Adult daughter. Should I disown her!?
Adult daughter. Should I disown her!?
Edit: LOL love the responses. You ain't wrong...
Edit2: I posted this for giggles and have enjoyed it immensely. Thanks for the "parenting advice" (rolls eyes). My daughter is a shit show, but I wouldn't trade her in for anything. She has three daughters, one of which is exactly like her and the two others are not. So...
It's your fault, accept the shame and teach her.
Shame 🔔🔔🔔
To the shame corner with them!
They don't learn some things, even if you teach them a 100 times.
Then you're probably teaching wrong.
She loaded it, but poorly. Which is a vast improvement on my wifes not loading it at all.
I won't even let my wife touch the dishwasher. Nobody does it right, but me.
Isn’t it more work to undo it and then do it again than just do it in the first place?
Ah, your wife has discovered the system at our house- let the dishes pile up in the sink until someone can't take it anymore.
A for effort
- Thank your daughter for helping you with chores.
- Bring her to the mess and let her see it for herself.
- Kindly ask her why she thinks it turned out that way.
- Ask her what she thinks she can do avoid this kind of thing next time. (This is your opportunity to explain to her how to do things.)
- Kindly ask her to do it again, correctly. (Consider doing it together)
- Tell her she’s awesome for helping out, and that you really appreciate it.
Never be angry. Be patient and supportive. Don’t let frustration escalate.
For an adult? Nah. You can certainly kindly let them know that this isn't really gonna work and explain why (and let them know you appreciate the effort), but the rest of it is way overkill and could easily be seen as patronizing, imo. They're an adult, not a 13 year old.
Also, I interpreted the OP as finding it humorously absurd (which it is) rather than being frustrated or anything.
They’re an adult, not a 13 year old.
As the parent of a 13-year-old, that wouldn't work either. They'd just pout and tell you that you think they can't do anything right.
Not that getting angry helps, that makes it worse. Bargaining can work though. Promising bubble tea from a local cafe if they do it right goes a long way toward committing a teenager to education.
You can certainly kindly let them know that this isn’t really gonna work and explain why (and let them know you appreciate the effort), but the rest of it is way overkill and could easily be seen as patronizing, imo.
If the goal is to get them to load it correctly, the way the top level poster describe is far more likely to be successful than this. Once someone feels attacked, and telling them 'you're doing it wrong' is most likely to be received as an attack, they go into a defensive mode and will become mostly unreceptive to any further suggestions from you because they will be too busy trying to defend themselves.
You’re absolutely right. In the case of an adult, I’d just take more of a stance of, “look at this crazy thing that happened! lol! Omg I wonder what went wrong” and try to elicit her awareness that way. Then teach through soft suggestion, “maybe we shouldn’t XYZ, huh. Crazy.”
All this plus I think it's important to say to first: be EXTREMELY careful if you feel the need to critique or criticize someone who is being helpful. Really think about if it's worth it. If what they're doing really isn't helping anything then maybe it's worth it!
BUT if you just think they could do it better or if they aren't doing it how you would do it, then think again. You might end up simply discouraging a helpful attitude that would have figured things out on their own if you had just given them a bit of vague encouragement and time.
Right? Is this post wash, and still looking like this, or is this pre-wash?
I am neurodivergent, and really struggle with dishes. Touching other peoples leftover food absolutely disgusts me and it takes a lot of mental effort to do a load of dishes. No one in the house cleans their shit, they just dump it in the sink, and there is nasty stagnant water, left over whole-ass meals, chunks of food floating in gross, opaque liquids.....
I almost threw up just from this description.
If I do a load of dishes, I have adopted the reality that some shit will have to be ran through twice. I'm not aiming for perfect, I'm just trying to get it done.
If what they're doing really isn't helping anything then maybe it's worth it!
Maybe not even this. Because if she’s providing positive help elsewhere, that could disappear if she’s criticized on this thing.
Bring her in and tell her the things she did wrong, and how it means she doesn't love you, and tell her to bring a chair with a cushion because it's going to be a long talk.
