Entry tags:

crafts, food, frugal living, parenting, peo

With Peo's up and down angstiness, we don't often feel like genius parents. However, there is something we frequently do that can sometimes avoid angst ramping up in the first place, and it takes hardly any time/materials/cost over and above what would be done otherwise: we add faces or other silly designs to things.

Here are some recent examples of how taking a few seconds to do something silly can really help with a 2-4 year old child:

1) In any kind of food preparation, especially one where the child might otherwise be a fussy eater, make some or all of the food into a smiley face shape. If the child is old enough and willing to help, bonus points, since kids are more inclined to eat things they help "cook". Some examples:

• Pepperoni slices, mushrooms, etc. on a pizza, including
  adding extra to pre-made frozen pizzas (we did this for
  dinner tonight, since we had extra pepperoni on hand from
  a previous homemade pizza night and we were throwing
  pre-made frozen mini pizzas in the oven for an easy dinner)


• Fruit salad (which is always cheaper and lower-sugar if
  made from fresh fruit cut up at home versus canned stuff,
  but granted, you can't always get decent fresh stuff at a
  decent cost)...just plop down some bits for an eyes, nose,
  and mouth on the kid's plate and make the rest "hair" or
  "body" or whatever.


• Anything on a tortilla, or even regular bread. Deli
  meat, veggies, leftover chicken chunks, whatever. Arrange
  a few bits as a face and again, call the rest "hair" or
  "body" or whatever. Peo thinks it's a huge treat if I put
  the tiniest dots of BBQ sauce on as mini smileys all around
  as a bonus. She will eat food that would otherwise get a
  sneer if I do this. Seriously. Bits of shredded cheese
  make fab hair.


• Meatballs on spaghetti in a face pattern. Also works
  with meat lumps in hamburger-helper type meals. Any
  combo of pasta/cheese/meet that's vaguely face-like will do.


• Blueberries (dried or frozen to save money when not in
  season) on cereal, be it hot, cold, dry, wet, whatever.
  Or other berries. A little fruit face goes a long way to
  getting that whole grain goodness into them.


• Most solid lumps of something can be cut up for a face:
  hot dogs, meatloaf, whatever. And if it truly doesn't
  work cut up, stab the face onto the surface, like on a
  sandwich or whatever...just poke some holes and sort of
  squish them out if needed to make clear eyes and a mouth.

Notes:
- Faces don't have to be perfect; kids can figure it out. Sillier is sometimes better.
- Sometimes the kid will eat the face off first. Fine. Let them. Then plop more of the dinner into a new face and they will eat it. Keep up a good mood about it and you can trick them into eating all of their dinner quickly. It's like frickin' magic, I swear.
- Do try to avoid mixing foods that will get soggy if your kid hates this (as Peo does), so no crackers with the wet fruit salad.
- Making the face say "hi" or "eat me" or "don't eat me" or whatever in a silly voice does wonders as well.
- Give in to whatever gory violence your kid does to the face. If they squeal about eating the eyes, squeal back about how gross it is. This ramps up the fun BIG TIME.

If you're artistic, you can go beyond faces for other shapes, but there's a caveat: the more detailed you get, the more detailed you'll continually be expected to be, so don't over-commit yourself. I made the mistake of trying to carve an Ernie-head out of a piece of cantaloupe when Peo was 2-ish and she wanted a damned Ernie head on every piece of melon for ages after that. Keep it simple for daily stuff, and if you feel the urge to push your limits, save it for obviously special times. Unless, of course, you're some kind of insane-martyr-super-parent-chef-knifewielder-spectacular, in which case, feel free to go full-Bento-competition with every meal.




2) Faces don't have to be limited to food. You can pretty-up plain stuff that's cheap instead of buying pre-decorated stuff for more money. Bandaids are our recent discovery for this example.

Peo recently cut her big toe and I couldn't find the one and only package of licensed-character bandaids we bought (which we only got because it was the only source of teeeeeeeeeny tiny infant-finger-size bandaids we could find), so I drew a stick figure on a regular bandaid in about five seconds and made a big deal about how special it was. Soon it turned into a big thing where Peo was much happier about her wound simply because of the potential for other exciting drawings on the bandaid. She confuses "plain" with "plane" all the time so Corran has been drawing planes on the plain bandaids, which delights her (actually lately we think she's punning it more than being confused, but same difference).

Caveat: ensure the child does not start wasting things to get more new designs. Peo has to be stopped from ripping off perfectly good bandaids to try to get new ones. Or as she phrases it, "It's not special anymore!" No. Not allowed. Don't ever give in or you are HOSED. If they rip off the bandaid, either they don't get another one until the next time you'd put on a fresh one anyway (like when Peo took hers off during dinner and she was going to bed in an hour anyway), or if you need to put another one on, that one stays plain until it'd be time for a fresh one. They will cry. Be strong...the delight will return on the next drawn-on one and they'll be more inclined to treasure it and not waste it.

Other things we've put smiley faces on over the years:

- Reused food tubs have been turned into Angry and Happy faces for bath-time play (Sharpie on a semi-clear deli tub seems to last for years).
- Rocks, with paint, markers, more dirt, whatever...or just draw 'em in the sand/mud...or any nature-based face is good when you're outside
- During any art or craft time, show your wee one how to make a smiley face out of stickers, paint (be it brush or finger or full-smacking hand in glorious splashy colour-puddles), googly eyes (don't for one second limit them to eyes alone!), glitter glue, regular white glue (seriously, buy it in bulk and let 'em squirt it and study fluid dynamics and don't fret about the excess), stamps (the rubber kind...DO NOT LET CHILD SEE YOU USING POSTAGE STAMPS UNLESS YOU CAN KEEP THEM OUT OF REACH or unless you reeeeeaaaallly like supporting the post office), crayons/pencils, pre-cut paper/wood/foam shapes, whatever. You'd be amazed at how much delight a little kid gets out of seeing or making faces.



This is when I cue dididdlyi to say how much she likes spotting face patterns in things, as do I (I had a whole army of them marked out on my cubicle wall when I was a staff writer for a tech mag), and of course the whole face thing is deeply rooted in our brains and that's no doubt why kids seek them out, etc etc etc. The psychological imperative is interesting but not necessary to know or understand: the point is, put faces on everything for your kids and make a big deal out of it and it can go a long way to mitigating a lot of behavioural issues. It doesn't generally stop a tantrum in full swing, but it can avoid some tantrums in the first place. Or at least, it doesn't seem to hurt.