The Better Breakfast Battle

We refer back to it, now, as the day the toaster pastries died.

Oh, I'd always been a proponent of healthful family meals; heck, we sat down to dinner together every night, even back when my youngest still refused to eat little more than buttered bread for weeks at a time. But somehow – I think it had to do with one of those "pick your battles" mothering moments – I'd given up on breakfast.

Our pantry was stocked with several varieties of toaster pastries, brightly-colored cereals, and the like. I put them on shelves the kids could reach and they fetched their own breakfast each morning. And I patted myself on the back for allowing them to be self-sufficient.

But a funny thing happened. One day I realized that my kids were devouring salmon and brown rice, roasted green beans, heaping salads, and choosing hunks of cheddar over cookies. And so when the toaster pastries and neon cereal ran out that week, I never replaced them.

Instead, I decided it was time to take back breakfast. Instead of sugar cereals, I let them help make granola (my son eats it naked, chased with a large cup of low-fat milk, while my daughter drowns it in vanilla yogurt); instead of oatmeal packets, I introduced steel-cut oats and showed them how the best part is drizzling honey and a little cream on it right before eating; I made sure the fruit bowl was always full and multigrain bagels or toasting bread on hand; I pretended that the simple but delicious combination of apple slices and Muenster was a decadent creation.

I'm not going to lie to you – the first week was hard. There was whining and complaining. And the kids weren't happy, either.

And then one day we walked down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and my daughter spotted a box of cereal she used to eat by the fistful. "Hey Mom," she said, pointing, "that looks totally disgusting."

I patted myself on the back…

… right up until she started begging for potato chips. Hmph!