I Tried To

Pretty much any time we go out for "breakfast" we have already eaten a small something--fruit, peice of toast, half a bagel, small bowl of cereal, especially the kids. You can't espect kids to not eat anything while their parents, who have probably been sleeping longer than they have, wake up, shower, get ready etc. It's not really about eating breakfast foods to fill their tummies, it's about going out together as a family and having an enjoyable meal even if you are eating pancakes at noon!

What happened is that you didn't talk to hubby about how he thought this was going to play out. He might have thought that going mid morning to eat M&M Pancakes would be a fun brunch kind of thing and that they'd have something light for an early snack. When we go have breakfast on the weekends we don't get up at the crack of dawn and go. We tend to go before McDonald's start serving lunch though...lol.

I think that both of you did not communicate with the other and little girl got the short end of it. She should have gotten to go eat pancakes. Either you could have woke dad up and said "she's ready to go now, what is the plan for this morning".

Sounds to me like you all had a part in this. That is only an hour and a half and by your own words the three year old was still sleeping at 8:30 so it was already going to be 9:30 ish before you headed out the door anyway. Regardless of his 10:00 leave time you were going to deal with her wanting pancakes now! Just a simple, little one is sleeping while dad paints so use this time to get your stuff together would have worked.

Sorry but it sounds to me like you didn't want to deal with whiny four year old so you made your distress your husband's fault.

Um can i ask why not get her a small snack like yogurt n then go out to eat while the ceiling dries? Imo you were wrong here mama you could of waited n go out to breakfast its sunday no need to not have a later breakfast

Okay, I think you made this harder on yourself because you were frustrated. Understandable.

Try this next time: "Okay, sweetie...Daddy didn't know that we wouldn't have time to go out with ALLLLL the busy stuff we have to do. I know that must make you sad, huh? (give a moment to be sad about it) Now, you can choose, would you like French Toast with strawberry syrup, or French Toast with CRAZY peanut butter and syrup? Do you want to help me make it? I bet you can put the _________ on, right?"

She might be sensitive, but part of life is learning that we don't always get what we want and things don't always go as planned. So it's important that you empathize with her, and give her a choice so she feels empowered when you can.

Source: Love and Logic (book).

ETA: It sounds like you may have given her a choice...but you skipped the empathy part because you were frustrated with your husband.

The first rule of family plans like that: NOBODY breathes a word about it to anyone under 12 til it's happening! (And I'm not joking!) And O. parent gives full plan disclosure to the other! That is perhaps more key, because, as most of us know, it's the mom that gets the planets to line up for ANY "plan."
NO vague references to "go to eat" "check out the fair" "see about that pumpkin patch" etc. until the plan is discussed and validated (among the adults) and deemed reasonable. For instance you could have given your daughter a half piece of toast at 8:00 and moved forward, right?

Two solutions:

When hubby does this, remind him and your daughter of x, y, z and why the idea is a not so good one...then suggest something else.

Or...When hubby does this, offer a small snacky breakfast at 8:30 when they get up and then go out and eat a full breakfast at 10...

Just my thoughts...

This happened in our family this morning. My husband wanted to go out to a pancake breakfast that was a community fundraiser but then he was slow to get up, slow to shower, started reading the paper etc. Our son was even slower to get up. I just let my daughter watch cartoons and gave her some snacks of cheddar cheese and apple slices. Then we finally went out for a late breakfast. Just think of it as an early lunch and feed your kid something when she gets up. Then you can all go out for "breakfast" later in the morning but she won't be a mess from not eating.

You need to communicate with your husband about how you are feeling, the logistics of stuff he wants to do, and that stuff. You are pregnant, you have multiple children, and YOU BOTH, as the adults, have to think things through. I know you are hormonal, but take a deep breath and do what you can to not take this out on your daughter.

You could have said - "Hon, you said breakfast for daughter - lets paint after you get back." You could have told him when he brought it up that he'd need to think it through to make it work. Instead, you let yourself get mad at him, and at her. SHE HAD NO PART IN MAKING THIS SITUATION. She was "rattling on" because she was excited about something that she was TOLD WOULD HAPPEN, and the adults in her life weren't able to get their acts together.

You don't have to "clean up his mess and listen to her whine", but you both have to be adults and deal with it. If he's clueless about the time - remind him about it. If she's sensitive and inflexible, it's your job as parents to work with that and teach her how to be less sensitive and more flexible. Yelling doesn't do that.

Yes, it gets old, but that's how it is. We all have things that but our significant others. We have to deal with it.

I've beat it into my husband that we do NOT tell the kids about any plans until we are pulling up to the place.

I think you had a hand in this chaos too, in which your daughter got crapped on by both parents; your husband by not fulfilling his promise, then you, by being short and yelling at your poor daughter.

