Like most parents, we have kids who rise and shine before we do, on most days. And our early-risers take the term “break fast” seriously; the first words out of their mouth, especially that of the Boy, are “Can you make breakfast for me?” So we looked forward to the day when they could make their own breakfast and give us an extra 15 minutes in bed.
Although both kids have “helped” in the kitchen since a very young age, it wasn’t until last year that the Girl reached a long-awaited (for both herself and us) level of self-sufficiency: she could now cook The Egg. The Egg is an important first cooking lesson in the life of any child, in my opinion. As a kid, the first thing I learned to cook was an egg, and I figured out early on that once I had kids, that would be their first self-cooked item too. Once you learn to cook an egg for yourself, you’ll never starve.
So the Girl started off at age eight with a sunny-side up egg, and then quickly graduated to scrambled. When she has an adult to flip for her, she can pull off an omelette. The beauty of it is, when kids have enough pride in themselves and enthusiasm in the kitchen, you never have to beg them to cook. So if you can get your child to enjoy cooking that egg, you’re well on your way to independent morning-kids, and a much-deserved sleep-in.
So this morning, we heard the usual whine, “I’m huuuungry. Can you make me breakfast?” from the Boy. And we had two pieces of advice for him: “Go get your sister to make eggs, and you know how to pour the yogourt and cereal.” True, we’d have to come down and sweep cereal buds off the floor, but we knew that his sister would take care of everything else. And as soon as we could smell the eggs wafting upstairs, and hear the Boy joyously exclaim to his sister, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”, we knew that we were in for an eggs-cellent day. (C’mon, you knew that I was going to fit in an egg pun somewhere, right?)
The Nocturnal Lecturer 