(no subject)

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have two kids, a daughter, 8, and a son, 5. My son is a picky eater and has very intense likes and dislikes. He likes enough foods and gets enough calories that our pediatrician is not concerned, but trying to introduce new foods has always been a dramatic struggle. My daughter is a much better eater, and generally does not complain about what is being served or trying new tastes and textures.

My daughter’s birthday was last week, and she requested a strawberry cheesecake. She said it’s her new “favorite” after recently trying it when visiting a friend. I have always baked a chocolate cake from scratch for all my kids’ birthdays. Both my kids like chocolate cake and it is an easy, fun tradition. I know my son would not like cheesecake and would throw a fit if we served a dessert that he didn’t want to eat. So I explained this to my daughter, and she was sad, but understood. I made the chocolate cake like normal, everyone enjoyed it and her birthday dinner went off without a hitch.

I mentioned this to a couple of friends, and they think I handled it wrong. They said that by not giving my daughter the cake she asked for, especially for her birthday, I was teaching her that her needs will only ever come second to her brother’s. They also mentioned that they think this is evidence of a larger pattern in which I rely too much on my daughter’s easy, go-with-the-flow nature to mitigate her brother’s tantrums. I was shocked to hear this. It’s only a birthday cake! And yes, my daughter is the easier child and can be reasoned with at a level my son can’t yet, so I do ask her to be a good role model for her brother and to be the one to compromise when their wants are at odds with one another. But these are good skills for her to have in life and will build a strong foundation for her to be a good person as she grows up. My son will get these lessons too, but I’m not going to make him suffer in the meantime for the principle of it when his sister is happy to go along with what I tell her. I’m just not sure if my friends have a point and I’m actually doing something wrong here. Any advice?

—At Odds Over Cake

Dear At Odds Over Cake,

I agree with your friends. Unfortunately, you did handle this incorrectly. Your son’s dietary preferences may be different from your daughter’s, and there’s nothing wrong with making some exceptions for him when meal planning if that’s the path of least resistance in your household. But this was your daughter’s birthday, not your son’s. She requested a different cake on a special occasion—a day meant to celebrate her. You should’ve gotten her the cheesecake. If your son didn’t want to eat it, I’m guessing you wouldn’t have forced him.

You say that your daughter is naturally easygoing. That may be true, and if it is, it’s all the more reason to reward her now and again for being your more reasonable, compromise-oriented child. It’s also possible that she’s already realized that her needs and wants will come second. Since she was 3, she’s had to adjust to being the big sister and the bigger person. Your son is 5, and it’s not too early to start teaching him the same consideration of his sibling’s wishes that your daughter has already mastered. That wouldn’t be a case of him “suffering for the principle.” It would be about you, the parent, setting the family precedent that it sounds like you’ve been relying on your daughter to model.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/11/scars-divorce-parenting-advice-care-feeding.html

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Maybe it's just me, but, two cakes? Daughter did deserve to get the cake she asked for.

[conuly]

Cupcakes are cheap at the bakery and grocery store. Cheesecake for Daughter, cupcake for son, done.

[ekaterinn]

Two cakes is the easiest solution! It is HER birthday.

[conuly]

The advice is perfectly sensible, though I'd add a few things:

1. It would be reasonable to go to the bakery and pick up a chocolate cupcake for Son. That's a very sensible accommodation for a beloved family member with some dietary restrictions.

2. If you go into every "new food opportunity" with the belief that you just KNOW your child won't like it, you're setting your child up for failure before you even get started. Which ties in to

3. In my experience, pediatricians are people and people are extremely ignorant about food aversions. LW's concerns about what Son will and will not eat are already affecting daily life. It's time for LW to get a referral to an occupational therapist or an SLP who handles feeding issues to see if they do need more help. If nothing else, I think LW could benefit from some more targeted education on how to parent a kid with serious food aversions. I don't know that Son does need special help, but I do know that the pediatrician may not be the right one to make that call so long as the weight is on target. You gotta talk to a specialist.

[ashbet]

All of this!!

no to OT and SLP

[gingicat]

I think all the professional advice we got for our son's eating disorder early on prevented it actually being diagnosed. SLP said "he swallows just fine" and OT was all about "just take a bite." In fact, the ARFID therapy we were referred to is all about "become familiar with the new food" in a way that makes the aversion worse. At this point we don't give a shit about new foods, we just want him to not starve!

