agonyaunt | (no subject)

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

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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.

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?

Edited 2021-11-05 21:08 (UTC)

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Edited 2021-11-10 01:14 (UTC)