Hindsight
Is a beautiful thing. DH's relative came for a few days with his early elementary school kids. They were pretty well behaved. I had more issues with their dad recently divorced. He knows me in that no guests ever lack for food. So he brings a gigantic cooler filled with kid food?? I've only seen a cooler like this at a family reunion and one relative is very orthodox Jewish and the family traveled like this. Lol.
Every meal was begging the children to eat offering them multiple choices. Several times we went out to eat and the father had to delay his meal because he had to pick out items in the kids meals that they found offensive. Unreal. And yes a few times the kids were upset and saying they wanted mommy.
DH said he saw the problems and he identified with the dad as he went through this with kids when he was divorced. Yes and we know how that turned out. Lol.
Look I'm not perfect. Recently had one of my own kids over for dinner and he is very obese. Eats junk food all day long. Do I feel guilty? Yes. I was the chicken nuggets type mom. And now he is paying for it.
hindsight?
We could all have done things
We could all have done things differently. We did the best we could with what we had/knew. None of us is perfect.
Hindsight is 20/20
Or so they say. Most of us do the best we know how to do at the time.
I have 3 bios. My ODS would eat anything...he ate from legs at 3 yo and loved brocoli. My DD is a little picky, but eats most things. YDS is a nightmare to feed because he's the super picky one. It's gotten better as he's gotten older, though. Hopefully they will be encouraged to try new things and understand when told if they're something on the plate they don't like, it doesn't have to be removed.
It's tough on littles to adjust when mom and dad may have different routines and rules. Things will settle down some after an adjustment peroid and new routines are established. For me, that was the key- getting everyone into the groove of a new routine.
There's sooo much I'd go back and change, but its not possible. I have told my kids (when it was age appropriate) that I wish I had done some things better or differently, but they assure me they know I did my absolute best at the time.
We can only make decisions with the information we have at that
time.
Hind site guilt and beating ourselves up for past choices, undermines life today and going forward. It is rare that anyone would make a different decion than the one made at the time it was made with the information available at that time.
Be kind to you.
As for a guest doing what your DH's relative did, I would not tolerate it. I would eat and when I was done it would be "We are leaving. If you haven't finished your meal, have it put in a to-go box. You have 10mins and we are out."
This level of kid catering is nauseating and no one should allow it to in any way interfere in our lives. Not even for a fraction of a second.
Poor parenting nor the product of that parenting can be allowed to adversely impact anyone other than the poor parent and their ill raised spawn.
IMHO of course.
My friend went on a trip to
My friend went on a trip to another city with one of her friends and her friend's daughter. They shared a hotel room. This daughter was around 15/16. My friend was horrified that her friend, one of the first things she did, was go out to a grocery store and get a ton of items for the daughter to eat, said it was bags of food (for one weekend). They were going out all day and this city has a LOT of good food. But no, the teen had to be catered to all day for food things. I think the woman even bought a toaster if I remember right, then tossed it when they left. My friend said "never again."