Leading By Example
On occasion, the family likes to substitute the usual dinner fare for breakfast foods. Pancakes, French toast, eggs, and bacon are welcome dinner foods for my children. One reason for this is whipped cream or as the HB children refer to it, “Whooped cream”, as in “you got you butt whooped”. We allow our children to use whooped cream on their pancakes, waffles, and French toast. “Why?” you ask. It’s much like Bill Cosby’s explanation of why chocolate cake is good for breakfast. There’s milk in it, milk is good for you. O.K. that’s probably the only thing in it that’s good for you, but it gets them to eat their food.
Another thing that happens in our house, on occasion, is one child briefly transforming into an enforcer, if you will. For some reason every child in my house, and this increases with age, has felt the need to correct and/or enforce rules that their siblings have or have been perceived to have broken. And this is regardless of whether the enforcer has ever been guilty of the same infraction.
Last night at our “Breakfast for Dinner” we had one of these very enforcement type situations. Dinner consisted of bacon and French Toast , which of course is paired beautifully with whooped cream. This time, which is unusual, My Beautiful Wife and I chose to not monitor the amount of whooped cream, but allow the children to monitor themselves. It’s good to let them show that they have good judgment. It gives them a sense of freedom, a sense of maturity, and allows them to go hog wild with the whooped cream.
As the whooped cream made it around the table to Sour Dough, my oldest, our littlest enforcer, Sticky Buns lashed out at him. “What are you doing?! Look how much whooped cream you took!” And the Pièce de résistance, “I always take excessive amounts of whooped cream, and you took LESS than me!!”.
Hmmm. And your argument is….?
Another thing that happens in our house, on occasion, is one child briefly transforming into an enforcer, if you will. For some reason every child in my house, and this increases with age, has felt the need to correct and/or enforce rules that their siblings have or have been perceived to have broken. And this is regardless of whether the enforcer has ever been guilty of the same infraction.
Last night at our “Breakfast for Dinner” we had one of these very enforcement type situations. Dinner consisted of bacon and French Toast , which of course is paired beautifully with whooped cream. This time, which is unusual, My Beautiful Wife and I chose to not monitor the amount of whooped cream, but allow the children to monitor themselves. It’s good to let them show that they have good judgment. It gives them a sense of freedom, a sense of maturity, and allows them to go hog wild with the whooped cream.
As the whooped cream made it around the table to Sour Dough, my oldest, our littlest enforcer, Sticky Buns lashed out at him. “What are you doing?! Look how much whooped cream you took!” And the Pièce de résistance, “I always take excessive amounts of whooped cream, and you took LESS than me!!”.
Hmmm. And your argument is….?
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