Hilarious article!
Why, oh, why wasn't this timer available when my daughter was little? Claire stoutly refused to eat breakfast. "It hurts my tummy," she said gloomily.
I danced around, making up statistics on the fly. "Ninety percent of girls who drink their orange juice get "A's" in school." Nothing worked.
Brain wave. Japanese bento boxes. I cut a down a paper lunch sack. In it, I arranged a peeled Mandarin orange opened like a flower, juice box, whole wheat toast cut into triangles, cheese cubes, carrot and celery sticks and a napkin.
Each morning, I drove Claire to school. Without a word about eating, I casually set the bento box beside her on the backseat. (Under WA State law, kids below a certain height have to ride in the backseat in a car.)
On the way to school, Claire got bored and polished off the food. Fist pump.
How did you get your kid(s) to eat breakfast?
You stumbled on the dynamic that some kids are resistant so you have to make them think doing what they need to do is their idea or in their interest.
Or more exactly, at times all kids are resistant, and at those times, escalating pitched contests of wills usually don't end well. Come to it, that principle applies with adults sometimes, too.
Lucky kid! I got Carnation Instant Breakfast.
I was gonna say lucky kid cuz if I didn't eat then hitting would be used or threatened or there'd be no breakfast if my sister was in charge of feeding us-- she was only a kid herself!