When I was a little girl, maybe three/three-and-a-half years old, my parents started training me to make my own breakfast. I would wake in the morning and head to the kitchen, where they would have left a bowl of dry cereal and a tiny pitcher of milk on a low shelf in the fridge. While they got ready for the day, I would pour the milk myself and settle at the table for breakfast. To this day, I eat cereal every single morning.
Babyman and my husband eat breakfast together, side-by-side at the dining room table, hair askew, while I pack lunches in the kitchen. We have a window from the kitchen onto the table, so we can all chat about the day ahead before the rush to work and daycare. Babyman is too young yet for the milk pouring — he really can’t even drink from a cup — but we are working towards it: nowadays we prepare him a bowl of yogurt alongside a small wooden bowl of cereal (Rice Krispies, Wheat Chex, GoLean “twigs”) which he can then dump into the yogurt and mix up by himself.
Turns out, he loves this process, and I am trying to incorporate more little bowls of ingredients into his meals…little bowls of parmesan cheese to dump on pasta, little bowls of breadcrumbs to put over cauliflower puree. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it gives him a feeling of accomplishment — not to mention the fun of endorsed spilling. Sometimes he hits, sometimes he misses, but any practice is good practice!
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