Re: no to OT and SLP

[conuly]

Oh, no, that sucks :(

But I do know some people who have had better luck. Maybe it's one of those awful things where it depends on where you are.

[naath]

son will not get even a bit sick from *not eating dessert*, for daughter's birthday she deserves her choice of treat (within availability and budget constraints), son needs to have a meal he will eat and not go hungry, but daughter should not be taught that her desires are secondary to her brother's even on her birthday.

If you want to cook a chocolate cake because you enjoy it, do it on your own time. If you can't make cheesecake I am sure they can be bought. If they are unaffordable, that is a different problem.

[beable]

I think LW failed even more spectacularly than was addressed, because asking for cheesecake as a “new favourite” sounds not just like ElderKid liking cheesecake, but also ElderKid trying to use the tools they had available to draw the focus of the birthday to be on them.

By all means get the younger kid his chocolate cake, but LW needs to pay more attention to her “easy going” daughter rather than taking her for granted.

[kindkit]

I also think LW needs to start gently teaching the son the basics of self-control. It's not okay to "throw a fit" if someone else's birthday cake doesn't meet your specifications. I mean, definitely get him a cupcake so he has a treat and isn't left out, but it's not doing the kid any favors to let everything in the family constantly revolve around him (and not just, I suspect, when it's a matter of food.) I have the impression--and this may be unfair, because the letter brought back bad memories for me--that LW is constantly prioritizing the son and expecting/instructing the daughter to accept that she gets less attention to her needs, wants, comfort.

I was the older "sister" (I'm a trans man, but didn't know it then) of a difficult, demanding younger brother who always got his way, while I was expected to be patient and mature and understanding, and I am STILL BITTER.

It also strikes me as a very gendered expectation. If the daughter were an older brother instead, would LW still expect him to be "easygoing" about not even getting the birthday treat he wanted?

[snakeling]

That was my first thought: would she be this "accommodating" if the picky eater was a daughter and the birthday child was a boy?

[minoanmiss]

*puts $5 on no*
*checks alternate universe*

[cereta]

Oh, the gender, yes. Being the oldest daughter (two years younger than my older brother, but seven and eight years older than my sister and younger brother), I got a lot of expectation dumped on me. First, my grandmother, who looked after us while my dad was being treated out of state for cancer, and then my mother, who was, well, a widow with four kids. My older brother was, and is, charming and charismatic and nice to pretty much everyone but me, but responsibility was pretty much not a thing in his world until his mid-20's and his second attempt at college. I got told a LOT that I was responsible for stuff basically because I was responsible, something I've resented since even then, but it only occurred to me very recently to wonder: if I had been the charming, charismatic teenager/young adult going out drinking every weekend, flunking out of school, holding parties while mom and the two younger kids were away (situations in which my mother explicitly told me that the condition of the house when she arrived home was my responsibility), basically being Older Brother with a bra, if I'd have been let off the hook as easily. As it was, I babysat (including coming home from college on spring breaks and long weekends to stay with one younger kid while mom took the older one to soccer tournaments), did chores, cleaned the damn kitchen floor of the watermelon dropped during one of his parties...

Ahem. There may be some current bitterness happening.

Point being: I wonder if a second child who was an oldest son would have been held to the same expectations I was. I wonder a lot.

[minoanmiss]

One of these days I'm going to learn to embroider just to make a wee doll with your older brother's face accurately rendered on it. And then I'll buy some long pins.

[vindoletta]

I'm the youngest of two, with an older brother by only a few months. Despite that, I was ordered to do a lot more household chores than him. Sometimes I was yelled at for not finishing a chore quickly enough so I could start on the next one, while my brother sat in the kitchen watching soccer. It doesn't surprise me eldest daughters are treated even worse and are expected to become a second mom. (To be fair, my brother was expected to relent in some things, and look out for me, being older and all. However, most chores he simply was never ordered to do.)

I was also a picky eater and my mother wouldn't have made a second meal to eat, usually. If there was a second option just for me I was expected to eat it without complaining. Most of the time, though, the problem were sensory issues that I didn't know how to explain, and my mom turning each meal into a power struggle and a personal offense.

[cereta]

It’s only a birthday cake!

