Here's another question for the moms and dads.
Parker is at the age where he's ready to become a little more independent. After taking him in for his check-up on Tuesday I discovered how wonderful (though messy) it is to let your child feed himself. It's great! I can put him in his highchair with his food, and enjoy my meal in relative peace. I can talk to him, or read to him, instead of spoon feeding him through every meal or snack. I can wash dishes while he works on his oatmeal. I can edit articles while he munches on an apple.
The problem I have at this point as that we potentially waste a lot of food this way. He ate a good bit of oatmeal this morning, as evidenced by his first dirty diaper of the day, but I'll be scraping the rest of it into the trash as soon as I finish this post. I can't really save it for later under the circumstances.
Any advice?
2 comments:
I think wasting food with toddlers is par for the course. Maybe give him a set amount of something and if he is still hungry give him some easy fillers like fruit, Cheerios, pb crackers, etc. It's sad but also wonderful when they can start feeding themselves. It's so nice to eat a meal as a family instead of mom or dad eating after everyone else.
Tina put it much more nicely than I would have. I was going to say, "Get over it. Babies aren't efficient." I would have been laughing, of course, when I said it.
This is probably the first of many times in your child rearing endeavor that you will be forced to choose between task efficiency and teaching life skills. If your focus is on getting the present task done in the most efficient manner, it will always be more efficient to exclude Parker and just do it yourself. On the other hand, if your focus is on helping Parker learn new things and develop unfamiliar skills, he's going to make a mess, do the task poorly, and maybe even break stuff. You, of course, know this already, but it's easy to get task-driven and forget.
Post a Comment