I like this. I don’t advise it, but I like it!
Here’s what I hope I would have done- “Hey Honey, GF Kid accidentally spilled her milk & we cleaned it up. Should we get her another glass of it?”
Jeez, talk about going (IMO) in totally the wrong direction.
Child acts up. Supposedly responsible adult lies to help her cover it up, and without even being asked by the kid.
??? !!! Not in my book.
Yeah, I know the adult might be actually be trying to be be sneaky & tell without appearing to be telling. But that subtlety will pass over the kid’s head by a mile. The message the kid gets is “This is a guy who will lie for me to keep me out of trouble.” Not a message you want to send.
I agree with the emerging overall sentiment. It wa a test. The OP flunked. It’s waay too late to have a talk with the kid about that incident. That’s not unrecoverable, because the next visit will have a test too & the OP has a chance to handle that one better. The OP isn’t a parent, but is an adult. And should approach dealing with the kid (at least for now) from the *interested / concerned generic adult *perspective, not the *parental * perspective and definitely not the *not my problem *perspective.
You should have lept to your feet, while loudly saying, “Of course you can have more milk, Angel!”, and pouring her more milk.
Problem averted!
I know this may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really see this being a huge issue. If I were in the same situation, I’d think that I need to pick my battles. Yes, you should mention it to the GF later on in a relaxed manner when an appropriate time comes in the conversation, but it’s not one of those things I’d sit down and have a Talk about.
Maybe the kid doesn’t like milk and doesn’t know how to say so. When I was that age, my mom used to serve us milk in E.T. glasses. She thought we loved them. Unfortunately, I associated E.T. with raw meat and have been unable to stand milk ever since. Mom thought I loved it, but much like your GF’s daughter, I’d either dump it or try not to breathe while I drank. I was uneasy telling her about it until recently, and when we were that age, she just never thought to ask.
This is the most sensible answer yet.
I’ve briefly dated a couple of women with children, and aside from any other difficulties I have with the dating milieu, there is always a huge disconnect between my (negligible) experience with children and the expectation of women with kids that I will be knowledgeable about the ways of child rearing and discipline, much less her peculiar set of rules and guidelines which often vary so radically from parent to parent that there is basically no essential standard. I can pass for a cool uncle for the span of a few hours, but beyond that, I don’t know, and frankly don’t care all that much, about children unless they demonstrate some special aptitude in an area that I’m adept at. Basically, I look as children as being small adults that are mostly not that interesting to talk to or interact with given that they are necessarily narcissistic (by adult standards) and generally not adequately experienced to converse at a mature or nuanced level. In general, single parents should seek to date other single parents, who can share and contrast their experiences and interests.
As for the o.p., yes, the daughter was testing you. In psychological terms, it would be called a compliance test–seeing whether you are going to be passive in response to a provocative impetus, or resistant–and you utterly failed. You should have called her on it, then and there before her mother even returned to the room. Now you are in the position of being a tacit contributor to her behavior, and if you start objecting to her continued bad behavior now she’ll throw an even bigger fit than if you’d done so initially as she has validated your behavior as approval due to your non-response.
In my not-very-informed opinion you should discuss this with the mother, not with the intent that she retroactively punish the daughter (which is pointless at this point, particularly since you are equally culpable in your passivity) but that the mother offer you guidelines for how far you should go in participating in disciplining her daughter, i.e. reporting poor behavior, direct verbal discipline, et cetera. Unless you are willing to undertake and be responsible for consistent application of these rules (and are planning on being around long term) then you should probably aver from engaging in any direct disciplinary action.
Stranger
Yeah, I don’t really see pouring milk out as a bad thing if you don’t like it. I speak as someone who loathed it (severe taste aversion stemming from early lactose intolerance). If anyone pours me milk to this day–sorry, not gonna happen. I don’t even like looking at it to be honest.
Oh, please. This is a ten year old kid trying to see what she can get away with. I wouldn’t sit down and have a round table discussion with her about her ethics and motivations. Fuck her. She’s disobeying her mom, and disrespecting her mother and me. I’d rat.
Yeup.
