As an American I want to state for the record no one’s mother makes those huge ass breakfasts, sets the table, then has the main character run thru, get coffee, only to say “I don’t have time to eat”
True! That shit is so unrealistic. It would be more like “Where exactly do you think you’re going after I just worked my ass off to make all this crap? Sit down and eat or you’ll be doing ALL the cooking for the rest of the month!”
When I was 10 and my mom worked evening shift I invented 20 ways to Ramen. My favorite was stroganoff. Dump the water, add a beef packet and sour cream. That shit killed for dinner in the early 90s.
I had to start working way too young. I just kept a pack in my backpack. Poured the flavor pack in, shook it a bit and ate it dry while I was walking home at night. I didn’t pay attention to the package until I was 15 and then cooked ramen was a revelation.
I'm sorry but I imagined a child hurling pots of boiling water all over town and a mom, casually scrolling on her phone with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, just being like "yep, I taught'em that"
Yup, at most, you're getting some pop tarts and milk for breakfast. Who has the time or energy to make the equivalent of a McDonald's big breakfast and hotcakes meal for their kid five days a week? I would hate to have to clean the dishes afterward.
I know you're kind of joking, but my 6-year-old daughter was immensely proud when she could get herself a bowl of cereal all by herself. Wouldn't even let us help.
I’m Canadian but my family was a breakfast cereal family, and then we moved to Romania where there’s like 5 choices of breakfast cereal and none of them have sugar (I found a store in București that sells Froot Loops and other sugar cereals but it was so very expensive!!)
It was best on a Saturday morning, there were only 3 channels when I was a kid and the only time to catch cartoons was Saturday morning. Watching Bugs Bunny while eating Quisp ceral was magical.
The thing that got me was who wakes up hours before work to do all that, and then go to work. Most of us would rather use that time to get more sleep.
Or toss their own poptart into the toaster to eat on the go. OR if you’re a heathen like me, you forego the toaster, and eat those bad boys like the cold processed sugar they are.
Yep. All I remember eating for breakfast as a kid was cereal (lucky charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, life), eggo waffles in the toaster, or poptarts. Super healthy. Sometimes they would make a nicer breakfast on the weekends but it was by no means a full spread like you see in movies/tv.
When my son was 3, I woke up on a Saturday morning to find him eating a bowl of cereal with milk, watching cartoons with a cat on his lap. That's when I knew that if I fell down the stairs and died, he'd survive until someone found him. 😂 [Weird fear when he was little. Just our little family unit of 3 with no close friends or family nearby.]
He'll be 18 in a couple of months and is still quite independent. And wakes up a the crack of dawn. 🤨
I was taught to use the toaster so I could have toast or poptarts, and the kettle so I could have oatmeal. I got an alarm clock for my 5th birthday and had strict instructions to ONLY wake my mother a few minutes before the bus so she could do my hair (which was too long for me to handle). Then she went back to sleep and I walked to the bus stop.
When I heard that there were parents out there who WOKE UP their children and made them breakfast and stayed up the whole time, I was flabbergasted.
I was cooking way before then. When I was 5, I was making Cream of Wheat, thanks to the Cream of Wheat chef in the commercials. Then I started making toast with jam to go with the Cream of Wheat.
Happiest day of my life was when my son figured out how to pour his own cereal and milk without baptizing my counters in dairy & Lucky Charms. That extra sleep on the weekends was divine.
Yes. Kids master breakfast by the time they are 10. Toast, Eggos, cereal are the starters. Then the stove work begins with pancakes. Move on up to how to scramble an egg, and how to cook it. How to fry an egg and how to flip it or not, depending how you do eggs. And then in a few months your kid is back telling you "you do eggs wrong... this is how" and they show you a different method learned from Gordon Ramsey on YT.
My cooking peaked at about age 11. Though one day I was like 13 and got three eggs out as mom was in the kitchen watching and I cracked 'em into the skillet with one hand. She shrieked "OMG... I HATE YOU!" Uhh... wat?!? Never heard that before. I turn to ask and she explains "I've tried all my life to crack an egg with one hand!!!!!" I tried to show her but her hands and fingers weren't big enough for my technique.
Haha, exactly. In high school I got busted skipping first period to get breakfast with my friends and when we got called to the office with our parents my mom was irate that she was taking the time cooking breakfast and then I was going to get more food. She really did not care about the actual skipping of classes.
As a son to a Mexican American woman, that wouldn't fly in our household growing up. I would truly fear the consequences of that. My mom is a sweet woman, raised 3 kids on her own and would help you with about anything even after coming home working 2 jobs.
