I don't know if you have kids or not or that if you do, that you may actually remember what it was like in the mornings when you were feeding them and getting them ready for school when they were wee tots, but for me this is my first (and only, so far), and what a ride it's been and we've only barely begun. Bargaining for Breakfast is only one small charade on a larger board seemingly full of games. My daughter is now four and a half years old and has just begun Pre-K at a local public school. This has been a boon for me as a stay-at-home-dad, as I can now start to look for some part time work to supplement our family's income, which with her mom going to school for her Master's and working part time, would be a very welcome economical addition to the family's substantive needs. Like any household getting ready to start the day that has young people as a proponent to the family mix, there is a lot of hustling, corralling, and 'prodding' that goes on. Breakfast is that special meal of the day that starts everyone's 'engines' for whatever awaits them outside the walls of the house out in the 'real world'. Pre-Kers don't really understand what this means, of course, and therefore this leaves you, their lowly parent, to be the one who begs and pleads and bargains in every creative way imaginable--doing acrobatics around the living room and such--to get them to eat something more than some milk and a half a piece of bread before sending them out into the jungle.
"You're going to be hungry in a matter of 45 minutes from now, and I'm not going to have the people at school thinking that we don't choose to feed you before sending you out the door", you say as calmly as you possibly can. "I'm not going to have you begging the teacher for a school breakfast when we've already tried to feed you four courses early this morning."
"Yes, daddy", she says as she looks at me as if I've lost my mind and knows very well that nobody eats breakfast at home anymore in this day and age.
"Well, get to it then. It doesn't really look as if any of your food has migrated into your stomach yet. Make it disappear. Make me happy and eat so that I know that you will not be asking the closest adult near you at school for food in an hour. ....Please? Pretty please?", I plead. If you had told me 5 years ago that one of the possibly biggest challenges that I would experience as a parent to a young school-aged child would be to get them to eat a good breakfast before sending them off into the wild blue yonder of the public school system, I would have thought nothing of it. I would have considered it for 20 seconds or so, trying to imagine this vague, amorphous concept that you placed into my lap, not feeling at all the real life responsibility that biology places into the genes of real life parents. I would have breathed deeply, shrugged a little, pushed it off, got up and walked away. Well, my friends,...that is a pretty little picture of something I now term to be blissful ignorance. The truth is, that the ignorant never know that they're ignorant until they're not ignorant anymore and by then it's far too late to enjoy the benefits of the ignorance that once was. Ahh, to be ignorant... Oh well. Moving on.
"It's really hard daddy", she mumbles and moans as the words come slowly tumbling out of her mouth after I return back to check on her progress from 5 minutes earlier, her bowl still sitting there with her oatmeal still intact, barely touched and her baby banana still sitting in the same spot where I had laid it, stem still connected and whole.
"Okay. So you've decided that the oatmeal you agreed on is not really suiting you tastes today", I ask?
"Yes", she quickly interjects! "Exactly!" Okay, so I'll give her that one.
"Okay Shayla. You have one more chance to decide on something different that you'd like to eat this morning, but we're running out of time. So what'll it be", I ask? I beat her to the punch and suggest something both easy and quick for both of us considering our time constraints.
"How about almond butter on a toasted half of a sprouted grain English muffin?"
"Sure! That sounds fine daddy", she says with a big smile. Glorious! Maybe we've found something that we can agree on this morning! My fingers are crossed, literally. Five minutes later I serve up the above to her and she does her best to eat about half of it plus the baby banana from before. Okay. I've done my duty I tell myself, and I tell her in no uncertain terms that "when your teacher asks me if you've eaten breakfast I will tell her with a crystal clear conscience, "Yes, she has", and that will be that. Okay?"
"Okay, daddy", she replies. And with that, we went off to school, with another episode of 'breakfast bargaining' laid to rest. I really hope some of this is sinking into my little one's head. It's really hard for me to be such a stickler for routine, but I know that routine will save her later. If there's no hard and fast routine to begin with, what do you have to be flexible with later on? If there are no rules, if there's no sense of action and consequence, what's leniency mean when you choose to enact it? Nothing. That's the funny thing about rules: they help everyone, both the rule maker and the follower. (Pardon me. Being a parent can make you wildly philosophical. One does not lack for material.) *smile*
"You're going to be hungry in a matter of 45 minutes from now, and I'm not going to have the people at school thinking that we don't choose to feed you before sending you out the door", you say as calmly as you possibly can. "I'm not going to have you begging the teacher for a school breakfast when we've already tried to feed you four courses early this morning."
"Yes, daddy", she says as she looks at me as if I've lost my mind and knows very well that nobody eats breakfast at home anymore in this day and age.
"Well, get to it then. It doesn't really look as if any of your food has migrated into your stomach yet. Make it disappear. Make me happy and eat so that I know that you will not be asking the closest adult near you at school for food in an hour. ....Please? Pretty please?", I plead. If you had told me 5 years ago that one of the possibly biggest challenges that I would experience as a parent to a young school-aged child would be to get them to eat a good breakfast before sending them off into the wild blue yonder of the public school system, I would have thought nothing of it. I would have considered it for 20 seconds or so, trying to imagine this vague, amorphous concept that you placed into my lap, not feeling at all the real life responsibility that biology places into the genes of real life parents. I would have breathed deeply, shrugged a little, pushed it off, got up and walked away. Well, my friends,...that is a pretty little picture of something I now term to be blissful ignorance. The truth is, that the ignorant never know that they're ignorant until they're not ignorant anymore and by then it's far too late to enjoy the benefits of the ignorance that once was. Ahh, to be ignorant... Oh well. Moving on.
"It's really hard daddy", she mumbles and moans as the words come slowly tumbling out of her mouth after I return back to check on her progress from 5 minutes earlier, her bowl still sitting there with her oatmeal still intact, barely touched and her baby banana still sitting in the same spot where I had laid it, stem still connected and whole.
"Okay. So you've decided that the oatmeal you agreed on is not really suiting you tastes today", I ask?
"Yes", she quickly interjects! "Exactly!" Okay, so I'll give her that one.
"Okay Shayla. You have one more chance to decide on something different that you'd like to eat this morning, but we're running out of time. So what'll it be", I ask? I beat her to the punch and suggest something both easy and quick for both of us considering our time constraints.
"How about almond butter on a toasted half of a sprouted grain English muffin?"
"Sure! That sounds fine daddy", she says with a big smile. Glorious! Maybe we've found something that we can agree on this morning! My fingers are crossed, literally. Five minutes later I serve up the above to her and she does her best to eat about half of it plus the baby banana from before. Okay. I've done my duty I tell myself, and I tell her in no uncertain terms that "when your teacher asks me if you've eaten breakfast I will tell her with a crystal clear conscience, "Yes, she has", and that will be that. Okay?"
"Okay, daddy", she replies. And with that, we went off to school, with another episode of 'breakfast bargaining' laid to rest. I really hope some of this is sinking into my little one's head. It's really hard for me to be such a stickler for routine, but I know that routine will save her later. If there's no hard and fast routine to begin with, what do you have to be flexible with later on? If there are no rules, if there's no sense of action and consequence, what's leniency mean when you choose to enact it? Nothing. That's the funny thing about rules: they help everyone, both the rule maker and the follower. (Pardon me. Being a parent can make you wildly philosophical. One does not lack for material.) *smile*