That’s really nice thank you
OP admitting to not teaching their kid how to do dishes.
Not all kids take to their teachers. My parents are clean people. I'm a clean person. One of my sisters fought to never clean as she was taught. And she married someone just like her. So that house is bad sometimes.
You can learn things that your parents do without having them teach you.
Proactivity and common sense.
...who gets taught how to do dishes lol. You take a dish, and place it in the logical spot. It's not advanced physics.
Children do.
You only have yourself to blame. You raised her, but clearly not better than this.
Not all of us are blessed with the smarts.
If I won't be able to get my child to properly load a dishwasher by the time she's 18, I'll have failed as a parent.
She is the embodiment of your failures, and thus should be purged from your life so that you can become the ultimate sigma male.
But who taught her to load the dish washer?
From you dad! I learned it from you!
My daughter is not an adult, she's a teenager. But it's her job to put away the dishes. And no matter what I do, she can't understand that, in the silverware drawer, THE BIG SPOONS GO IN THE BIG SPOON SLOT AND THE LITTLE SPOONS GO IN THE LITTLE SPOON SLOT!
And she thinks this is acceptable.
I understand the compulsion to disown.
My husband is 30 and can't understand this. And not every pot is meant to be stored in one, large, precariously balanced stack. There's a whole cabinet there. You can spread them out...
Meanwhile in our house, every pot needs to be precariously balanced in a stack in order to fit in the cupboard.
How precarious? This will blow your mind!
We have 3 pots/pans, A big one, a medium one, and a little one.
Now, and bear with me because I know this is an unorthodox way to stack things, but I think the little pan should go inside the medium pan, and those two should go inside the big pan. It's crazy, but it just might work.
My partner has other ideas when he stacks them though.
"You aren't really upset about the spoons."
Nah, Peggy and me are tight.
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Many dishwashers will clean all of that fine, in my experience. The annoying part is the cups or bowls that may fill with water, just make sure they’re upside down.
As far as scraping or rinsing things…. Nah. Haven’t done it since I worked in food service and saw what dishwashers could do. Some stuff needs scraped, sure, but most will come off under the detergent and hot water.
People don't know how to use dishwashers. What's the point of using a dishwasher if you're going to clean the dishes beforehand…
It's not necessarily washing them first, but I do get the "chunks" out. As the only person in the house who remembers that the food doesn't just magically disappear, and eventually has to clean the filter, I prefer to do the cleaning before the food gets to the filter. Everyone else, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to put a half-full bowl of spaghetti in the dishwasher.
Galaxy brain right here
Haven’t done it since I worked in food service and saw what dishwashers could do.
I'm a chef. If you were my dishwasher and you insisted on chucking food in, I'd insist on sacking you! They're not designed to take food and you end up making more work for yourself cleaning it all out and getting it fixed and all that palaver.
She's trying, and she's already got the concept of "concave side down" so you need to acknowledge that. Moving on, "water sprays from the center" and "similar shapes share space" are good concepts to add. She can't exactly do "Don't crowd" because there are just too many here. But she's fully grasped "you can always rerun anything that doesn't come clean the first time."
concave side down
Yeah, she doesn't seem to be applying that, I see sideways containers.
But you don't see any that will pool water. Sideways is perfectly fine if they face generally toward the center, or in any direction the machine sprays, if it has side sprayers. What you want to avoid is catching the wash water so it pollutes the rinse water.
Her brain is capable of detecting error and correcting it without any intervention at all.
I’m in the gratitude-only camp here.
She’s already got the senses and reasoning capability to detect and correct the problem. Fastest way to improve her effort is to provide the thing she cannot provide herself: evidence that her efforts are appreciated.
Agreed, although if OP is specific about it, telling her they noticed she remembered to put the glasses on the top rack, etc. then they can do a little "I've found this makes it easier..." to show how a row of same-sized bowls on their sides can fit on the bottom rack. Because then you can Wolverine them all out at once and stack them on the shelf in one movement! Dishwasher Tetris can be a fun challenge.
Take out half the stuff and do two loads.
