Dad Takes Teen Daughter's Birthday Gift Away Because She Doesn't Like Stepmom's Cooking

Nov 24, 2021 by apost team

There are so many wonderful aspects of being a parent, but there are also some less than thrilling ones too. One of those is when kids are picky eaters. But one story about a child who's a picky eater went in a different direction than usual. A father in his 40s wrote into Reddit's AITA subreddit to ask about a situation he'd had with his 16-year-old daughter, who wasn't a fan of her new stepmother Molly's cooking. Since she didn't wish to eat everything Molly made, the girl began to cook her own dinners when the stepmom's meals weren't to her liking.

Although most parents would be proud of a self-sufficient teen who cooks for themselves, the girl's refusal to eat Molly's food made the stepmom feel insecure. This led her to bring it up with the father, who then tried to convince his daughter to eat more of her new stepmom's cooking.

Things escalated when the father came home one night and found his daughter and wife arguing because the girl had started cooking her own food again. He demanded his daughter stop cooking and eat with them or go to her room and not eat at all. The daughter began arguing, so the dad told her she wouldn't get her birthday present from him and her mom, which was a new iPhone.

Incredibly upset, the girl called her uncle and aunt, who told the dad that he wasn't being fair and that she did nothing wrong. The father hung up on them, and afterward his daughter wouldn't come out of her room.

Unsure if he or his daughter were in the wrong in the situation, he asked Reddit to weigh in. Unfortunately for him, the unanimous decision was that he was in the wrong.

The dad began his post and said he has two kids, a 14-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. He mentioned that he recently got married to Molly and said she "is a great cook and she has been cooking for me and the kids in the past few months." But unfortunately, his daughter "doesn't like all the meals Molly cooks and sometimes cooks her own dinners." This made Molly feel "hurt thinking her food isn't good enough." She confided in her husband "how much it bothers her to see (the girl) decline her food and cook by herself."

The dad then spoke to his daughter to "address the issue," and while the girl "appreciates Molly's cooking," she said she "naturally can not be expected to eat everything she cooks." The dad asked her to try more of Molly's food "to avoid conflict since (Molly is) very sensitive."

But one day, he came home late and found Molly and his daughter arguing because the girl had decided to cook her own dinner again that night, which made Molly feel as if her "food was less th(a)n." The dad asked his daughter to come and eat the food, which she refused and said she's "old enough not to eat food she doesn't like and pretend to like it just like (he) wanted her to, to appease her stepmom."

The dad told her she was "acting rude" and made her turn off the oven. He also said that she wasn't allowed to cook that night and asked her to go to her room and think about things before returning to talk about everything.

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The girl began to argue, which led the dad to punish her by "taking away her Thanksgiving gift that her mom left with (him)," which they'd both paid for. The gift was a new iPhone and actually her belated birthday present from two months earlier since they weren't able to give it to her at the time.

This made the daughter cry since "she didn't understand why she was being punished." Her dad asked her to go and cool off in her room, but instead, she called his in-laws (her uncle and aunt), who picked an argument with him over the phone and said she's "old enough to cook her own meals and (his) wife should get over herself and stop picking on (his) daughter." 

Molly said, "she just wants to make sure (his) daughter eats well and that she cares otherwise it wouldn't hurt so bad." The in-laws told the father to back out of the punishment, but he thought it was "more than an issue about dinner and (he) refused to let them intervene and hung up." Since then, his daughter had been "completely silent" and refused to go downstairs. 

Reddit wasted no time in overwhelmingly calling the father the villain in this situation. The top-rated comment said:

"Your daughter's done nothing to warrant having her gift taken away, but A+++ effort to your new wife for attempting to stick a wedge between you and your child (and A+++ effort to you for not noticing)."

Over 37,000 people upvoted it, and many others agreed the new stepmom was the issue. Another user wrote:

"Your new wife sounds like a control freak. It is about more than dinner: you brought a new wife into the house and suddenly she gets to control what your nearly-adult daughter eats?!"

Who do you think was in the wrong — the father or his 16-year-old daughter? What do you think about the stepmother's motivations? Let us know, and pass this on so others can weigh in too.