People Want To Know What's On Our Mind After Reading Their "Am I The Jerk?" Stories

“My sister is a single mom who works long hours, so I watch her daughter (Eva, 14f) after school and feed her dinner alongside my family.

I am happy to do this and normally get along great with Eva (we’re both bookworms). She has ARFID, and eats a very limited number of things–it’s not that she has things she won’t eat, more that there is a specific list of things she -will- eat.

For the past two years I’ve been watching her, I’ve balanced Eva’s needs with everyone else’s by modifying meals, because I want her to be fed but at the same time I’m not restricting my family to the few dozen things Eva will eat. For instance, if I’m making broccoli beef and carrot stir fry, I’ll cook the beef and carrots first, take out a serving for Eva, then add the sauce and broccoli for the rest of us.

If I’m making mango chicken, I’ll bake an extra chicken breast plain for Eva. If a meal can’t be adapted at all, I make one of her safe foods.

This was going fine until a month ago. I baked a lasagna and made extra meat sauce, so Eva got meat sauce on spaghetti and the rest of us had lasagna.

But when I cut into the lasagna, Eva made a face and said it looked like a suppurating wound. I told her ‘Nice vocabulary word, but you’re not allowed to be rude about my cooking. You don’t have to eat it, but you can’t be nasty about it and spoil everyone’s appetite.” She looked unhappy but subsided. A week later, I made dal curry (she had frozen pizza) and she said it looked like diarrhea and smelled like crap, and I reiterated that being rude about my food at the table was unacceptable.

This time I told my sister, who said she’d talk to her. Days later, I made chicken/broccoli/rice casserole (she had chicken and rice) and she compared it to cat vomit. I told her that if she couldn’t be polite, she’d have to take her meal to the living room and eat it there.

She went. I again told her mother.

Two days ago, I made Thai green curry for the rest of us and a sandwich and a side salad for Eva. She took a look at the curry and opened her mouth. I cut her off and asked if she was capable of being civil at the table, and she sort of shook her head, so I handed her her sandwich and pointed her to the living room.

She made a face but went.

Last night I got a call from my sister saying that I’m being cruel by banishing her daughter because she has a disability (ARFID). I said I wasn’t banishing her because she had ARFID, I was banishing her because she was being insulting.

My sister said that her daughter shouldn’t have to fake it and that family shouldn’t have to eat alone. I said all I was asking was for her to not say anything about our meal. My sister says I’m being insensitive to how hard it is for her to be surrounded by things she thinks are gross all the time, that I should be more accommodating, and that she’s just a kid and I should be the mature one and not bully her.”

Another User Comments:

“NTJ. If your niece is distressed by the scents and visuals of your family’s food, then you are making accommodations for her needs by giving her a place to eat where she isn’t subjected to distressing sensory input. If she hadn’t been rude, then it wasn’t an unreasonable option for addressing her special needs in this situation.

However, it wasn’t just an accommodation, because you had already made significant accommodations for her restricted diet. She was unnecessarily rude and insulting about the foods you’d prepared – which sounded delicious, by the way.

The niece experienced the consequences of her actions. She should be taught how to speak in a way that isn’t rude.

Whatever her mother said to her obviously didn’t convey the essential points. Your niece has a medical problem, but it’s not the world’s responsibility to adjust to her. She needs to learn how to handle situations like this, where she has sensory distress, such as asking for help to get through that moment of difficulty.

The jerk here is not the niece, since she’s a child who is still learning social skills. The jerk is her mother, who accused you of being a bully rather than helping her daughter learn how to express herself in a civil way, as well as to figure out a solution that makes reasonable accommodations without ostracizing the person who needs it.

In addition, assuming that your sister isn’t paying for your time and for all the food you provide to her daughter, you are doing your sister a favor by caring for your niece and making efforts to meet her nutritional needs.

Instead of making disgusting comments about the food, the niece should learn to say something like, “Aunt, I am having an adverse physical response to the smell and looks of the food you made for the family.

Help me.” In this situation, eating in a separate room makes sense. In order to be included in the family gathering, perhaps a video call connection like FaceTime or an internal camera system could be used to allow her to participate without the odors of cooking.

It would limit the visuals of the foods, too. Note: I am not an expert in ARFID, so maybe isolating oneself from other people’s foods isn’t the right way to manage sensory distress. For some conditions, desensitization is a better strategy. Whatever is true for ARFID, the point is that the child learns by the consequences of her actions, and by the behaviors of the adults around her, how to communicate and navigate social situations with respect to her medical needs.

Her mother failed. OP used reasonable consequences for niece’s behavior.” DWYL_LoveWhatYouDo

Another User Comments:

“NTJ.

However; this sounds like the statement of an autistic child who doesn’t realize their words (which they may view as impartial observations) are actually hurting people’s hearts.

I could be wrong, but as you reference her talking about ‘masking’ and ARFID is heavily common in autistic people.

She’s probably trying to explain her distress and sensory issues in some of the few ways that allistics seem to understand us, metaphors and similes.

She feels forced to smell feces and see corpse pieces while she eats. If just that statement makes you feel yucky, imagine being in a room full of people slurping up sewage and chowing down on a bleeding, wiggling corpse. That is how she feels.

As she is learning to unmask, she has to navigate between advocating for her sensory needs and not being a jerk. She has been taught that her discomfort and suffering don’t matter and has finally discovered a way to show her discomfort – which hurts everyone around her.

She needs to learn what she wants, and how to say what she wants without upsetting others, and that is a challenging task for an unhappy child.

If you don’t understand why she suddenly has changed her behavior, I suggest you research masking in autism and Sensory Processing Disorder.

People don’t understand when I say, ‘I don’t want to go down the detergent aisle,’ but they understand when I say, ‘Going down the detergent aisle makes me feel like I’m being held face down in a vat full of detergent, feeling it coating my lungs and choke me to death until I want to scream.’ My request would be ignored but my descriptive language would stress people out enough to let me do what I want.

This is also what I had to resort to as a child (long ago now) to reduce my suffering.

A lot of times people ignore autistic sensory needs because it’s difficult to get across how much they impact us.” Dontdrinkthecoffee

Another User Comments:

“ESH.

I remember a similar incident as a child. My babysitter gave me a lollipop and it tasted like dirt. I don’t mean it just tasted bad, it tasted literally and exactly like dirt (much later, I found out that sometimes candy goes bad and acquires this taste).

My babysitter did not understand that I was making a simple observation, and I was put in time-out for the rest of the day as punishment.

Your niece may not understand this distinction. Her simple, obvious, direct observations, while correct, might also be put in such a way as to be insulting.

The more you push against her, the more she’ll push back and insist that her observations are correct. This will lead to either resentment or a power struggle.

Take a moment, be the adult, and talk to her about the distinction between what she truly and accurately observes and what others might experience when they hear her observations.

Her truth is valid, it’s real, and it belongs to her, but it may not be shared by the group. It may even taint the experience of the group. This is subtle and requires sensitivity, but if you just stay on your high horse, she will resent you.” Reddit user