Child responsibilities.. Should dinner be made or even started when the first parent gets home from work?

[Playinwithfire]

Last night I get home, it was around 7.30 and my youngest said mummy I'm hungry. I was confused DH had been home since 2pm and sorted HIS stuff and then he headed off to his hobby. I checked to see if they had enough dinner, then the child says we didn't get any dinner! I'm furious...

There has been a few changes and I have been very understanding that DH is trying to adjust. However, for f"*k sake... I feel like I need to still manage everything and ensure things get done. I'm asked a 100 questions daily. An I snapped last night...

I just don't get how you can go off to a hobby knowing that your children still haven't eaten however, you've made sure all the stuff he had to do was priority and very much completed.

He was asked by a parent to do a reasonable, age appropriate task. He did not do it. That is disobedient. If he was genuinely unable to do the task, he should have said that when asked.

You are doing your DS no favours here.

Totally agree. Instinct tells me OP doesn't get this luxury!

But you are coming from the bias of man = lazy, man= wrong.

We do not know what the Dad was doing, how many hours he works, how much he's picking up. We don't know of he was "dicking around" or whether he was doing something else (e.g maybe catching up on sleep if his full time work hours finsh at 2pm, who knows?)

What we do know, for a fact, is that the 15 year old was asked the perfectly reasonable task of sorting a simple dinner out for himself and siblings. He disobeyed. Mum is undermining Dad, and sticking up for the disobedient child.
This is terrible parenting. 15 year old should have cooked dinner, and there should be sanctions for his disobedience. It's not OK to just ignore when your parent asks you to do a reasonable chore.

Separately, behind closed doors OP should have a conversation with her DH is she did not feel this was something she wanted the 15 year old to do in the future, or she felt her DH misjudged (and I think he did in as much as he should have asked the 15 yo earlier and checked it was done).

@mrsm43s I am just going to repost the same thing I posted last time as you chose to ignore it.

Asking the 15yo to cook is not in and of itself unreasonable.

But it is perfectly unreasonable for any parent to forget to consider that their child may need to eat (regardless of who is doing the cooking) until 1hr before bedtime and when they are immediately leaving the house.

The teen could absolutely be asked to make dinner.

The father should not have forgotten about it entirely until he had no time to complete the task and had to push it off to his older child.

Parents are allowed down time, and I don't believe that children should always come first and we as parents should martyr ourselves. Basic needs of our children should be met in a timely manner, whether the father cooked it or not the task should have been assigned and completed WAY before he was leaving the house at 7pm.

@mrsm43s p.s forgetting to feed a child is not a "misjudgement"

OP has stated that DH was doing odds and ends but not too busy to make dinner, so not catching up on sleep from an imaginary night shift.

I agree with you he should have asked before 7pm.

But, this is a much lesser parenting fail than supporting a disobedient teen and undermining your co-parent in front of them.

In and of itself, the request for the 15yo to sort a simple dinner for himself and his siblings was not unreasonable, and it was very bad behaviour for him to be so disobedient.

It is interesting that OP is complaining about her husband not doing what is expected, whilst simultaneously bringing up her son to do exactly the same.

Dad should absolutely have done dinner (with a plate for you).

15 year old can be asked to do it, and should, if neither parent is at home.

In this case though, Dad is the adult and should not need to be reminded to feed his children! It makes me think of those Dads who babysit.

No it isn’t, he did a shit job of parenting, end of story.

It teaches the older siblings what a HUGE responsibility having kids is and may make them think twice about having their own kids later on. Not the reason im child free by choice but it is the reason my friend is. She comes from a larger family.
Actions have consequences

You are joking right? You feel the idiot of an H needs a plan to tell him that an 8 year old needs to be fed well before 7pm?

I seriously despair at the infantilising of men these days.

Do you think if OP was home since 2pm then she would have had to check a plan to know her child needed to be fed??!! 😂

Only the shittiest of parents blame their 15 year old for forgetting to feed an 8 year old after faffing around at home for hours and then fecking off to a hobby.

He's a loser father.
He knew bloody well what he should do, but chose not to.

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he has form for this.
The OP is the adult in the marriage and he is the selfish waster that does the bare minimum as father and husband.

Divorce is invariably a blessing from such losers.

At 7pm, just as his dad was leaving, having been home for 5 hours

There is no way this is the 15 year olds fault

His dad acted without though and his mother has every reason to be annoyed

That's all irrelevent.

Parent asks 15 yo to do an age appropriate task. 15 year old ignores request and doesn't do it. Disobedient and unacceptable.

Maybe it's time to dump useless selfish DH!

Yanbu OP. If my husband was home at 2pm and I came home at 7 I would expect him to have made the family dinner, the children to have eaten it with him, and a portion plated up for me to tuck into as soon as I got in the door.
I would do the same.
whoever is home first gets the family dinner going that’s the rule ! No grown adult parent should need reminding.
what does he think your 8 year old was surviving on they must’ve been starving the poor thing!

I think it's ok to address parental neglect with the neglectful parent in front of the kids. Why should addressing neglect be withheld from the victims of it?

These kids know their dad doesn't do for them. It's ok to say that out loud in front of them.

He was home from 2p on and had plenty of time for this and that and to go to his hobby but he can't find time to feed his kids. Fuck that bullshit. He's the parent with the legal responsibility. Not the oldest. Maybe the oldest had things they were supposed to be doing.

Not feeding your kids is neglect. This ass couldn't be bothered with that.

It is not 'parental neglect' to ask a 15 year old to throw a pizza in the oven for their and their siblings dinner, don't be so ridiculous.

OP, did the children know the time that your partner would be leaving? Were they thinking that the meal would just be a bit later than normal as dad was going to do it and were waiting but he left suddenly, or did they always know what time he would leave and were waiting for you to come back and sort it out?

There are some really odd replies on this thread.

Yes, my dc could all cook a meal (or several) at 15, but that isn't the point.

The parent was at home, and had been at home (not 'working at home' but actually just at home with nothing specific to do) and had a 15 yr old and an 8 yr old who he would know would need feeding at their normal meal time. He also knew the other parents wouldn't be home then. It is entirely the parent's responsibility to ensure that happened. It is beyond belief that he could somehow excuse himself from that responsibility, and even more odd that there are people on this thread trying to excuse him.

If it's so fucking easy, why didn't the father do it?

Parentification is not healthy. It can lead to developmental and mental health issues.

The parent in charge neglected his most basic responsibility to his family.

The reality is that the kids will have to learn to do for themselves and that includes food. Their dad can't be bothered and he neglects their most basic needs. So hopefully Mom can teach them something besides cooking ultra processed food.

I think you might be trolling now. No one is this tone deaf. If you're not, I pray you don't have children.

That poster is either the dad or one of those Must Keep a Man Satisfied at All Costs women

Older children should not be pushed in to a parenting role so an adult can do a hobby. The 15 year old should have told his father he was unwilling to do it however. Both parents need to discuss passing parenting jobs on to older children who are likely to have homework and often resent that role as they didn’t choose to be the eldest and get dumped on.

Well we can see where the 15 year old gets his uselessness from can't we.

A case of "do as I say, not as I do" from the father.

And then throwing the kid under the bus "I TOLD him to do the food" - what an absolute loser the H is

How do you know it was a pizza btw?