OK, so first a confession:

I’m a bit of a healthy eating nut and I think it is a skill and a philosophy I have to teach our kiddo.

When I say healthy eating I think I mean something reasonable without being extreme: Lots of veggies and fruit, less sugar and white anything, whole grains, very little red meat, lots of fish, nuts and other awesome stuff, like avocados (an obsession of mine and thankfully, my daughter). We don’t have junk food or candy in our house, don’t drink soda or sugary drinks, and our daughter has never been to McDonald’s. But we definitely have dessert and treats a few times a week and one of the most important things I try to teach at home is enjoying eating and food and making it a special experience as often as we can.

The other day our kiddo came home from a playdate and I asked her how it went. She said fine and then got this look on her face that said “hey, mom, I’m not telling you something.” I gave her my best version of the “hey, it’s OK, just tell me, I promise I won’t be mad” look and then she confessed: They ate pop tarts. And candy.

I think she expected me to get upset. But I wasn’t.
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I had really ambitious plans for tonight:

Get home from work (around 6pm).

Do homework with kiddo.

Practice piano with kiddo.

Bedtime stuff and then read a chapter of Harry Potter with kiddo (we just started the first book).

Make dinner for tomorrow night.

Call mom.

Catch up on work stuff.

Get stuff organized for tomorrow.

Write this blog post.

Do yoga.

Read (currently making my way through the Steve Jobs biography, although very slowly).

Get to bed by 10pm.

Ha! I hope you’re laughing because seeing all my plans written out here makes me laugh with the realization that I was kidding myself thinking I can do all that and get to bed by 10pm (an epically early time for me, mind you.)

I’m terrible about making insanely unrealistic to-do lists. In fact, as I started writing this post I glanced at my to-do list sitting next to me and it’s not a list that I could have possibly accomplished in one day. Yet when I wrote it this morning that’s what I was aiming to do. And the downside is that now I feel like I failed when in fact, I wasn’t going to ever succeed in the first place.

I know we hear this advice all the time but I’m going to repeat it again and try to listen myself this time:
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I’ve had a major revelation recently about how to get my daughter to do more to help out at home.

She is seven and a half and for a while now we’ve had a chore chart going in an effort to get her to be more consistent about doing a few things to help. Nothing too crazy: Put away the dishes after dinner, make her bed in the morning, check her backpack for school, sweet the kitchen floor, feed her fish, etc. She is not terrible about remembering but I do have to reminder her, a lot.

The other day I wasn’t feeling well so I plunked down on the couch and said to my daughter, half kidding: “Could you please go and make me some tea and a snack?”. She has never done this and I wouldn’t trust her with the hot tea, but as soon as I said it she got really excited and ran to the kitchen. My husband was there and she asked him to help her get the tea ready and figure out what snack I might want. They came out and brought me some tea, cut up apples and some cheese on a tray. I kissed her and told her it was the best snack ever and she was so excited.

A few hours later I was in the kitchen finishing up making dinner and she came over and asked me: “Mama, do you want me to make you more tea?” I told her sure, so she went and got my husband, and they repeated the routine from before (she pressed the electric kettle button, he poured, she timed three minutes on the clock for the tea to steep). The next day she asked me again. And it’s now become a regular things she asks me and I don’t know which one of us likes it more.

So here is my revelation about how to get your kids to help out more:
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