r/AITAH•3 mo. ago

AITAH for stopping my friends kid from eating all the crackers?

My (32f) friends and I met up at the beach with our kids. I have one son (3y). My friend "Sarah" (31f) has two daughters (2y and 4y) and our other friend "Laura" (32f) has one daughter (3y). We agreed to meet up at 10:30am and stay until the kids were ready for naps (so probably until 1-2ish). Obviously, this runs through lunchtime, so I packed a cooler with cheese, crackers, peaches, summer sausage, pickles and avacado (the picnic lunch my toddler expects anytime we go anywhere like this). I didn't tell my friends I was packing lunch. I didn't offer to pack for their kids, but I did pack extra in case anyone else wanted any.

Everyone is having a great time at the beach. Eventually my son and Sarah's four year old come and announce they are hungry. No problem. I break out the food and tell my friends and their kids they are welcome to have some. Sarah's four year old reaches for a pickle and immediately spits it out because it's not a dill pickle (they were bread and butter pickles). She freaks out, chugs water like she's dying. No big deal, she's a kid. Then she reaches for some cheese (Munster) and does it again. I offer her a peach, but she doesn't like peaches. She also doesn't like summer sausage or avacado.

I offer her crackers. She accepts and then eats an entire sleeve (I only brought two sleeves). When she reached for the second sleeve, I told her she could have four more but we needed to save the rest for everyone else (Laura was still in the water with her daughter and Sarah's two year old and hadn't had any food at all yet and my son still wanted more crackers too). I didn't even eat any crackers, even though the food was meant to be mine and my sons lunch.

Sarah got upset and said I shouldn't be denying her daughter crackers when I didn't bring anything else that she would eat. She acted like it was my fault there was nothing else for her daughter since the crackers were the only "normal" food I brought. She said there was plenty of other food and that I should just give her daughter the rest of the crackers (at this point my son had eaten four crackers and I knew he would want more, but I make him finish his other food first).

I said she could have the rest of them after the other kids had a chance to eat. Sarah got huffy and said they would just have to leave then. She started gathering their things and throwing them into a bag while her four year old was crying saying she didn't want to go yet. At this point, Laura comes over with Sarah's two year old and Sarah says they are leaving because there's nothing for her four year old to eat. Laura offers a pack of goldfish, and they ended up staying but Sarah barely spoke to me for the rest of the day and it was awkward and uncomfortable after that.