Everyone says they want choices. Then when presented with too many choices, people get so overwhelmed by decision paralysis that they realize that they don’t want too many choices, but just enough to feel like they are actually choosing from an array of things. The last several months before heading off to school, we’ve really simplified Kaia’s first breakfast of the day (I say “first breakfast” because she gets a SECOND breakfast when she arrives at school!) so that it’s really just cereal: it’s Weetbix or (organic, Whole Foods brand) Cherrios, and occasionally she can have some toast with peanut butter. But I realized that I really want her eating oats more regularly as she used to, and not just in baked healthy muffins and cookies. So I started making my oat porridge fingers again with oats, peanut butter, flaxseed, and milk. She ate them for breakfast yesterday, but this morning, she got really mad when I presented them to her along with a cup of milk.
“I don’t want this!” she yelled. “I don’t want to eat oats today!”
I told her that mummy made them just for Kaia, so she should eat some for her brekkie.
“I WANT CHOICES!” she yelled back. “I DON’T WANT OATS! I DON’T WANT OATS!”
I always have to stifle a laugh whenever she goes into these little indignant outbursts. I want her to know I take her seriously, but at the same time, I cannot help but think how comical all of these situations are. If we went back to 3-year-old me, circa 1989, and I yelled at my mom like this, she easily would have just whacked me or slapped my face to get me to shut up. She would have hit me into submission until I ate every last bite of oats. But here, I ended up relenting with one other option: I asked her if she wanted toast with peanut butter. She said yes, and I went ahead and prepped that.
Who knows — maybe one day, when Kaia is in her 30s, she will be in therapy and recount the time when she was 3 years old, when her mom *almost* forced her into eating peanut butter oat porridge fingers. And she will discuss how that felt like traumatizing experience to her.