Then OP would come along, see a pile of dishes still in the sink, and post it on Lemmy. There's probably only 3-4 items that are really going to be left with food residue here. She can put the others away and leave those in the machine for another go.
Does the machine result in clean dishes? If yes, all good. If not, she dumb, u dumb. You built her
We can rebuild her. We have the technology.
"You're broken. We are still your friends. Do you still believe that? I'm still here. I will put you back together."
If containers are not facing down, may not result in clean dishes.
Believe it or not, jail.
These are the kinds of people who go on the Internet and claim that dishwashers don't work very well.
When I was 23 I moved into a sharehouse that had a dishwasher, I lived there over a year before I saw it, it had a false cabinet so it blended in. I'd always just washed my dishes in the sink and I keep all my dishes, cutlery and pans separate in a tub in the pantry because I have allergies. I'd never used a dishwasher before.
I googled how to use a dishwasher because I didn't want to be the 20 year old that can't do basic chores. I read the user manual and looked for the filters and catchment drains. They were filthy so I cleaned them, then followed the stacking guide in the user manual and ran it with a full load of my housemates dishes.
I was very impressed with how clean they came out.
I mentioned it to a housemate who found it very amusing I'd only just discovered the dishwasher, he warned me that it was old and broken and not a very good dishwasher so the few housemates that use it were actually talking about splitting the cost of a replacement if I wanted to get in on it.
Why? When the dishwasher was working perfectly.
All 7 of my housemates flooded into the kitchen to assess the cleanliness of the dishes because no one believed me that the dishwasher worked.
Turns out in the 7 years the house had been used for student housing since the landlords son took over as head tenant, not a single one of the rotating cast of 8 housemates had ever cleaned the secondary catchment filter, and only rarely did someone remember to clean the main filter.
Turns out the dishwasher works great when you remove the months worth of old rotten corn building up in the filter, and drain off the 7 years of muck that's blocking the greywater outlet flow.
My housemates will still say I stack the dishwasher like a sociopath, but I learned from the user manual so I don't care, the dishes are clean.
She's from group B. Group A loads correctly. Group B does this stuff on purpose so we in group A will just stop letting them screw this up and they no longer have to load it.
Not necessarily. Some of us are ADHD and we do things like put regular dish detergent in the dishwasher instead of the proper one and make a huge mess, or we load and wash normally but forget we ever did that so the clean dishes just sit in there long enough until they probably need to be rewashed.
You clearly failed as a parent.
Am I married to your daughter?
I have created a monster.
The woman I married stuffed the dishwasher like that. Just tossed stuff in, unrinsed. Wherever it would fit and still allow the drawers to close.
I had to clean out the filter twice in one month and asked her to rinse. Bowls would turn over and fill with nasty water, so I asked her to stack them in such a way so they wouldn't.
The woman I'm married to now has a fucking system. I don't fully know it and I dare not do it wrong. Meal prep bowls go on top, lids, on the bottom. Forks and spoons have a very specific place and so help you God if you put the sauce pan in the wrong orientation.
Fuckin hell I love that woman
Pre rinsing actually makes the dishwasher do a worse job, a big part of the dishwasher detergent is to latch on to dirt and grime so when the water sprayer comes it can more easily clean it off
If you prerinse there's a lot less surface area for the detergent to do it's job. You're supposed to clean the filter about once a month, so twice isn't too unusual.
HOWEVER that being said
Just tossed stuff in,
unrinsed. Wherever it would fit and still allow the drawers to close.That's the unforgivable part
This honestly looks fine. (Assuming this is before the dishwasher has run). There's not like solid chunks of food or anything just the actual stuff that you own a dishwasher to wash off for you so you don't have to. The configuration of the dishes is haphazard and chaotic but if you want to fit a lot of dishes it usually ends up that way. The cup and cup like vessels not being upside down is a problem but for the most part things are upside down or on their side as they should be. I want the dishwasher to wash dishes for me not the other way around. If you get the occasional dish after a cycle that hasn't completely cleaned you have to wash it yourself, which sucks, but that doesn't always happen so there's a reasonable chance you won't have to, and when it does happen, it's still way cleaner than it was so you're talking a cursory fix up of very few dishes. I'd take that over rinsing each and every one every time or having to hand wash half the load when there's a lot of dishes in service of a neater stacking configuration that's optimal but less space efficient.
