So you’re not just cooking an extra portion for him, but you’re cooking a whole separate meal?
Has he been evaluated for depression? This is the sort of thing a lot of depressed people do?
My Aunt (& Uncle) had a policy with their kids that after you were 18 and out of school, if you stayed at home they set a board-and-room fee that you were expected to pay each week, (higher if you expected things like laundry service, room cleaning, etc.), a list of weekly chores you were to do, and that family rules (like no overnight boyfriend/girlfriend guests, times to be home, etc.) still applied. If you objected, you were welcome to find an apartment, buy groceries, do your own cleaning, laundry, etc. (This didn’t apply if you were continuing your education via college or trade school.)
I remember hearing from my uncle about the first time his wife & the eldest son had a battle about this (family rules), and he said “OK, I’m moving out” and did. He said that his fife came to him privately crying “my baby’s moving out!” and his son came to him privately crying “my mother’s forcing me out of my home!”. He told both of them that that was the agreement, and we were all going to stay with it.
I wasn’t sure of it at the time, but it seemed to have been as good idea – all of their 6 children turned out pretty food – grown with families of their own.
That’s for sure! You anywhere neqr Minnesota, Saint Cad? I’ll gladly come over for a chef-cooked supper, and not use any ketchup.
You and your wife have to get on the same page. The goal should be to help your stepson become a responsible adult who takes care of himself and supports himself. At the bare minimum, “supports himself” has to mean that he shoulders part of the expense and labor of living in a household, whether it is your household or a future apartment he shares with roommates, or a place where he lives on his own. (I am assuming he does not have any personality issues that make this expectation unreasonable.)
If he is living with you, at age 23 he has to contribute to the household financially and by doing household tasks. The amounts can be adjusted according to how much he works at a job (15 hours a week or more like 40 hours a week?) and how much he earns. This will also let him feel the pride of being an adult who contributes, rather than a parasite who sponges off his family.
Do not call the financial contribution rent, because then he will feel entitled to say “I’m paying rent, I don’t have to do X, Y, or Z.”
If you don’t like the idea of taking his money, take it anyways but secretly save it for a housewarming gift for when he moves out on his own, or an emergency fund for when he can’t pay his medical bills because he doesn’t have health insurance. The point his, you want him to feel responsibility for the cost of living in a household, and also the pride of being an adult who contributes to the household.
He should be doing his own laundry. If his work hours are closer to 15H/week, he should be doing a lot more than vacuuming the living room once a week. Cleaning the bathrooms comes to mind. If you are doing the cooking, he should be doing dishes, either on a rotation with your wife or every night as part of his household contribution.
Of course he won’t want to do any of those things. It is important that you establish his new obligations as part of a new framework for how your household is going to operate. You are not obligated to cook for a healthy, capable 23 year old. Doing so is your choice, and make it clear that you can choose not to if he is not willing to contribute like an adult. Ultimately, if he doesn’t like it, you and your wife have to be prepared to require him to move out.
So be prepared to make him suffer natural consequences. He won’t do his own laundry? He wears dirty wrinkled clothes. (If he doesn’t care, well, it shouldn’t matter to you, then, either.) He won’t agree to do chores/dishes? He will no longer have meals prepared for him. Does he provide his own transportation, or does he drive a car you own and pay insurance/maintenance on? That is another privilege that can be withdrawn if necessary to emphasize that privileges come with responsibilities.
Also, you can reduce your own stress by using natural consequences. If he is oblivious to the responsibilites of adults in the U.S., remind him once in March (because you are a nice guy) that he has to file taxes by April 15. And then forget about it. If he fails to file his taxes, let him find out about the IRS and fines and penalty interest on his own. Better for him to experience that next year at age 24 then to spend the rest of your life trying to goad him into doing his taxes every year, right?
Same thing with health insurance. I don’t think you can be made responsible for his medical bills if he is 23 (but you might want to look into that more closely). If you decide to put him on your insurance (because he is still young enough), then make him pay his share of the premium. But if he ignores reminders that he needs to sign up for health insurance, let him incur the penalty and let him pay his own medical bills. Feel free to let your family doctor/dentist know that they are to bill him on his own account from now on. It is unlikely (but not impossible, I know) that he will encounter a life shattering medical expense before he has another opportunity to sign up for insurance in November. The point is again that you (or your wife) can remind him about these things once, but it is not your job to make sure a 23 year old follows through on his responsibilities. Let him suffer the consequences of being irresponsible/forgetful/lazy.
This matter of natural consequences is where it is essential that you and your wife be on the same page. It is also important that you make them clear to him beforehand, so that he knows what the situation is. If you suddenly stop cooking as seeming retribution for him not cleaning the bathrooms, he will justify it to himself as you being mean and unfair, and you might also feel vaguely guilty. If you stop because you all agreed that would be a consequence of him failing to do what is expected of him, then you are simply abiding by your agreement.
Regarding meals, he should let you know by XX o’clock everyday if he will not eat dinner at home, and if he will not be home by say 8:00, then he should expect to either get dinner outside or prepare something on his own. If he says he can’t cook, well, he can make a sandwich or put waffles in the toaster or pour cereal and milk in a bowl.
