Is She Wrong For Trying To Force Her Son To Cook For The Family?

One of the hardest things about being a parent is when your kids get older and you have to let them go – and realizing that they are their own people with their own opinions and own interests and feelings.

OP has three children who are all more or less adults. Her youngest son enjoys cooking and is good at it, too.

I(46f) have twins (19m) and another son (16m). My son loves to cook and bake. To him it’s his source of relaxation. Alfredo, burgers, pizza, you name it. Heck even a whole cake he can make it. Everyone who’s met him knows he’s a fantastic cook.

That said, no one is thrilled about the fact that he generally does it only for himself, and doesn’t relish making more or sharing.

His siblings “sometimes” bring home fast food for the entire family but they do not typically cook.

However, he prefers to only cook for himself and gets really annoyed when my twins walk in on him cooking and ask him to make them food as well.

He’ll end up doing it but he does it very begrudgingly and usually gives them a much smaller portion than his own serving, which my twins don’t like. They both have jobs, and will sometimes use their job money to buy us all a little fast food.

So they find it really upsetting how their younger brother never returns the favor by primarily cooking for himself.

Recently, they were home and found their younger brother making himself banana pudding. They asked for some, too, but he was finished and headed for the shower, so he told them to make their own.

Instead, they ate all of his pudding, which rightfully upset him.

The other day, neither of my twins had class and weren’t really in the mood for the food that we had in the house. My son came back from school and decided to make himself some banana pudding. When my twins asked for some as well, he told them they could just make it themselves and the ingredients were all still there.

My son put the banana pudding in the fridge and went to go take a shower while it was chilling.

When he came back down he saw that my twins had eaten it all and this really upset him.

Their mother admonished them for eating the pudding but also told the younger son he was “inconsiderate” for not making extra – then she told him he wasn’t allowed to cook in the future if he wasn’t cooking for everyone.

When he told me about the situation I confronted the twins to which they said it was really rude for him to only make something for himself knowing that they were hungry as well and like he said, he could always make some more.

I told my son that while they shouldn’t have eaten his food that they were right, and he was very inconsiderate. My son replied that it’s not fair how he gets back from school and is expected to make food for his older siblings.

That they can just get a cookbook and learn how to make things for themselves. I told my son that if he’s not going to cook for everybody than he can’t cook anymore.

She doesn’t think she said anything too awful, but the boys are all upset with each other, so she’s asking Reddit what they think.

He’s been pretty moody ever since. Obviously his brothers shouldn’t have eaten his food but it takes no effort to just make a larger portion of the food he’s cooking so that everybody can have it.

My husband thinks I’m in the right but I’m really not happy with how things are right now between my children.

So AITA?

You know they’re about to tell her!

The top comment says she’s definitely not being fair.

This comment, and others, say it’s clear who her favorite children are.

And this person says the youngest son is not the one being inconsiderate here.

They think she should have come down harder on the twins, for sure.

Most people are getting stuck on this point, and fairly so.

This is not great parenting, but listen, we’ve all been there.

Hopefully she’s read the answers and has fixed things at home!