✓ The importance of having breakfast with children

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The importance of having breakfast together

Starting the morning together with a good breakfast is important: not only from a nutritional point of view, but also from a pedagogical and emotional point of view. He explains why and gives us his precious advice Marta Stella Bruzareas, educator and author of the site mammechefatica.

"This difficult period marked byCoronavirus emergency it can represent an opportunity to enjoy breakfast with a less frenetic pace: a change that can lead everyone, parents and children, to be more aware. You can set the table more carefully, perhaps decorating it with gods fiori, or by combining i colors of the napkins and dishes: minimal but creating details heat family, so important in this moment of great uncertainty and fragility. It is right to children to always tell the truth: we do not know when we will get out. They absorb our concern very easily, but we can make it clear that we are here, we are together, we are united. Every cuddle is important. Let's prepare one together cake or simple ones cookies: children really like the ritual of food preparation. Thus, even a foregone moment like breakfast becomes an occasion for sharing, support, support. All together we try to make sense of the day, even in the uncertainty of this very particular period ".

Why having breakfast with the family is important

"The breakfast it is a fundamental moment because it represents the start of the day: it is a meal with a strong symbolic value - explains Marta -. For a child, experiencing awakening together with the primary figures is very significant. It's a collective rite that allows you to start in the right way ".

What may seem like a simple and daily event, almost in passing, instead contains a wide range of possibilities: "During breakfast you can start to face the challenges of the day, as go tonursery or to nursery school: it is not an obvious activity, but a real job that you learn and appreciate over time, but which at first is tiring. By being all together, with mum and dad, the child receives indirect encouragement. The start of the day must never be associated with a hypothetical abandonment, but rather the awareness of seeing each other again, the pleasure of meeting again. For parents it is not always easy to understand and practice: there is a rush that pushes them to do everything in a hurry to arrive on time, there is the effort of greeting and parting. However, it is vital to remember that the baby needs rituals. While having the first meal of the day, one can remember what will happen with phrases such as: "mom will go to work, you will go to kindergarten, then we will go home" which describe and verbalize to the child what is about to happen ".

How to explain the importance of breakfast to children

"It is useful, in general, to emphasize the pleasure of sharing moments, ask yourself with sweetness, both with the little ones and with the preteens, explaining that it is a beautiful ritual that they will carry with them when they grow up. Breakfast must be an event for everyone, during which even mum and dad can communicate with each other ".

"The little ones like it a lot bring theTeddy bear or the doll favorites: are welcome. Let's put them at the table with a bib and offer them some crumbs: breakfast also becomes the starting point for a imitative game. To the slightly older children, from 6 to 8 years, we could propose to write the menu of breakfast in the morning or the previous evening, and of playing waiter, perhaps with a cloth as an apron and a napkin on the arm, transforming a home routine into a grand hotel breakfast. To the preadolescent and to teens you can instead propose to prepare some desserts, testing yourself in the kitchen or by organizing a buffet or some particular course that stimulates creativity ".

Read also: Breakfast: why to make it, how to make it and how to convince children that they don't want it

Breakfast together: the importance of small rituals

"Are the very small gestures that, if cultivated from an early age, they make a difference. Like attention for each other, which arises for example from the awareness that the little brother prefers that particular jam, that the mother loves the coffee prepared in that way, the father that specific type of biscuit. A great idea is to reserve for the children of small tasks, as lay o wash the cups: minimal gestures to be performed with care. Children often tend to be self-reported: the shared breakfast is a good starting point to make them realize they are part of a community ".

The interviewee

Marta she is an educator and author of the site mammechefatica. On the Facebook page of the site you will find video tutorials with advice for parents.

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