Which is exactly why daughter's preferences should have been prioritized this one time, if not more often even than that. Yeah, this is kind of "my issues, let me show them," but even my mother, who very much relied on me to be the Good Kid, got me a chocolate cream pie for my birthday instead of making me share my brother's (whose birthday was six days before mine).

[futurism]

This is an unfortunate situation that reflects on a much, much darker pattern LW is teaching her daughter here. I guess that prioritizing her own comfort and her son's comfort was what came first because of the immediate nature of things, but setting up the daughter to always accept compromising and being second and never getting what she wants? What kinda relationships will she get into as she grows older? What kinda partners will she pick once she reaches adulthood? I may be overreacting from my own experience here, but it's not *just* a birthday cake, it's the whole mindset they've been teaching her.

I agree with everyone's take on this and the letter advice.

[lemonsharks]

I want to steal this little girl away and give her the kind of life where she is the most important person on her birthday and where it is abundantly clear that she is absolutely important and valued on every other day.

And I want to drag her mom's head out of her own ass with a ding dang grappling hook

[raine]

Seconded!

[movingfinger]

I guess I'm a big meanie because if a five-year-old doesn't want to eat any of someone else's birthday cake, I would not be providing special consolation extra cake. Five is not too young to learn that everything is not always about you.

[lilysea]

I guess I'm a big meanie because if a five-year-old doesn't want to eat any of someone else's birthday cake, I would not be providing special consolation extra cake. Five is not too young to learn that everything is not always about you.

For me it depends.

Allergies/food intolerances? They get a small safe alternative dessert

Serious sensory issues? They get a small alternative dessert they can eat

If it's just a dislike/preference, tho, no, no second dessert.

[starfleetbrat]

"and would throw a fit if we served a dessert that he didn’t want to eat."

I feel like this wasn't really addressed. Its one thing if a kid is being picky and chooses not to eat something and is then offered an alternative but completely another thing if you're accomodating a child who throws a tantrum over it. That kid is learning all he needs to do to get his way is throw a fit.

I also think that the LW just didn't really want to make the cheesecake.

"I have always baked a chocolate cake from scratch for all my kids’ birthdays. Both my kids like chocolate cake and it is an easy, fun tradition."

That makes it sound like its more about the LW than the kids. Like she cooks it -from scratch- and its -easy- so why would she want to do the cheesecake? Maybe the other kid throwing the fit was just the excuse LW needed to stick to the "easy" chocolate cake.

[conuly]

That kid is learning all he needs to do to get his way is throw a fit.

Or he's five, he has a lot of big emotions, many of them centered around food, and being expected to eat something unfamiliar on the fly when everybody else gets to eat something they enjoy is enough to send him into a meltdown, which LW calls "throwing a fit" because they don't have better vocabulary or understanding.

Could really go either way.

I also think that the LW just didn't really want to make the cheesecake.

Yeah, I got a hint of that too, in which case LW's weaponizing one child's problems to use against the other, which is a level of parenting so bad it falls off the scale.

Though really, it's not that hard to buy cheesecake at the bakery.

[ekaterinn]

Hell, at the very least, LW could still make her chocolate cake and buy Daughter a slice or two of cheesecake from a grocery store bakery. Though right now, LW owes Daughter a whole damned cake.

[liv]

I'm glad to see your interpretation here. I don't know many 5yos but my strong impression is that they don't intentionally "throw a fit" in order to "get their way". Or, if they do there's something very wrong in the family dynamic, for a child that young to have learned to be that manipulative. I think little kids with food issues who have massive overreactions to a sibling eating something they have an aversion to, more often than not genuinely are that upset. I mean, that's still a problem, it's still something they need to learn to handle, but it's not a strategy to get what they want.

I don't think the solution is to force the older, calmer kid to celebrate her birthday with something that the younger kid prefers and she doesn't. I think I would have handled this by giving clear explanations to the younger kid, well in advance of the actual birthday, of what was going to happen. That his sister is getting the cake of her choice because it's her birthday, and he doesn't have to eat it if he doesn't want to, and he can have another treat (not necessarily a whole other cake, but something he likes) to make up for it. And yes, there may be emotions in response to hearing that, but dealing with your child's emotions is part of parenting; hopefully if it was covered in advance, it wouldn't spoil the birthday.