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.

You don't "teach" 15 year olds to help others by ordering them to take over your responsibilities because you have better things to do such as hobbies. Quite the opposite. It may be "your world" to insist that older children look after younger ones but certainly not most people's as can be seen on here.

How many children do you have btw?

I have 2, not that it's really relevant. And yes by 15 I'd occasionally ask them to do dinner for a whole variety of reasons, including sometimes just wanting a break from it myself. We're a family we help each other out when asked.

You weren't asking if they weren't allowed to disagree. You were telling. So you used to tell your older child to feed/look after their sibling regardless of whether they agreed and are feeling defensive about the fact that other people don't think it okay.

FFS, no, I was asking. A perfectly normal and reasonable ask in functional families. You are being utterly ridiculous as I assume you well know. A parent asking a 15 year old to make dinner is perfectly reasonable. A 15 year old simply ignoring the request, without discussion, is disobedient. Your children must be utterly feral and badly behaved if you really think it wrong to occasionally ask teenagers to help out with simple tasks in the family, and it's OK for teenagers to simply disobey and ignore those reasonable parental requests without discussion.

And I'm really not defensive. I've raised two great children who are fuctional, well adjusted members of society and who I have a wondeful relationship with.

I'm presuming you are just winding me up now, as surely no one has such a lack of parenting skills as you are displaying.

Agreed. The teaching going on here is through the modelling of the adult relationships. The parents are modelling that men do their hobbies/prep, and leave the parental load to the women. The father is modelling to the son how to be a useless partner to his future wife.

Buy the sounds of it you often rely on your 15 year old to do tea and DH did tonight

has this happened before or was this a one off?

What was he doing between 2-7pm?

It was up to the DH to have the discussion and at least get a yes or no. If there was no discussion it would probably be because he didn't ask and just told his DS to make tea as he walked out the door. Stop trying to insult everyone who disagrees with you (I.e. just about everyone) by telling them they lack parenting skills. It is not a parenting skill to tell your children to cook or look after their siblings because you feel like a break and call them disobedient if they don't agree. The fact that your children are well adjusted adults doesn't mean everything you did as a parent was reasonable.

"Hey DS can you bung some dinner on for yourself and sibs, please?" No response and request ignored. (Or agrees and then request ignored) Rude disobedient teenager.

"Hey DS, can you bung some dinner on for yourself and your sibs, please?" "Sorry Dad, I'm snowed under with homework". "No problem, son." Normal, functional conversation.

If your 15 year olds can't respond reasonably and need parents to spoon feed them in every conversation, then you have a big problem.

Option 3.

Ffs i forgot dinner.

”Jimmy sort dinner out for you and your sibling, yeah? Bye!” as he walks out the door.

Come on, it's not likely he was saying that whilst literally slamming the door. Even 1 second is enough for the teenager to start to respond.

Dad hasn't covered himself in glory here and I expect teenager is going to grow up equally useless unless something changes.

You seem really desperate to blame the DS and reduce blame for the DH. Why is that? It seems likely that it was an instruction rather than a request that could be refused given it was 7 p.m and he was leaving. If he was planning to give the DS the option to refuse he would have asked earlier so there would still be time for him to make the tea himself. And I haven't got a 15 year old. My children are adults.

Why don't we think it's likely, if he's chaotic enough to have forgotten to feed his younger kids until well past their dinner time?

Except we both know that instances of a woman being that utterly selfish almost never happen. And that if the mother were to expect the teenager to cook, (again, except in extreme outlier cases), she'd only do so because she already knows that she has spent hours teaching the teenager to cook, she has verified many times that the teenager can actually cook edible food and do so safely without burning the house down and can be relied upon to do so in a timely manner, she has bought food in advance that she knows the teenager can cook, and she forewarned the teenager that they would be expected to cook that evening, and then reminded them in a timely manner, with instructions as to what to cook and when. In (almost) no circumstances would a mother just decide it's not her responsibility to make sure her own kids are fed and just bugger off and leave them to it. And if she did, we all know we're imagining some sort of alcoholic or drug addict where social services should probably be involved if they aren't already. Whereas an average middle class man who functions pretty well and everyone sees him as "a good dad" can do it and half of people just laugh and say "ahh, what's he like eh? Just teach your kids to cook, it's easier than expecting a GROWN MAN to FEED HIS OWN KIDS"

I expect his dad is responsible for that training, given that he already is a useless adult and a lazy parent.

@mrsm43s You're to bloody invested...