Yes, I feed my kid

One night, about 6 months ago, my sweet husband planned a night away for just the two of us. Instead of getting a babysitter for The Kid, his best friend’s parents said that he could have a sleepover at their house and that they would take him to school in the morning. Apparently everything went just fine until breakfast. Their morning ritual is to eat cereal for breakfast. The Kid decided that he didn't like cereal and ate nothing.

Normally this wouldn’t be a giant problem except he was particularly weepy at school that day – the result of being so excited to have a sleepover that he didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Being 5, he would NEVER admit that he was tired. Instead, he told his teacher that he was sad because no one would make him breakfast in the morning. He forgot to mention that he was offered cereal or that he wasn’t at home. The teacher gave my poor neglected child a big hug and offered him a snack.

He was so excited about the fact that he got special treatment from the teacher that every day he told her that no one would make him breakfast and that he was SO hungry! After about a week of this, my husband and I got called into the school’s office. The director of the school was VERY concerned that we hadn’t been feeding our child in the mornings (it doesn’t help that he’s skinny as a rail). She told us how important it is for growing kids to eat a good breakfast every morning and that The Kid really needed to eat before coming to school.

Due to my never ending mom-guilt, I make him eggs, bacon, pancakes and milk pretty much every single day so we had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, after going back to the first day that he said he was hungry, we realized what happened and explained everything. Issue resolved.

Fast forward six months. We had our first conference with The Kid’s kindergarten teacher. After our discussion of his work, social skills, etc. we were ready to go when the teacher asked us about The Kid’s daily schedule. I went through his day starting from when he wakes up to when he goes to bed. She said it was great that he had such a consistent schedule and to keep it up. As we were walking out the door she left us with one final piece of advice – “you really should make sure that he has breakfast every day”.