home

The Anti-Breakfast Club

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so we’re told.

Ane doesn’t believe that.

Breakfast at our house, with the exception of Saturdays, is usually a very hurried affair. Ever since Ane entered school last year, it has become a crazed ritual in which I tell the kids to eat, and half an hour later they’re still staring at their food.

I have managed to get Tad to eat breakfast on most days without much trouble. He gets a bowl of dry cereal and a cup of milk. This is the quickest and least messy way to get food into him in the morning. His cereal of choice is Cinnamon Toast Crunch (or the generic version thereof), and I have not heard him complain once about it. I sit him down with his cereal and milk, hand him his My First Flintstones chewable vitamin (which he promptly pops in his mouth), and 15 minutes later, he’s done. I can even run around getting ready, knowing that he’ll keep on eating.

Not so with Ane. I have tried cereal in vain with her. She won’t eat it dry, and the one time she tried it with milk on it, she wouldn’t touch it after one bite. So, she usually ends up with a “hot” breakfast – if by hot you mean a piece of toast with jam or cinnamon sugar on it. Toasted mini bagels with cream cheese and jam, or English muffins with butter and jam are also acceptable.

I have no idea how I have let her become so high-maintenance at breakfast, but here I am.

Yesterday morning, I handed Tad his vitamin and cereal, and handed Ane her gummy vitamins (I hate those things with a passion) and a English muffin, split, toasted, and adorned with butter and jam. While I raced about getting myself ready for church, and the kids’ clothes laid out, the kids were supposed to be eating.

I came back to find Tad nearly finished, and Ane sitting at the table, staring into space, with a single bite out of one half. “Ane, you’d better hurry up,” I warned her. I then cleaned Tad up and continued getting ready.

I came back after another 10 minutes. Ane had spent a half hour staring at her food, and she’d taken a grand total of THREE bites out of one half of her English muffin.

“ANE! We need to leave in 15 minutes! Why haven’t you finished eating??”

“It’s cold,” she complained. “I don’t like it when it’s cold.”

My jaw dropped. “It was HOT thirty minutes ago when I gave it to you!! You should have eaten it then!”

She shrugged, unruffled by my shock at her temerity. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Finish that half,” I told her, as I swiped up the untouched half and stuffed it in my mouth.

She did finish it, but we were late for church.

Why, oh why, do I even try???

2 Responses to “The Anti-Breakfast Club”

  1. Ressis
    December 8th, 2008 08:56
    1

    She is one picky eater. Maybe she needs to volunteer with the homeless, scare her into appreciating what she has. Either that or she’ll be happily willing to donate all her food to them.

  2. Matthew
    December 9th, 2008 23:44
    2

    I’m a firm believer in “they’ll eat if they are hungry.” Having said that, would she eat instant cream of wheat or instant oatmeal? Make it with milk and it’s pretty decent.