The moment I wanted to never take my kids in public again

A few weeks ago a new pizza place opened and my boys were begging me to go.  We finally went but I made the mistake of going right at noon.  The cool thing about this place is you can order a whole pizza pie or just a slice.  We opted to order one slice each.  When we arrived the wait was 35 minutes for a slice and 45 minutes for a pie.  Finally after much waiting our slices came.  

HOLY SHIT.

They were huge.  Huge is an understatement.

We chose to sit at a family style table with about 6 other people sitting near us.  Brandon snarfed down his slice of pizza before I even got half way through mine.  Poor Codi took a while to eat because the pizza was so big he couldn't lift it off the table he could only slide it off the end and take a bite.

See…

It was all fun and games until Brandon started going off about being hungry.  I was flabbergasted.  How could he still be hungry?  This slice of pizza was huge.  I didn't know what to do.  By now there was a 45 minute wait for another slice of pizza and I was on my lunch break there was no way I could order him another slice of pizza. Then things got bad.  He curled up in a ball on the chair and clutched his stomach and started saying,

"But mom I'm starving and you won't even feed me any more food and I only had one slice of pizza and that's not fair.  I'm so hungry."

Then he started doing this weird grunting, whining noise and just totally losing his shit about being hungry.  I calmly asked him to wait 10 minutes for his stomach to process what he just ate and he would be fine.  I explained that there was no way I could wait 45 minutes for another piece of pizza. 

That is when it happened.  The lady next to me turned around and said, 

"Your poor little boy, he is obviously starving, should I give him half of my pizza?"

I died.

Before you accuse me of being an asshole please look at the size of the pizza.

I was dumbfounded at the lady.  But more dumbfounded when my son sat up and shouted, "YES I WANT YOUR PIZZA."

I almost died.  

I politely said no thank you and thought it was done.

It wasn't.  Brandon got louder.  He kept going on and on and on about being hungry.  Told me I was awful for not letting him have that ladies pizza.  Slid back down and clutched his stomach again and just started moaning.  The lady picked up her knife and actually started cutting the pizza in half.  She started telling me how she really didn't mind, and how she couldn't finish both of her pieces and that she just felt so bad to see this starving little boy.

Brandon again said YES.  

I wanted to bonk him with my paper plate.  

I again explained to the lady that no my six year old did not need her food, that we would be heading back to my work soon and I had plenty of food there.

Then Brandon started saying that his mother hadn't fed him all day.

I looked around at that point for the hidden cameras because this had to be a fucking joke right?

RIGHT?

I reminded him that I had cooked him eggs and bacon that morning, he had a gogurt, a lunchable, a cheese snack, juice, chocolate milk and chips.  

His response, "yeah mom, that is barely anything."

I finally gave in and gave him the other half of my pizza which he hoovered in about 2.5 seconds.  

Then he started up again.  

"I'm still hungry.  That's only one and half pieces of pizza, I can't get full on that mom. Moooooom I need more food."

The lady made one final offer and before I could reach over and smack her Codi got sick of listening to Brandon and finally told Brandon that he was full off of 1/3 of his pizza and that Brandon could have the rest of his.  

That one took him about 4 seconds to eat. 

I threw away all of the plates, made them wash their hands and left.

At that point I was drained.  I didn't know how to feel that was a huge slice of pizza.  Was I a bad mom for not ordering another? 

Then I heard it, "mom…I'm still hungry, do I get a snack now."

You guys, I swear to God I wanted to list him on Craigslist, "free to a good home, must have large refrigerator."

Was this child kidding?  I mean…in reality he had just eaten probably close to a medium size pizza if you combine all of those slices together.  I finally had to explain to Brandon that it was totally unacceptable to make a scene like that in public.  He didn't understand.  He said there was nothing wrong with his behavior, the problem wasn't him it was that I wouldn't feed him.  

From there we drove to my husbands work so I could drop off the boys for a minute and go to the DMV.  Seconds after walking in Brandon announced to my husband that he was hungry.

I quit.

The lady ended up laughing at me.  She said she had three boys at home and they would eat dinner, put their plate in the sink and then announce they were still hungry.  She also told me this would only get worse and this was only the beginning.  Either way, I felt like crap.  I felt like the whole table was staring at me thinking I was some terrible mom who didn't feed her child and couldn't even afford to buy another slice of pizza and who didn't even love her child enough to buy him another slice of pizza.  Followed by walking into my husbands work and having them all think I didn't feed him and just brought him to his office starving like a bad mom.

What would you do in that situation?  

Poor me.

Kids…sigh.