The problem is that ceramic and glass dishes often chip if they are in contact with each other in the dishwasher.
The dishwasher also reduces clean water usage by a significant amount.
When my colleagues load the dishes haphazardly at work, I find I can fit several more cups, plates, and bowls by reorganizing them neatly.
I guess I should say "appears haphazard" as I don't know if it really has been stacked with reckless abandon or of it's a kind of organised chaos as the two tend to look very similar. When your colleagues stack the dishwasher at work, they're adding to the load a little at a time until there's literally no room and someone has to run it. In such an instance there's no particular method to their madness other than fitting their one plate or one cup that they're personally trying to deal with.
When you're stacking a full load start to finish you're stacking with the aim of fitting everything you have from a large load of dishes of which really don't want to have any left out. In doing so, I at least, find that while one starts with some attempt at being organized, you'll eventually realise that if you just slightly lift this concave object slightly up so it's still upside down but not completely, you can squeeze this one awkward shaped small object in next to it, and this large flat but not very deep baking dish for which there is now no room on the bottom shelf will juuust fit if I kind of wedge diagonally a little and over the top some cups and small objects which hopefully will be small enough that some water can get between them and spray up and clean the baking dish. In the end it it can look like you put no thought in to it all but you know that you tesselated a 3d puzzle quite nimbly to squash the maximum possible number of dishes in there and then more often than not, despite all the fretting that certain types have over correct stacking, it ends up coming out much the same as when it's a lightly stacked load with optimal spacing. It definitely sometimes doesn't work out that way, but even then, in the absolute worst case scenarios where several dishes, not just one or two, didn't get all the way clean, you need only then unstack those that did clean fully and the remainders are already stacked ready for another cycle right away or to wait til later to make a fuller but hopefully not as full load.
Or just educate her.
Jon Richardson would probably say yes
I side with Jon 100%, and I do 100% of the dish washing.
But unlike Jon, I'm not married to an absolute head case. He knew what he was getting into.
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That guy’s delightful.
I've woken my wife up giggling at this clip more than twice.
It isn't a problem if it's a light load.
A light load.
I'm behind him 100% on this skit.
A light load
Why does my wife hate me with such a passion?
A light load.
This comment section is saucier than OP’s dirty dishwasher!
Throw it away and make a new one
Nah, OP could probably sell her. For cheap of course, given the circumstances, but still.
Man your daughter is lucky, I don't even have a dishwasher. I am the dishwasher. I used to have one, but then we moved house.
In the end it doesn't matter how it's stacked so long as they come out clean - don't forget to fill the prewash section with powder, it helps immensely.
OP is lucky. I don’t even have a family.
Ugh, washing dishes in a sink regularly sucks. You have my sympathy.
You have brought shame on your bloodline with your failed attempts at raising a child.
I swear, the people obsessed with enforcing one right way to do... everything.
It looks exhausting. I feel kind of bad for them and when they start rearranging other people's work I always think of this sad lil raccoon for some reason:
There are correct and incorrect ways to load a dishwasher. Mainly allowing for water to be able to reach all surfaces and drain away from the objects.
Take a closer look. There are multiple instances in those photos that show that those two simple conditions aren't met.
Engage that brain you claim to have.
Where problem?
Op is the problem. They want to punish instead of teach.
Believe it or not its the opposite for me. I help take care of my elderly parents keep them independent and they both do this. I am compelled to physically take dishes out and rearrange them to reclaim like a second loads worth of wasted space. Some days I'm also tempted to disown them!
I live in a dry climate and very tightly meter my water usage and running the dishwasher twice uses less water than doing it once by hand unless I am extremely careful and use a single basin of water and a rag to rinse. That takes longer and is extremely annoying to do.
That'll show her...
