a week.

Everyone is sorting themselves out for breakfast and lunch, and she gets to teach her son how to cook and not be the sort of husband her DH is.

It's a gradual change. More successful than a strike.

That still leaves Op with the responsibility of sorting all that out though.

If i was her I'd go on strike.

When I was 16, a decade ago, I was a chef at a cafe on the weekends… teenagers aren’t babies. They can cook. They can press a button on the washing machine. You’re treating him like he’s 7 and behaving as though you’re a slave.

Could you cook at 16? I bet you could and I bet it was expected that you did.

He doesn’t need cooked food 5 times a day. He will be obese if you do that. He can have fruit or yoghurt for snacks.

However the options for non labour intensive food aren’t just sandwiches. I don’t know where people get this idea that all British folk eat is sandwiches. Easy lunches include omelettes, pastas, quesadillas, chicken rice, fish/prawn rice bowls. They take 10 minutes and a 16 year old can do it.

Despite some awesome stories here of creative kids knocking up a feast at 8, most aren't. But they are slowly learning the basics.

So for my 8yo, she can bake a cake independently if I give her a simple recipe and I get it out of the oven for her (she's happy putting it in though). She can make a simple sandwich, toast, cereal and has just started to make pancakes. She's very risk adverse (which we are trying to deal.with) so doesn't like knives, hob etc. I'm going to get her more comfortable with the air fryer and microwave over summer so she can be more independent but in a way that doesn't freak her out. She is less independent than a lot of her friends, yet even at half the age of your son, she does more

My parents pretty much babied me, but I could and often did cook for myself at 16, albeit it was very oven based and quite basic. I could knock up a decent roast and make cakes for the family.

Mine certainly weren't operating the oven at 7, they could make a sandwich though. I taught them how to do simple things like sandwiches, toast, cereal as early as possible. I don't think I've made them breakfast/dinner since they were about 8. I do cook tea but if I'm busy or working one of the older ones will cook tea, that probably happens once a fortnight. They are 18, 15 and 13 and can all cook, put a wash on and do basically any form of housework if I need them to.