My youngest still-at-home daughter (19) just gave me an ugly look at what's been going on in the world.
BLUF: I never realized how much different my kids' friend's lives were from my kids' lives.
The story:
Tonight, my daughter had some friends over, and I cooked dinner. A half a ham and potatoes and some rolls. Normal kind of dinner. Great leftovers. Ham and eggs for breakfast, for sure.
These kids, about the same age as my daughter, and who also live with their parents, thanked me for dinner, which was nice. After a couple hours, they left.
So I was fishing for some positive feedback about my cooking from my daughter, and she told me how her friends enjoyed it so much because her parents don't cook. That started a whole conversation that I wish I'd never had. Please, don't fault me, I just didn't know.
10 years ago, and more with my older daughters, when my kids wanted to have sleepovers with their friends, their friends always wanted to stay at our house. We're not millionaires, just a middle class family in a middle class neighborhood. Their friends wanted to stay at our house, because my wife and I cooked food. We made meals, we had snacks, some healthy and some not, but the kids would gobble up baby carrots as fast as they would gobble up Oreos. I didn't know they didn't have that at home.
Now I know. My kids didn't want to stay at other kids' houses for sleepovers because they weren't being fed. Their cupboards were literally empty, as in you would open a kitchen cabinet where you expected to find food, and find nothing but an echo.
I wish they had told me, back then. I thought we were all doing the same thing around here, buying nice houses, buying nice dependable cars, taking care of our kids the best we can...
I didn't realize that the latter was less important than the former to them. Damn.
BLUF: I never realized how much different my kids' friend's lives were from my kids' lives.
The story:
Tonight, my daughter had some friends over, and I cooked dinner. A half a ham and potatoes and some rolls. Normal kind of dinner. Great leftovers. Ham and eggs for breakfast, for sure.
These kids, about the same age as my daughter, and who also live with their parents, thanked me for dinner, which was nice. After a couple hours, they left.
So I was fishing for some positive feedback about my cooking from my daughter, and she told me how her friends enjoyed it so much because her parents don't cook. That started a whole conversation that I wish I'd never had. Please, don't fault me, I just didn't know.
10 years ago, and more with my older daughters, when my kids wanted to have sleepovers with their friends, their friends always wanted to stay at our house. We're not millionaires, just a middle class family in a middle class neighborhood. Their friends wanted to stay at our house, because my wife and I cooked food. We made meals, we had snacks, some healthy and some not, but the kids would gobble up baby carrots as fast as they would gobble up Oreos. I didn't know they didn't have that at home.
Now I know. My kids didn't want to stay at other kids' houses for sleepovers because they weren't being fed. Their cupboards were literally empty, as in you would open a kitchen cabinet where you expected to find food, and find nothing but an echo.
I wish they had told me, back then. I thought we were all doing the same thing around here, buying nice houses, buying nice dependable cars, taking care of our kids the best we can...
I didn't realize that the latter was less important than the former to them. Damn.