Fend for Yourself Friday

4

August 24, 2012 by CJ

I love Fridays for many reasons. End of the work week, I can sleep in (well when I don’t have a long run scheduled or a child’s activity or a road trip or…), I stay up late (at 39 late is anything past 11pm but again I can’t if I have to get up for all the stuff listed above) and fend for yourself Friday.

What is Fend-For-Yourself-Friday? It’s something I started once the twins were able to boil water, which equates to making hot dogs and utilize the microwave without me fearing them trying to crawl inside of it. It’s the one day of the week that I am not responsible for making dinner. I offer suggestions, I may even help heat something up, but I do not cook. They actually enjoy FFYF. Some of their meals have been nutella sandwiches, hot dogs, tortilla pizza (tortilla, salsa, mozzarella cheese and whatever else they care to put on their own pizza), waffles, leftovers (of course) and tonight they discovered my stash of lean pockets:

A very healthy and nutritious dinner

Do I feel bad about this weekly night of mostly bad meals? Yeah, sometimes I do. I was actually feeling pretty down about it tonight as I read blogs and they read the directions out loud on how to heat up their dinner. Then I stumbled upon a recently Freshly Pressed post, Parental Winning: You’re not as Awful as You Think. While she chose to focus on how it’s ok to be hypocritical about what you tell your kids they should eat and what you eat.  I read in it that it’s ok to not be the “perfect parent” all the time.  When the twins were younger I was much better at the cooking healthy meals 7 days a week thing. I was excellent at making sure they had a starch, protein and green vegetable with their dinner, while I ate frozen chicken nuggets and a box of lemonheads.  I was a HUGE hypocrite.

The title of her post caught my attention. My daughter is 5’1 at 10! Obviously, weekly hot dog eating isn’t stunting her growth. My son, has been in the gifted program at school since kindergarten. I fear, and I do mean fear, that he may be too smart for his parents to handle. I am left to believe that eating nutella more than once a day isn’t detrimental to brain cell development. My kids are healthy, they play well with others, occasionally they clean up behind themselves without me nagging and at least once a week they eat whatever they want. Am I an awful parent for that? I like to think not. There are a lot of things out there that make parents awful. Being a hypocrite about food and allowing them to pick their own meal may cause some self-doubt, but in the big picture, it’s ok.