As parents we like to have a plan, but a huge part of being a parent is thinking on your feet. Sometimes it’s how to answer a difficult question posed by a kid. Sometimes it’s figuring out how to clean up a major diaper blow-out with no wipes on hand. Sometimes it’s explaining to your curious toddler why that nice police officer just pulled you over. Sometimes it’s navigating the unspoken social contracts on playground. Sometimes it’s just doing whatever you possibly can to get your baby to sleep.
And sometimes, as is often the case for me, it’s improvising at meal times. Usually that means working with what you have in the fridge and pantry, and coming up with something that everyone will enjoy (or at least eat without complaining). Other times it means finding a way to make mealtimes fun or interesting.
I like to think that I’ve gotten pretty good at improvising. And if we’re honest, really, that’s half of parenting, isn’t it?
Take Easter, for instance. It’s late on Easter Sunday Eve, and everyone except me is in bed, fast asleep. That’s when I realize that I (and, in my defense, my lovely and brilliant wife) have completely forgotten to put together anything for the boys to find from the Easter Bunny in the morning. I had the foresight to pick up some treats, but have no baskets or anything else to put them in.
So I do what any good parent would do: I raid the boys’ art supplies and have a late-night craft session. I come up with a plan, say a little prayer that this will work, and then after much cutting, folding, gluing, and coloring, I had myself two custom-made Easter paper baskets. I feel like they need a little bit something special, so out to the yard I creep (at 1AM) with scissors in hand, to trim some grass to fill them out. Then a little bit of cartooning, to create an adorable bunny face to adorn the side of each. Add the candy, and BOOM! Easter is saved!
We do what we have to do to make our kids smile.
Have a great story of a time you had to improvise as a parent?
The fine people at Mott’s are running a Good & Honest campaign, to celebrate that parents everywhere are just doing the best they can for their kids. They sent me some products to try (the boys in particular are big fans of their applesauce) and asked me to share about a moment of having to make things up as I go.
Any dad worth his salt will gladly rock a tutu to make his kid smile.
And now it’s time for you to share yours! Leave a comment below, on the Daddy Doctrines Facebook page, or on Twitter (tagging me @ChrisRoutly and use the hashtags #Motts and #GoodAndHonest) to be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card and some tasty Mott’s products! Be sure to use the widget below to make certain your entries are in! Good luck!
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Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Mott’s and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.
I'm a proud full-time caregiver dad, and the new President of the National At-Home Dad Network. I'm also a children's book author and illustrator, blogger, and accidental activist. Canadian-born-and-bred, I now live in Portland, Oregon, with my lovely (and much smarter) wife and our two adorable sons.
Find out more here.
I'm proud to be the newly elected President of the National At-Home Dad Network. Check them out to find out more.
Parenting.
The end That’s my story.
When my kids were smaller they didn’t want to try fish so we used to tell them it was “special chicken”. It worked.
When my kids were smaller they didn’t want to try fish so we used to tell them it was “special chicken”. It worked.
I used to add some veggies into my child’s fruit smoothies. I later told him about it and he was fine with that
My Good and Honest parenting moment comes when I accidentally forgot to pack a snack for my son (I had everything else in the diaper bag.) Thank goodness a Motts applesauce pouch was found in my purse! My son gobbled it down.
Another “honest” moment is when I always use applesauce to get my sons to take their medications. It has such a great flavor, they can hardly taste the medicine.
the moment that I try to get the kids to clean their rooms.. it turns into a fun dance party with great memories.. and a clean room.
Oh one of my moments was when we went to my sisters and it started snowing. We didnt have his boots along, so we put some of her adult socks over his shoes and put plastic grocery bags over his shoes and tucked them in his socks! Worked like a charm and the kids had so much fun playing in the snow!
My kids hate eating there veggies, so I always sneak them into the food when cooking, when they ask what it is and notice, I tell them it is a special ingredient that comes from magic beans to help them grow. Now sometimes when I am cooking they tell me not to forget the special ingredient. lol
I have always said that fish is not really fish but special meat from a unicorn. They love unicorn!!!
My son refused to eat his vegetables, so I would sneak them into his diet, buy making a Smoothie and calling it Big Guy Juice, and he drank it all up. Also when my son was a baby,I could not get him to eat baby food, so I cut open the hole bigger on his baby bottle and put it in there, and he drank it all up! I sure tricked him!
When they don’t like to eat there veggies, so you sneak it in the food, and when they ask what it is, I tell them it is a special ingredient.
Thanks for the chance!
Evening snack time used to be all about cookies. These days fruit is the primary food in the evening snack. I’ve expanded their fruit selection by putting it with the cookies, ‘forgetting the cookies,’ or ‘hiding the cookies.’ It’s all good.
With as many kids as I have there’s always scrambling and improvising. Picking kids up from school to take them to the doctor unexpectedly or switching out a favorite pair of pants in the drawer without telling the child.
When my oldest was in middle school and we had just one other child, a baby at the time, there was a middle school open house. We went. Baby needed to have a diaper change. Oh, it needed to happen. I found myself a classroom that wasn’t being used for the open house and used a desk as a changing table.