Make her clean those dishes manually. "Daughter, meet sponge, soap and faucet."
If you think "loading the dishwasher" means getting your wife drunk, you might be a redneck.
-Jeff Foxworthy
This triggers me in so many ways.
Just teach her about gravity. Dont feel bad - for a lot of people it’s not the first priority.
Lets just say I wouldn't eat her cooking
Neither would I. That sounds dangerous no matter how spry she is.
You could always just kill her and eat her organs.
She needs mandatory wife training so her future husband does not suffer. /S
Dear god, no. I could have taken this exact picture and titled it "My 40 year old wife. Should I get a divorce?"
She needs mandatory me training so just in case she ends up living with me (extremely unlikely lol) or someone equally as anal about this (reasonably possible) she doesn't "force" them to reorder the dishwasher while grumbling under their breath.
I was thinking the same, this looks well organized compared to how my wife does it, she even puts silverware on the top rack instead of in that little basket, or glasses drink side up (instead of upside down). I have talked to her about it so many times but she is incapable of doing a better job somehow (and she's a smart, thats what really irritates me).
Is your wife also incapable of seperating trash?
My wife refused the dishwasher for months after moving in. Hand wash only.
"It is not clean."
Fuck I know. Maybe they don't have good ones in the Philippines? Still trying to deprogram the "tradwife" out of her. 😂 But now she uses it! And sometimes allows me to do our dishes!
Nah my mom does the same thing and tells me im wrong. Some people are just tornadoes.
I'm not like that but sometimes I throw two or three things on top of everything and everything gets clean. My only problem with her organization is it's not efficient, the machine would hold double the amount of dishes
Sir/maam, you've raised a Psychopath.
I remember my first time loading a dishwasher 😂
We come from different backgrounds
Maybe she never used a dishwasher and has only done dishes manually heretofore?
That's me. I've only lived in one apartment with a dishwasher, and that was only for a year. We just used it as storage for pots and pans. My folks have a dishwasher now, but any time I go visit them I just wash stuff by hand, at least partly because I don't know how to dishwasher.
Same here. I have no idea what the issue is.
Okay not sure about this based on on the other responses but...sure why not, so here goes:
"It looks like you already have".:-P
This thread is full of clearly basement dwelling non parents. So many AKctually it hurts from laughing.
I’m shitty at housework but thankfully my parents never thought of disowning me…that I know of.
My almost adult son once tried to convince me that dishwashers work better when the dishes aren't rinsed first.
I watched this video a long time ago which I thought explained this really well. https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04
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Some of y'all need this video. Enjoy.
Yup and the newer one : https://youtu.be/Ll6-eGDpimU?si=hDUzHVjKej_EnkSR
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Exactly the people.who should be made to do manual.labor
Why are you on Lemmy asking children for parenting advice? Seems like most responses are blaming you as if an adult needs to be taught something as rudimentary as loading a dishwasher. Simple solution, box up all the plates, cups, silverware. Replace with disposable stuff
I don't think you need to parent an adult child.
Sometimes you do, you don't stop being a parent after your child turns 18. You can still try and help them especially if you think something this simple has been done wrong. Shaming your child online because of how they load the dishwasher is just stupid.
Arranging dishes in the dishwasher neatly is only for when there are a lot of dishes that wouldn't fit otherwise. If there are only a couple of dishes, then it's whatever, as long as they get clean, it doesn't matter.
I would encourage you to be more considerate: your daughter is an adult, with her own thoughts and feelings, and her own family. If I were her, I would certainly not appreciate if one of my parent tried to shame me in front of strangers on the Internet over how I load my dishes and threatening to disown me for it, even "as a joke".
You're doing just great at shaming yourself to strangers on the internet. Keep it up.
Don't blame the parent... Kids don't do anything when they know someone else will fix it for them.
Once I moved out, I magically had to do everything myself, and my parents were shocked that I actually kept my house clean, lol
Sounds like a parenting problem.
+1 on this one
Edit: you being downvoted tells me there's a group of people who haven't seen adult children revert to child when visiting their childhood home...
