Woman refuses to abide by ex-husband's wife's 'weird food rules' for her kids; 'Do NOT parent MY children.' AITA?

"AITA for refusing to follow my husband's ex-wife's rules for our stepkids regarding food?"

My husband's ex-wife, who I'll call Kate for simplicity, and my husband/I have been feuding for the last few weeks to the point she's threatening to take us back to court about custody arrangements over her food rules.

I will preface by saying, none of the kids (10F, 13M) have food intolerance or allergies. Kate has read a lot of alternative medicine blogs and genuinely believes a bunch of myths like food combining and gut biome related.

At first, we tried to accommodate her concerns as it was coming from a place of love for the kids but the list has grown to a point my husband and I are no longer able to follow them all and have given up.

Some food rules include: No fruit after 5pm; No liquids directly before a meal or while eating or shortly after eating; No ice cold drinks, only cool or lukewarm; No non-natural sugars; No FODMAP foods; No combining starches/carbs; 15 minutes of digestion sitting time after every meal; No gluten at all.

There are way more rules than this, we have a google document that she updates with new rules and hyperlinks to 'studies' that show why its important that the stepkids follow these rules.

The reason why I wonder if we're being an AH for not following these rules is the history between Kate and my husband.

My husband's third child with Kate passed away at a very young age due to complications from an allergy. They had left the three kids with Kate's niece as a babysitter, and their youngest son had an allergic reaction.

No one knew that 3M was allergic to anything, and the cousin mistakenly thought an allergic reaction was just being ill and gave him benadryl to help him sleep it off. It was what lead to their marriage breakdown, and Kate has been very fearful about what the other two kids eat ever since.

My MIL is firmly on Kate's side and has been berating my husband and myself for not following Kate's rules regarding food. But my children/my husbands stepkids (10M, 15F) don't follow these rules obviously, and its making all meals impossible to handle.

10F, 13M hate following these rules when my children don't, and my husband and I don't think its fair for my children to have to eat this restrictive diet. AITA for not following Kate's food rules for her kids when they're at our place?

Let's see what readers had to say.

bekc2 writes:

While I understand Kate is hurting from losing a child, her hurt and fears are spilling over onto her living children in such a way to likely cause disordered eating. Her kids likely don’t follow this off the wall diet when at friend’s houses, or at school, or wherever they’re not under her control.

NTA, but I think your husband needs to spearhead this fight with you for support. If these kids don’t have food related allergies, her list of rules is a bit inhumane and unnecessary.

Maybe your husband needs to initiate court intervention in terms of parenting, because Kate is not approaching this rationally. I can’t imagine a pediatrician or any other doctor backing this food regimen. Kate needs some therapy, and MIL needs to stay in her lane or get behind her son, not former DIL.

beenbat writes:

I don't think that these rules should be adhered to, but you are misunderstanding what a fodmap diet is. You can absolutely subsist on it. Yes, it can be used as an elimination diet to see what FODMAP foods may trigger you, but for some people, all FODMAP foods are triggering.

Even though the diet is very restrictive, there are still lots of foods one is able to eat. A friend of mine has been on a low/no FODMAP diet for years to treat her IBS. That being said, if you don't have digestive issues, why on earth restrict yourself so severely?

I'm more concerned about no FODMAP in addition to the other rules. This lady sounds like she has orthorexia. Maybe a custody hearing wouldn't be so bad - none of these restrictions are medically necessary and they are BURDENSOME.

Also there is no way in hell a 13 year old boy is following that diet when his parents aren't around. Not a chance. This is going to backfire when these kids grow up and throw out ALL rules about nutrition because they weren't taught moderation.

porbla writes:

Yeah, unfortunately this is a mental health issue and OP is going to be powerless to address it. I had a coworker who went through something similar. At first she believed she was gluten intolerant (with nothing to really base it on), then it progressed to having to cut out other foods too.

It got to the point where anytime she didn't feel well, she ran to her 'doctor' with a list of what she ate in the last week and they'd select something else to cut out. She also refused to eat anything out of plastic, or prepared in/with plastic.

At one point she went out for dinner at a restaurant with some friends and she demanded to go into the kitchen to see that they weren't using any plastic utensils while preparing the food.

Unsurprisingly she ended up terribly unhealthy and had to be hospitalized. I'm not really sure what happened to her because she moved away not long after that.