Family Resemblance

On Sunday I spent a good five minutes arguing with my six-and-a-half year old.

Why?

Oh, because he forgot to eat breakfast.

And it was noon.

I can’t even fathom forgetting to eat (I’m not that kind of girl), but whatever...

You’ll note, lovely parent that I am, that I take no responsibility for his lack of breakfast.

Why?

Well, because I’m raising independent kids. They know how to grab themselves cereal bowls and fill them. They can pull a stool over to the fridge and grab themselves bread, and jam, and even (gasp!) grab a butter knife to apply their own spread.

Besides all that, I reminded him. I even went so far as to tell him there was more of his current favourite junky cereal (Captain Crunch. Gag.) on the shelves in the stairwell, where we keep the pantry’s overflow of stock.

Back to the argument, though—I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was his freaking problem?!

Seriously. It went something like this:


Me: L, it’s lunch time. What do you want for lunch?

L [shocked]: But I never even had breakfast!

Me: Well, it’s lunch now. What’re you going to eat?

L: BUT I NEED CEREAL!

Me: So have cereal for lunch.

L: BUT I DON’T WANT LUNCH. I WANT BREAKFAST.

Me: So eat cereal for lunch. I’ll get the milk.

L: NOOOOOOO! I NEED TO EAT BREAKFAST! I WANT CEREAL!

Me: Whatever. Cereal for lunch. Let’s get to it.

L: NOOOOOOO! BREAKFAST!

Me: It’s lunch time. Lunch.


At about this point he ran sobbing to his room, to howl at the walls.

You know, it took me a good ten minutes of listening to him raging to figure out he somehow felt slighted that he had missed a meal, and all it would’ve taken was the simple admission that he can call it whatever he wants, but he needs to eat.

I tried explaining that the reason I was calling it lunch had to do with the fact that it was noon, and nothing to do with the type of food he wanted to consume.

Apparently this isn’t a good enough explanation when you're six, and the idea of missing a meal is borderline traumatizing.

Whatever. It’s over. He ate.

It took an hour, but he managed to pack away a bowl of cereal with milk, a bowl of hot oatmeal, a jam sandwich, and a mandarin orange.

This seemed to satisfy him.

Anyhow, this entire incident is a symptom of a bigger problem. Our six-and-a-half year old is perpetually distracted. He’s on the ball academically, but he struggles to finish any task (be it school work, feeding the cats, getting dressed, brushing his teeth, you name it), usually because he’s too busy gabbing or hamming it up.

I have no idea where he gets it. [::shifty eyes::]

And that stubbornness that kept him from admitting that the noontime meal is lunch, despite type of food consumed?

Well, that’s definitely his father...