14 thoughts on “The moment I wanted to never take my kids in public again

  1. Porgie is always hungry. ALWAYS. I bet if I went into her room right now, the first thing she would tell me is that she is hungry. The girl can eat. Sometimes I worry about her getting fat. I don’t see how any kid could eat that much and not be morbidly obese. But she’s not fat, so I guess six-year-olds are just bottomless pits.

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  2. I can feel your embarrassment. My kids are a hair older than yours, but seriously how can a kids that small eat more than we can and still want more? They always seem to find the time that is going to make you feel the worst to announce that you are starving them to death, too.

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  3. OMG, its as if you were writing about my life.
    My kids are pigs.
    I know this sounds harsh but I really just do not care.
    I have two girls, yes GIRLS, ages 4.5 and 12 who could eat a professional football player under the table.
    I have watched Adam Richman on the Travel Channel and thought aloud….sissy, my girls could eat that 24 inch sub in under a half hour.
    My grocery bills total 150.00.
    Per week.
    The hubs and I go hungry most weekends because there is no more food left.
    I can’t keep up.
    I would have slapped that lady for going on and on about trying to give you the pizza.
    You are the mom and she was undermining you, completely.
    I feel for ya sistah.
    Know that somewhere in Chicago is a woman, weeping gently while her kids are eating her out of house and home.
    Maybe there is a support group for people like us…….

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  4. Enjoyed your story. I think after the first time you declined the lady should have stayed out of it. Nice of her to offer once. I can just picture “you didn’t feed me all day””..they forget what they eat! My thing

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  5. Oh my goodness! I don’t have any little one’s yet, but this reminds me of one of my nephews…man can that kid shovel it in! Kudos to you for standing your ground and not letting strangers feed your son! Good luck in the years to come with all of that eating!

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  6. Oh my goodness! I don’t have any little one’s yet, but this reminds me of one of my nephews…man can that kid shovel it in! Kudos to you for standing your ground and not letting strangers feed your son! Good luck in the years to come with all of that eating!

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  7. Sarah: Shovel is not a big enough instrument to feed these kids….back hoe perhaps! Thank you for the comment
    Winnie: Oh no the worst part is HE REMEMBERED everything he ate (which was a lot) and then had the audacity to say, “but that was barely anything mom.”” I wanted to bang my head on the table. Thanks for stopping by!

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  8. My suggestion: feed them more things that they don’t love but that they have to finish to get seconds, think green beans. My kid is quick to drink his entire drink, proclaim that he is full after one bite and then 30 minutes later beg for more food.

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  9. I agree with Jblank. Have tons of raw veggies waiting, then when he starts moaning dramatically hand him a bag of carrots. Also, If he starts acting like that in public it’s time to leave. Just have your other son take his pizza with him and go to the car. Give the drama king no audience and he’ll calm down to a certain extent. HOWEVER…they do tend to go through phases when they’re having growth spurts when they’re just bottomless pits, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you supply him with lots of milk and fruit he won’t starve. Take this opportunity to fill him up with all kinds of fantastic nutritious foods that he’ll be trying to reject in a few years. I pumped my kids so full of milk (regular not chocolate) when they were little, my son broke his knee and healed in 4 weeks, not 6. First thing the doctor said was “does he drink a lot of milk?”” Yessssss! But I’d be more concerned with letting him know that pitching a whiny fit in public isn’t cool…”

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  10. Yes, boys get hungry a lot. Still, I think you had a power play going on here. And Mom with 3 boys should have known better than to undermine you.
    I was going to cut her some slack, thinking maybe she just wanted some quiet and didn’t have any kids, so she didn’t know any better. We moms need to support each other more.
    It’s not really about whether your son is hungry. Obviously he was not starving. It’s about making a scene to get his way.
    I just read this article in the New Yorker. You might like it too, Spoiled Rotten, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Why do kids rule the roost? http://nyr.kr/MhloYT 





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  11. OMG! This is too funny. The same look you gave your son you should have given her the “stay the fuck outta this”” look after her second attempt. MOM’S CODE. LOL”

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  12. Wow. Don’t know what I would’ve done in that situation. I have a (super skinny) 4 year old and she eats twice as much as I do (and I’m pregnant!). She could literally eat all day and still complain she’s hungry. Did I mention that she’s so skinny, her slim fit jeans fall off her little butt? I’ve gotten dirty looks in restaurants after she’s polished off her food, I’m still eating mine, and I refuse to share with her (http://supermommyornot.blogspot.com/2012/04/letter-to-my-children.html). Strangers have come up to me and asked if I’m feeding her with concern in their eyes. Um, yes. The kid is a bottomless pit and doesn’t gain weight!

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  13. My kids, two teenage boys, can eat an enormous amount of junk food. When they’ve had their serving, though, that’s it. If they’re still hungry, there are apples and bananas. They usually decide they are full enough then.

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