Man is honest with wife: 'our 4-year-old won't eat your food because you're a terrible cook.' AITA?
"AITA for telling my wife that our four-year-old son won't eat her cooking primarily because she's a terrible cook?"
My wife [34f] and I [39m] have been married for about ten years. During these ten years, I have done the majority of the cooking. Having kitchen experience, I am confident in my abilities, and she fell in love with my cooking fairly early on in our relationship. She did occasionally cook for me during this time, but I tended to want to avoid it because to be brutally honest, it was never any good.
Now that we have a four-year-old son and she's a SAHM, she's cooking a lot more, and it's not going well. I've heard her have the same argument with our son probably 100 times by now. It always goes the same way:
[1] She cooks something that he has previously said he doesn't like.
[2] He doesn't like it, often expressing his disgust with "yuck."
[3] She throws a giant tantrum and tells him that if he can't eat his dinner he should get out.
[4] He cries and argues back.
[5] I'm left picking up the pieces.
Well, last night, my wife decided to make her seafood stew. Her seafood stew is among her worst recipes. She essentially throws a bunch of fish in a pot, overcooks it, throws in some vegetables (yes, she puts the vegetables in after the fish), and then throws in a couple of cans of tomatoes and lets it stew for a while. It manages to be both devoid of any actual flavor because she barely seasons it, but the acidity of the canned tomatoes is downright horrible. I've been trying valiantly to eat her cooking for the better part of a decade now, and even I find it awful.
The second my son saw the stew he said he wasn't going to eat a bite of it. Naturally my wife flipped her lid at him and told him to "get out." Instead of trying to deescalate them, I told her that it's her own damn fault for never even trying to learn to cook, and that maybe she should be getting out if she can't feed her own child. She shrieked at the top of her lungs, said she'd eat all the stew herself, and stormed away. I just snapped. I reached my breaking point. Now I'm afraid I went too far.
Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:
tsscaramel said:
It was certainly brutally honest but you really should have been flat out with her a while ago, especially if you’ve been eating her cooking all this time just to spare her feelings. She’s under the impression that you enjoy her cooking because every time she makes it, you end up eating all of it, however in reality you’ve been protecting her from the ugly truth which she should’ve been told about years ago. Her reaction was over the top, but you really should have told her this stuff a long, long be time ago. ESH.
Even_Gas_2738 said:
Nta. Get the wife a crock pot. And a crock pot recipe book. Literally idiot proof.
Prestigious_Time_138 said:
YTA for not telling her earlier. You’re married for a decade and this is the first time she hears that her cooking is disgusting? Great communication there champ.
GrouchySteam said:
ESH - you for not voicing correctly your issue, lying by omissions then flew off the handle to make her aware her cooking is not alright. Her for her inability to handle appropriately your child unwilling to comply eating her unsavoury concoction. She might really not get it is a real issue. Her tastebuds can really be fine with whatever, so her not getting at all how awful her cooking skills are can very much be honest. You failed to communicate for YEARS!
Total-Addendum9327 said:
NTA, but maybe spring for some cooking lessons for your wife? Agree with some other posts here, probably should have tried addressing this much earlier.
JessyNyan said:
NTA. Why is she arguing with a 4 year old? Why is she telling the 4 year old to get out? Where to? Why didn't you tell her honestly that her cooking sucks at any point in the last 10 years?
avatarjulius said:
NTA. The problem here is that she can't take criticism. Her child won't eat her cooking, and her reaction is that the child should get out. She doesn't ask why or take the child's disgust into consideration. She might feel sensitive because her cooking is going against someone with professional experience, but she still needs to listen to her child.