My Brother Is Mad I Let His Kids 'Go Hungry' After Not Eating What I Made Them for Dinner
Raising kids isn’t a piece of cake. Instead, it’s full of twists and turns that keep us on our toes. Sometimes we have to think creatively when it comes to encouraging our kids to do something they clearly don’t want to do – and that includes eating meals.
Most often parents are happy to do the dance of dinnertime, giving the kids something they know they’ll eat instead of forcing them to only eat what's offered at the table. But when the kiddos are being watched by a family member or a babysitter, the patience to make several different meals so all the kids will eat something can be really thin if it even exists at all.
That’s an issue that one family is experiencing right now. A helpful person (OP) has stepped in to help a brother with child care for his two kids while he travels for work. OP was happy to help the brother out and hang out with the kids for a few weeks but was not willing to play that dance at dinnertime. It ended up causing some issues, and now, OP needs some advice.
OP jumped into the situation, sharing all the details with Reddit.
Posting to Reddit’s AITA community, OP shared about recently helping a brother with his kids .
“My brother started a job that will need him to travel for up to a few weeks at a time. He's widowed and has two kids,” OP wrote. “The job is great for him and the kids, but obviously kids have to go to school. On the other hand I do wfh and live literally 3 blocks away from him so I don't mind taking care of the kids since it's nice to see them.”
For context, OP shared some pertinent information that comes into play with what's going on.
“I'm on the autism spectrum and have adhd so I need things to be a certain way otherwise it won't work for me,” OP admitted. “I have to cook certain things on certain days or else it will all fall apart. I quite literally have my meals planned out 3 weeks ahead.”
But that didn’t work too well when OP was babysitting.
“The issue I bring up is that I basically let the kids skip lunch and dinner since they didn't like what I made on our first day together,” OP explained.
“I didn't get angry at them or anything I just told them they didn't have to eat if they didn't want to so they went and played on their tablets both times,” OP added. “They were pretty hungry at around 10 so we reheated the saved dinner that they didn't eat and they picked at it a bit.”
The next day, the same thing happened, “but they ate all of the lunch I made,” OP shared. “After that they pretty much just ate whatever I already cooked. Minus a few things that they just didn't like such as pumpkin.”
When OP’s brother returned, they discussed the issues around the kids eating — or not eating.
“After my brother got back I told him that he should let me buy them fast food or something (he explicitly told me no since he knows I spoil them) so they don't feel hungry,” OP explained.
That statement didn’t go over too well. “He got pretty mad when I explained what happened,” OP wrote. “He called me an a--hole for letting his kids go hungry.”
After sharing what happened, OP turned it over to Reddit for opinions.
“If they refuse to eat the food they weren’t that hungry,” one person wrote. “It’s edible, they’ll eat eventually.”
“Your brother can't say you can't go to fast food but you can't make them eat what you cook either,” someone else wrote. “If that's the case then it's only your brothers rules or what the kids want? That's not fair to you.”
“I raised 5 kids and they ate what was cooked or they could make a PB&J,” another Redditor suggested. “Looks like your brother's kids started out pretty picky and quickly learned to eat the food that you cooked; not a bad lesson to learn.”
“You didn't let his kids go hungry, you provided them with food that they chose not to eat,” wrote someone else. “Maybe your brother can send meals with them if he's so worried about it.”
But there were people on the other side of the fence too, ones who thought OP was wrong.
“You’re in the wrong for agreeing/volunteering to look after kids you are unwilling or unable to feed properly,” wrote someone else. “I sympathise with your needs, but they can’t supersede the kids’ need to eat.”
“Why didn't you ask what they like to eat instead of trying to force them to eat things they obviously don't like,” questioned an anonymous Redditor. “My parents used to force me to eat things i hated, some of which would make me throw up but they didn't care and i ended up with a eating disorder when I moved out.”
“You should offer healthy alternatives if they are going that long refusing food,” suggested another person. “A sandwich and some fruit/veg is not hard to put together. If you need your food in specific ways you should understand that they might too.”
“You let them miss lunch and dinner,” pointed out someone else. “When they finally got hungry at 10 PM, they still only picked at what you gave them. They had to have been starving by then. Yet, you will only eat certain foods on certain days. I don't think you have the kind of flexibility necessary to care for children over long periods of time.”
With people pretty evenly split on whether OP was in the wrong, there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer for this situation.
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