Toddler Chooses

Today I had a small parenting win. Upon asking what breakfast my child wants, he replied “eggs”.

“Okay great,“ I said, “I can do that. That's easy..." or so I thought.

If you are new to mom life or dad life, you might set out to prepare your child a beautiful ornate spread, have it all prepared over a 30-45 minute timeframe and set it on a plate with beautiful presentation just to have them say “I don’t like that”. In other words, “that’s not what I wanted!“ If you're not green around the parental gills you probably know what they want is what they have eaten for breakfast for the last 20 days and you have figured out how to cut every edge and corner possible to prepare it in the shortest amount of time possible with the least amount of waste. Which is what most people tend to do, streamline and improve processes over time and experience to minimize tantrums and meltdowns, both toddler and adult toddler alike!

But if you are one of the former parents in the examples above, you’re left thinking, “well it’s what you asked for," with little understanding of what trickery your little toddler just played on you because they didn’t actually know what they themselves wanted in the first place. They just answered “yes” to a vague question, such as “do you want eggs?” from mom or dad. Which usually happens around the forth or fifth inquiry: “Cereal... oatmeal... toast... yogurt... eggs...?”

So I thought to myself, how can this be easier? How can I know what my toddler would like to eat and what they want it to look like in order for it to be visually appetizing and encourage them to eat it? Then it hit me; I whipped out my handy-dandy electronic pacifier (my smart phone for you young folk), went to Google images and pulled up pictures of the same breakfast item cooked in different ways—in my specific case, eggs prepared in many different ways.

Lo and behold and to my never-ending joy and amazement, it worked like a charm! My child pointed to which egg he wanted, I made it (be aware of your own culinary skills and try to show them a picture of food that falls into your own cooking competency ;) and he ate it! Win win win! Gotta love those trip wins!

So all in all, a picture is always worth a thousand words, especially with kids and little ones. Let’s put it in a different light; when we go to a new restaurant that we have been wanting to visit for a month and we sit down and have the menu handed to us, we really get a sense of what we are about to eat if there is a picture attached to the food item. Thus granting us the pleasure of viewing before choosing. If we allow our little ones the same choice, we may have a little victory to be proud of ourselves about. Best of luck moms and dads.

Very respectfully,

P.S.

Remember that toddlers are little beings that have come into the world knowing just about nothing about the world. They are trying to piece together how to exist in a world of giants that tell them what to do and place these, sometimes obscure, boundaries on them. With this knowledge and constantly reminding ourselves that they are infinite source energies trying desperately to cling to the source from which they came, we might be able to allow them to a small piece of patience and soft guidance with what they are trying to tell us. Have fun.