What do your weekly meals look like for you and your fam? I generally enjoy cooking, what I don’t enjoy is the negotiations that come with cooking, and with kids, it’s even worse. I’m also the kind of person that could eat the same 5 dishes for a year without much fuss or question. That’s the ADHD lodged in my brain for you.

The negotiation, or even the anticipation of negotiations, makes me agitated. If I could, I’d be a food dictator, but that’s not how living with people works. It’s annoying enough to me that I often push it to the back of my mind and just “figure it out” on the fly. That’s not conducive to making good choices, though, only convenient choices.

If I’m going to do most of the cooking, I’ll want a schedule of meals, so I can both plan, anticipate, and head-off any objections. I struggle with being assertive on this point, and I’m told often, “We don’t need to do that much planning.” Which, as someone with ADHD into my late 30s, I know is not true, and I do need that much planning if not more. Structure is something I need, and the kids at this age obviously thrive off structure as well.

So anyway, how do you tackle this? I need to get this sorted out for myself, but also for my kiddos. Kiddo 1 just had an annual checkup and is low on iron, and is growing increasingly picky about food. Kiddo 2 is still in that “I’ll try anything in front of me.” phase, and getting this sorted out now hopefully means I can avoid the pickiness down the line.

I’m going to cross post this in !neurodiverse@hexbear.net & !food@hexbear.net as I think it has some clear overlap.

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      How does the negotiation come about?

      Oh, it’s your typical “What do you want for dinner?”, “Oh I don’t know… what do you want for dinner?” trope. The part of the problem stems from my inability to retain what kind of food we even have in the house, even though I’m there when we buy it. Once it’s behind an opaque door, it might as well not exist. The other part of the problem is that the question “What do you want for dinner?” registers as almost nothing to me most of the time. This might be a side effect of my medication (which suppresses apatite), but I have no desire for any kind of specific meal on any given day. I also never get “bored” of a meal, even if we’ve “had it a lot recently.” I have a very hard time relating to these ideas, it just doesn’t compute.

      I need to know the schedule of things to feel safe, honestly. I need to know what I’m cooking tonight, tomorrow, and when to pull frozen meats out of the fridge.

      Yeah, this is how I feel too. Most of the time, we’re not cooking frozen things, but that is an expression of the problem because I’m not thinking ahead enough to actually pull frozen meats out. Thinking ahead, is not something my brain does well. If I have it written down, and I create a structure for myself to stop and actually plan ahead for the week / two weeks, I’d actually pull that stuff out. For my spouse, she can do all that in her head. I can’t.

      Thanks for your comment!

      • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        The part of the problem stems from my inability to retain what kind of food we even have in the house, even though I’m there when we buy it. Once it’s behind an opaque door, it might as well not exist.

        Are you all deciding what’s for dinner before or after the shopping? We usually figure out a plan for the week, take inventory of the stuff we already have, and then make a list for what we need. Usually the items for each meal end up on the list next to each other, and that helps me contextualize these items as “the broccoli for the stir fry” or “the diced tomatoes for the chili”, if that makes sense.

        The other part of the problem is that the question “What do you want for dinner?” registers as almost nothing to me most of the time. This might be a side effect of my medication (which suppresses apatite), but I have no desire for any kind of specific meal on any given day.

        The other benefit of having the plan set before the shopping for me is that it has already been decided, and we kinda stick to it in a democratic centralist sort of way. There might be some pivots (“the bok choi is getting a little sad, so let’s bump the noodle bowl up to tonight”) but we try to hold to the plan unless the week gets thrown off by other circumstances.