The pouring the milk out wasn’t the bad thing. The bad thing was waiting to do it while her mother was briefly out of the room, and then returning to the table as if nothing had occurred. The deception was the bad thing, and the OP let himself be manipulated into being complicit in that deception.
Now, is it possible that the child is lactose intolerant and milk makes her tummy hurt but her mother doesn’t believe her? Perhaps. Is it possible that she really hates milk, but her mother beats her if she doesn’t drink it? Perhaps. Is it possible that her mother promised her orange juice but poured milk instead? Perhaps. But I think that’s what known in Testville as “reading into the question”. Absent evidence to the contrary, I’m sticking with the deception theory.
I agree that you need to pick your battles, but in the reverse - you win the small, early ones and the kid gets an idea of where you stand and what you’ll let her get away with. Getting away with stuff with the boyfriend that mom wouldn’t allow is not acceptable at any level.
Absolutely!!
Also, milk is for infants–I don’t blame the kid for pouring it down the sink.
I’ve raised a child of my own, and I was the oldest child in my family, so I got to supervise my sibs and cousins, and I babysat a lot. And I have to agree with this. The kid was testing the OP to see what he’d do, and he flunked. However, I don’t think that this means that he has permanently flunked, this was just a little pop quiz. If he continues to date this woman, then he needs to be on the alert, because this kid WILL test him again. I’m willing to consider that he was completely taken aback by the kid’s behavior.
Almost exactly the same thing I would have said. 
If nothing else it opens the door of the kid to at least offer a reason (even if it’s not a good one).
Yes, actually, now that I think about it, I was. I had no idea what to do or say, so I clammed up.
Girlfriend likes the idea of me saying “I saw that!” and letting her get a confession out of Daughter. What she also thinks might work is for me to explain to Daughter that I’m being put in an awkward position - perhaps by saying “have you ever had a friend do something you know is wrong, but you don’t want to be a tattle-tale…”, then giving her the choice of confessing or me saying something.
We’ll see what happens. I’m sure I won’t know how I’ll react until the next test comes along.
She obviously doesn’t want to drink milk. If she feels she needs to hide that fact it seems to imply the mother is forcing her to drink milk for some odd reason.
The appropriate response is:
“Looks like you don’t want milk, have you told your mother that? She might think you like it. Do you want water? or Juice? Something else”
The important thing to teach the kid is to express her desire not to drink milk to her mother and solve the problem properly. It should be a simple open conversation including when the mother returns, there really is nothing to hide in a situation like this.
I thnk you did exactly the right thing. Checking with the parent away from the child is by far the safest way to go, particularly if no safety issues were involved and you dont have a lot of experience with children. If you had intervened more, you ran the risk of annoying the parent and starting off on the wrong foot there too, so no matter what you did it could have come a cropper.
No matter what the ideal parenting strategy is, its her that determines what interventions are going to be OK with her child, at least in the short term.
Otara
I completely agree.
If I were new to this particular dating situation I would have just watched and kept silent as well, and then talked to the mother afterwards.
The daughter may have thought that you flunked her “test”, but pre-teens and teenagers don’t always have a lot of foresight.
If anything, the “error” was on the daughter’s part. The mother now knows that the daughter can be disobedient when the mother’s not around.
Presumably the mother will now give you some permission to discipline, or at least confront, the daughter when she is misbehaving.
But Mom slaved away to produce that meager amount, held off on ice cream profits. What an unappreciative brat.
Next time, use a trebuchet. The little brat gets to go for a fun flight into some poor bastard’s yard a block or two over, and you get to spend a quiet evening with your honey without having to worry about ethics.
I agree with knowing when to pick your battles. Given the newness of the relationship for all parties, I think I would have acknowledged the daughter’s act in a way that didn’t impart any judgment.
Me: Aha. Is that how it works? I tell you what. I like milk. It’s a shame to see it go down the drain. Next time give it to me and I’ll drink it.
After a couple of minutes, ask her what she likes to drink. She may volunteer some information about why milk sucks.
That may be the end of it.
If the girl presents you with a glass of milk next time, I would weave the events into a conversation with mom and let the chips fall where they may.