If he fails tolet you know, consistently, stop preparing his meals.
On the other hand, if he is going along with everything,you have to let him put ketchup on everything if he wishes, and without complaint. If he is contributing to the household like an adult, he is entitled to eat his food with whatever condiments he chooses. If he can tell when you don’t season the food, then season his food like everyone else.
Actually, it’s quite common. Other people (looks at self) don’t whinge and moan about ungrateful step-children drowning their decently cooked meals in tomato sauce. We overeat to calm the pain. That doesn’t work particularly well either (nor does gambling or alcohol addiction or being a shopaholic) but it’s one of the things we mortals do when our lives are shit.
Since I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I feel qualified to comment.
Saint Cad feels a special sense of accomplishment in cooking. He takes pride in the finished product, pride that he does not take in washing dishes or folding clothes. The step-son’s use of ketchup squashes SC’s sense of accomplishment, it stabs directly at the thing he takes pride in. Even though it seems minor, it’s one of the things that will hurt the most.
From what we’ve read, and as someone who takes pride in my cooking, I would agree. There’s probably more than the surface story, but this sums up how I understand the portion of this situation that has been shared.
I gotta side with the kid on this. Parks and Rec is pretty funny and Ron is an excellent role model for young men.
Apparently this kid doesn’t know how to pause/resume on Netflix, either.
To each his own on ketchup, but as an avid cook I find it offensive if you cook for hours and perfectly balance a sauce and see a person drown it in ketchup BEFORE even tasting it. Once a person has tasted it as presented I don’t care what they do, its their taste buds. Just give it a shot.
I always bite my tongue as they are the ones eating it, I just thinks its a damn insult. I probably wouldn’t be able to change that, but I would not go out of my way to cook anything nice for this person. Perhaps a sou bowl with some ketchup an a garnish would suffice?
By all means, fuck that kid. He’s an ingrateful whiner and if he were in my house he could microwave some paula dean tv dinners or starve. But you can’t go on and on about “i’m the chef, how dare you insult this great chef, blah blah” and then cook up half-assed food. I had the same problem with fellow chefs who would char the ever loving hell out of any well-done steak because “they can’t tell anyway.”
I don’t like catsup on anything but hot dogs, but I respect that other people do. If you are an avid cook you more than anyone should understand that things like salt, pepper, catsup, mustard, etc. are things that are traditionally added at the table by the person eating, not dictated by the cook. It is no more an insult to the cook for someone to add salt or catsup than it is an insult to the dressmaker if a woman likes to wear a brooch she inherited from her grandmother on all her dresses.
I think the point is that ketchup is not viewed as a brooch, but a vinyl poncho.
At some point, after you hand embroidered a beautiful detail on yet another dress, you’re really going to get sick of that fucking everpresent poncho.
And that’s the point at which you stop embroidering. When someone doesn’t appreciate the favors you do for them, continuing to do them is kinda nutty. I recognize that the OP has all sorts of other things going on that he eventually will need to tackle, and tackling them might be sooner rather than later if he stops doing this favor. But it is a favor, and it is under the OP’s control.
It sucks when we do things for other people and they don’t appreciate it. It hurts. It makes us feel belittled and unappreciated. But we won’t fix that by continuing to do the things and continuing to be unappreciated.
Once someone has essentially told you that they don’t appreciate your favors, are they to blame if you continue to do them?
Yeah, that right there has got to stop. He eats what you cook or he makes do for himself. And he’s 23 for goodness sake - if he can’t figure out by now how to boil up some pasta and heat up some sauce from a jar, there’s not a whole lot of hope for him.
But the issue isn’t really the cooking; SC likes the cooking.
If he liked cooking for its own sake, he wouldn’t feel resentful or angry when his stepson either a) doesn’t come home for dinner when promised or b) drenches his food with ketchup. He likes cooking, but he needs other people to appreciate that cooking. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think that most people probably feel that way to some extent about cooking for other people.
But there is literally no way to force this kid to be appreciative or respectful in the way the OP would like. So, as I said earlier and as others have said (ad nauseam at this point), the only remaining options are for the OP to change his behavior or at least his approach to the situation. But he doesn’t seem to want to. So I wish him all the best with that.
Only if they bitch to my wife when I stop.
The son is to blame for his own actions. He isn’t to blame for the OP continuing to do favors that are unappreciated.
I disagree. Cooking is a social activity; one may enjoy it for it’s own sake and still want appreciation.
Also, I don’t think it necessary the SC give up or cut back on an enjoyable hobby; there should be another approach.
But this is getting silly. SC came in to vent because the family is having trouble adjusting to a change, and we are recommending breaking up the family, abandoning a favorite hobby, and accepting blame for everything.
Or to accept that he is playing a role in enabling the behavior and either find a way to cope with that or stop doing the favors for the stepson that the stepson does not show the required appreciation for.
There’s no reason the OP needs to or should stop cooking. But he should stop casting his pearls before swine if it hurts his feelings that they are swine who will do what swine do.