A South Asian woman was left shocked after her neighbour accused her of forcing her son to eat “ethnic food”
The heated discussion took place after the child’s mother, who has been given the pseudonym ‘Linda’, asked the woman to look after her seven-year-old boy whilst she attended a meeting, Indy 100 reported.
Linda handed the babysitter a packed lunch containing a sandwich and orange juice as she dropped off her child. As reported by Indy 100, Linda also informed the woman that her son was allergic to almonds and asked her not to give her child any sweets.
When the babysitter prepared her own lunch, which consisted of roti and brinjal sabzi, an aubergine curry, the boy reportedly asked if he could “take a bite.” The woman then let the seven-year-old try her food.
In a Reddit post, the woman said: “He ended up loving it and ate two rotis.”
She added: “I was happy to see him gulp all that up but unfortunately, he was full from the rotis so he barely ate his sandwich.”
Linda arrived to pick up her son and everything seemed fine. However, Linda returned appearing “pretty mad” after she discovered that her son had eaten food made by the babysitter.
The mother said that her neighbour had “no right to feed her son ethnic food”, before adding: “God knows what’s in it.”
The woman said on Reddit: “She said that she was trying to transition her son into the vegan lifestyle and I just sabotaged it from giving him food she has never even heard off.”
She added: “I tried explaining to her that what he ate is completely vegan-friendly and is very healthy and, needless to say, yummy or else Ben wouldn’t have (eaten) it all by himself.
“But she was in no mood to listen.”
She continued: “(Linda) was saying something about how my food would have been so spicy that it could cause her son to fall sick.
“I am worried now. I felt that Ben enjoyed his lunch and he never complained about it being spicy and all but could he really fall sick?”
She ended her post saying that Linda called her an “a**hole” for feeding her child without parental permission.
Putting the question to fellow Redditors, she asked: “I kind of feel like one. Am I though?”
It did not take long until her post went viral, with thousands of Reddit users offering their stance on the predicament.
One user wrote: “This could’ve been educational for the kid but his mom ruined it by being bigoted.”
Another responded, saying: “I am sick of the stupid ‘Indian food is spicy’ thing that everyone seems to think.
“Unless the dish is actually supposed to be spicy then it normally isn’t.”