Since you know he does this "all the time", then why didn't you nip it in the bud when he made the promise the night before, and you knew he wouldn't follow thru?

I suggest that there is enough trouble to go around. If you'd stopped your daughter from bugging you, you wouldn't have lost your cool. And if you hadn't lost your cool, your husband wouldn't have lost his. Both of you let the situation get out of control. I see this as not anyone's fault. No need to place blame.

How about you all call for a time out and start over.

As to making promises he can't keep. Who said it was a promise? Last night it seemed like a good idea. This morning not so much. He changed his mind. That's life. No need to make it into a big deal.

After your SWH: offering her french toast is not love and logic. Offering an acceptable alternative, the french toast, is a good thing to do. But it's not discipline. Love and logic is allowing the child to suffer the consequences of their behavior. She kept pestering you. The logical consequence for the pestering is to separate her from you so that she can't continue to pester you. When she is removed from the room she will learn that if she continues to pester you she will be removed from the room. There could be other logical consequences. Another one would be to stop paying attention to her. Say to her, that's enough. I'm not going to listen to you any more and then completely ignore her. If you're not able to completely ignore her that one won't work. Love and logic requires trial and error to find what works with your child to teach them to do or not do some behavior.

M&M pancakes are dessert! Go ahead and give your daughter a healthy breakfast. Especially if she is sensitive, gets low blood sugar and has a hard time being flexible. By the time they get to the restaurant for pancakes, it'll be time for dessert, or a mid day snack, or lunch at the rate your husband is going!

Well men are definitely very different in this area, and it's not that they are wrong, they are wired different. When we spaz about all the details then we miss out on cool stuff sometimes but when they ignore the details then well it can hit the fan as well. So in your scenario, if my hubs announced that we would go to breakfast in the morning, I would just feed my kids a light breakfast at the normal time like a piece of toast and 1/2 a banana with some milk or maybe even just a banana and some milk, have some coffee and a banana myself and be ready to hit the door around 10:30ish for a brunch. I mean really even if she had eaten a normal breakfast by the time he actually had it together to leave (like lunchtime!) all would have been well. If you daughter had kept saying pancake you could have just said, 'sounds great, when daddy is done in the bathroom we are going to get something to eat'. That is how I handle it when my man goes all spontaneous, he needs that room to just make a decision last minute and he doesn't do it like every weekend, I can work around it, and we always have a great time when Daddy decides to initiate some family time :) Just hang in there and try to be a bit more flexible, I think you will be happier! I saw someone else comment on your being pregnant and really, when pregnant just my husband's loud breathing could annoy me, hormones really do drive us up the wall, hang in there!

He needs to stop telling a child the plans if he doesn't intend to make them happen. If she's hungry, tell her to ask Daddy what his plan is. Let him deal with a whiny kid while he's painting the bathroom.

You don't have to clean up his mess. You don't have to solve a problem he created. What you have to do is not get so frustrated that you start yelling - it's not always the mom's department to solve things. I know we often feel like that, but sometimes we make it worse for ourselves.

You could also have fed her at 8:30, at least a partial breakfast, if she was hungry or if you have measured her blood sugar and found it low (you didn't say why you knew she had low blood sugar). If she's got a sugar problem, make sure the doctor knows about the M&M pancakes and the strawberry syrup. I would think complex carbs would stabilize her much more than a quick sugar fix.

If the breakfast place serves breakfast all day, then you can go at lunchtime and still have breakfast food. But your husband needs to learn to keep his promises. In the future, send the kids in to check with him. If that means waking him up when he sleeps late, oh well!

I wouldn't listen to my kids whine for 15 minutes about anything, no wonder you yelled at her! Next time she whines about something send her to her room until she stops.
And if dad decided he didn't want to go to breakfast why didn't YOU just take the kids yourself?
I do get why you're annoyed at your husband. I hope you can TALK to him about how important it is to follow through when he tells his kids something. Children don't generally respect parents they can't trust or believe to do what they say :(

Aww J., you're having a bad morning, aren't you...

Little kids get fixated on stuff like M&M's. Try to hang with it, and don't get upset. Say "uh-huh" and go on about your business. Or say "I'm sorry Daddy thought that we could go out for breakfast, but he's in the middle of painting right now." Or say "We can have pancakes for lunch." You could actually fix a bunch of pancakes and put them in the freezer to pull out on busy mornings like today... french toast too... we do that when we fix pancakes or waffles on the weekends...

It's not your daughter's fault that your husband doesn't think things through, so try not to get mad at her. Your husband? Well, that's another story altogether. I'd have a talk with him about making promises without talking to you first...

Hope you have a better day tomorrow!!

Dawn