Dragging Her Into A Rut

For breakfast, we like things quick and simple. Instant oatmeal, yogurt, toast, cereal or a bagel are all the typical choices around this house. For more elaborate breakfast meals, we wait until dinner. We often have pancakes and sausage or scrambled eggs and hash browns or biscuits and gravy for dinner. I have more time to make it at that time of day, and it works for us. Especially on Saturdays or Sundays.

Last Sunday we had blueberry muffins for dinner. A nice lighter meal. Yummy in the tummy. Later in the week, Alaina was having yogurt for breakfast. When I give her yogurt, I always offer her either toast ("like Grandad likes it"...with grape jelly) or dry Cheerios. She wasn't too interested in either of those options, so I had a flash of brilliance. We had a couple of leftover muffins, so I gave it to her with her yogurt. I thought it was a fun treat; let's face it, muffins are really just cake disguised as breakfast.

Well, she refused to eat it. She kept saying "I eat breakfast." Because she's never had a muffin at breakfast, only for dinner. She thought I was trying to get her to eat a dinner food. She asked for toast "like Grandad likes it" instead.

I know I get in a rut in how I do things. Most of the time I like it there. Apparently, though, I've dragged her down with me, to the point where muffins are now dinner food and cannot be served for breakfast.

Next lesson: how to teach your child how to think outside the box. Since I often have a problem with this one, I'm not sure how to teach it to her.