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The mother-in-law wants to bring her own food to the Thanksgiving meal.
By Alexandra Blogier — Last updated on Nov 05, 2023
Thanksgiving brings families together to share a meal and gratitude for each other, but the holidays aren't without stressors, as one Reddit user has discovered.
A woman asked for advice regarding her mother-in-law’s wish to bring her own meal to the Thanksgiving table.
Posting to Reddit, she wrote that she was excited to share her cooking with her family and that her husband “has been supportive and helpful through all the planning and prepwork.”
To prepare, she's been planning a menu and trying out recipes, only to find out that her mother-in-law doesn’t want to eat what she’s making. Upon this discovery, she told her mother-in-law to stay home from the holiday, where she could eat whatever she wanted on her own.
The menu she planned was extensive, including traditional dishes like roasted turkey, stuffing, and sweet potato casserole, along with unique dishes like braised short ribs and lasagna with white sauce. She claimed that among these options, there must be some food on the menu her mother-in-law could eat if she simply tried it. While her husband explained that his mother is a “grade A picky eater” who won’t like any of the prepared food, she feels that her mother-in-law is being rude by not sharing the meal everyone else will eat.
She believes her mother-in-law's behavior is disrespectful to the time, money and effort she’s put into the festive feast.
She wondered if she was wrong for disinviting her mother-in-law from Thanksgiving dinner.
Some users said yes, she was in the wrong as her mother-in-law clearly has dietary restrictions or even an eating disorder, and shouldn’t be left out for those reasons, calling her "petty," "passive-aggressive" and "insensitive" for telling her MIL not to come over. One user even said she was “weaponizing special needs to humiliate people.”
While the woman appears to have taken her mother-in-law's picky eating as malicious, she may, in fact, have an eating disorder. WebMD notes that picky eaters may actually have avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), which causes them to restrict certain foods based on texture, taste or traumatic experiences with certain foods in the past. While ARFID is mostly prevalent in children, it's becoming increasingly common in adults.
Photo: Reddit
Instead of ostracizing the mother-in-law, the woman could, as some people on Reddit suggested, "kill her with kindness" by either asking her what she would eat on Thanksgiving and prepare a special meal for her or encouraging her to bring her own meal.
Ultimately, the woman had a change of heart. In an edit to her post, the woman explained that she decided "the kill her with kindness route will be the best thing to do," blaming her knee-jerk reaction to uninvite her on being "overwhelmed and exhausted."
"I just want to have a perfect Thanksgiving for everyone," she wrote. "I will let her know she is welcome and will ignore her and focus on my other guests. I won't let her ruin my day and will be the bigger person."
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.