Nobody in this family is a morning person. Not one of us, including the three-year-old, who wakes up early and is furious about it.
So this is not a note about a nourishing start to the day. It’s a note about getting four people fed inside twenty minutes when the collective mood is somewhere between neutral and hostile.
Three things
Toast with something on it — often the loaf from Saturday. Cereal. Yoghurt with fruit already cut up.
That’s it, on a rotation, and everyone knows which one it is before they come downstairs.
The rotation is the load-bearing part. For about a year I asked what they wanted, because that seemed kind, and what I had actually built was a negotiation that started at seven in the morning with a person who had been awake for nine minutes. Nell would want the thing we didn’t have. Rowan would want whatever Nell had said, and then not want it.
Taking the choice away removed almost all of it. I expected complaints and got, I think, two.
Before they’re dressed
Everything on the table before anybody puts a uniform on. I’ve written about this in the school-run note and I’ll say it once more here because it saves about ten minutes: eating in uniform means a second wash of a face, sometimes a changed jumper, and a child who thinks getting-ready is over.
Nothing that needs cooking
A cooked breakfast on a school day takes one adult and stands them at a hob for twelve minutes, and there are only two adults, and there are four other things happening.
We do cook at the weekend. Properly, sometimes, with Tom doing eggs badly and everyone pleased about it. On a Tuesday it is the wrong use of the only two people who can find a shoe.
The overnight oats fortnight
I want this on the record because I did it for fourteen consecutive nights.
The theory is genuinely good — move the work to the evening, which is when this house has more of everything — and I made four jars every night, and every morning two of them came back untouched and I ate one at eleven o’clock like a sort of penance.
They looked at them with real suspicion. Cold, in a jar, having existed overnight. Rowan asked, on about day nine, whether it was for the dog.
If yours eat them, this is the best idea in the entry and I am pleased for you.
The bowl
The three-year-old has a bowl. It is a specific bowl, and the spoon is a specific spoon, and if either is in the dishwasher the morning changes shape.
I resisted this for months on the grounds that it was ridiculous and that he should be flexible. He is three. Flexibility is not a thing he has, it is a thing that happens to him. There are two of that bowl now, and I bought the second one deliberately, and it was the single cheapest fix in this entire notebook.
Things people email to ask
- What is a good breakfast for children before school?
- Something they will eat without discussion that does not need an adult standing at a hob. We rotate three: toast with something on it, cereal, and yoghurt with fruit already cut up. Nutritionally none of them is remarkable, and the thing that matters more on a school morning is that breakfast actually happens and nobody leaves the house hungry and cross.
- Should children get dressed before or after breakfast?
- Breakfast first, by about ten minutes in our house. Eating in uniform means a second wash and sometimes a changed jumper, and it also tells a child that getting-ready is finished when it is not. Food on the table before anyone is dressed, then dressed, then shoes — one continuous run at the morning rather than two.
- Are overnight oats worth it for a family?
- They were not for us, and I made them every night for a fortnight before admitting it. The theory is excellent — the work moves to the evening, which is when we have more of everything — and the practice was two children looking at a cold jar with obvious suspicion. If your children like them, they are the best idea in this entry. Mine did not.
- How do you stop breakfast becoming an argument?
- Take the choice out of it. Three fixed options on a rotation removed nearly all of our morning conflict, because a question at seven in the morning is an invitation to negotiate and a six-year-old will accept that invitation every time. They know what today is before they come downstairs, which turns out to be most of what they wanted.
Anna
Mid-thirties, former magazine copy editor, now works part-time from the kitchen table. Started this as a private record and only made it public because friends kept asking for the recipes.
If this was any use
The school run, worked backwards from the door
We were late four days out of five and I kept trying to fix it by getting up earlier, which is the one thing that doesn’t work. The fix was writing down what the door actually needs and moving all of it to the night before.
Packed lunches, after two terms of getting them back
For two terms I made a nice lunch and it came home. Not some of it — the same three things, every day, in the same box, having travelled to school and back untouched.
The Saturday list that finally stuck
We tried a laminated star chart, a shared app, and a rota with everyone’s initials on it. The thing that worked is a piece of paper with four jobs on it, and it took us three years and about £40 of failed systems to get there.
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