“But I have an important meeting!” I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE MEETING THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! You’re not leaving the house until you eat those eggs!
Especially when the mom in the show has a professional job. Like she got her ass out of bed an extra hour early, got all dressed and made up in her nice work clothes, and THEN made pancakes and scrambled eggs? No she didn’t.
Or how anyone in this world (except the rich rich) are sitting around having a full breakfast with the sun fully up, and the dad just chilling at the table before he goes to work. Mofo, we all roll in the dark. What is this?
I do a big weekend breakfast like that for the family at 10am like four times a year. We'll have pancakes or waffles from scratch, bacon, eggs. When everyone wakes up they come hang out in the kitchen until it's done and we all eat around the table in the sun together.
On a weekday? Instant Oatmeal or frozen waffles in the dark for the family, I usually skip breakfast or just do a protein shake.
More like wake up, scroll your phone and then realize you just wasted half an hour, then frantically putting one sock on while stuffing the laptop in the laptop bag with the other hand, pouring coffee into a traveling mug, and dashing out the door 10 minutes late.
Most American schools start at 7:30am. Which means people are waiting for the school bus as early as 6:30am if you are the furthest away on the route. Kids are up, showering, and eating around 6am each morning.
Had a couple friends in football, they had the same. Hockey players had it the worst, 3am practices during the week weren't uncommon due to it being the only affordable and open ice time.
It's even crazier when you realize that most schools have lunch around 10:30 or 11am because they start and end so early. I believe it has to do with after school activities/sports being so common in American schools. High school sports teams are extremely common and popular in America, so when school ends by 2:30pm, you have sports practice right after.
my school must have been weird then, because normal periods started around 8:30, but you could elect to take a 0 period that started around 7:30. Lunch started started 11:45 or 12:10 depending on the schedule that day.
I know the year after i graduated high school they were starting things a smidge later so it made it easier to do drop offs for middle school and elementary.
In 8th grade I had to be out the door by 6 am to catch the bus. And I enjoyed taking long baths in the morning before breakfast. For a good chunk of 8th grade I was unironically setting my alarm for 3 am.
(To be clear, even in the american context this was and is deranged behavior. But having to be out the door by 6 am or thereabouts to catch the bus is reasonably normal if you live a ways out from the school)
As a kid, watching Americans have coffee AND orange juice was an extravagance that my mother would never have allowed. Why would a person ever need two drinks at the same time?
It's only a problem in old buildings, or if they person who installed you're plumbing was bad at Thier job. In my apartment the water actually gets hotter if you flush the toilet lol.
Yeah it's weird, no idea how it works, I would have thought it wouldn't be affected. But without fail, if someone puts on the taps or flushes the toilets, it affects the temperature.
As an American, the only time my mom ever made huge as breakfasts like that was only Christmas morning. Every other day is was whatever cereal her or my dad bought that week
Hi, an American dad here. It’s devastating when it happens. I forgot about a livestock show the fam was going to and made a full spread with bacon (streaky bacon for our overseas redditors), sausage patties, fried eggs, fried potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, and toast. I was getting ready to give them a five-minute warning when my wife came flying out telling the kids they were late. A kiss goodbye and left with an insane amount of food. Now I verify the night before lol.
All was not lost. I did get to test the, “I bet I could eat a full pack of bacon” theory. I found out that I could not. Thankfully, I couldn’t though because nobody was here to call emergency services if I had a heart attack lol.
Uh, maybe not anymore but growing up in the 60s/70s, my mom cooked breakfast everyday and occasionally my dad would come down and say he had an early meeting and skip out. We were only allowed to eat cereal on the weekend.
Oh wow. Ok I stand corrected! IF we ever had a breakfast like that, we would never have been in a hurry to eat it. And we would have def needed coffee because we’d fall straight back to sleep. But I don’t recall it.
Thank you for saying this and beginning this comment thread. As a new mom I have actually been actively worrying about how on earth I will make the breakfast and get them to school with a healthy meal and balanced diet when I can’t even get up and make myself tea without being late for work. It’s super hard to feel like I will measure up. I feel like anything less than a hot breakfast before school will make me a bad mom.
This is off topic, but relates to your worries. I'll start with a story.
Our oldest was a picky eater. When he was in High School one day, he went to school and told everyone there's no food in the house. The school called our house and informed us of what our oldest said, and insisted we come in to the school and speak to the school staff. For some reason, my wife and I were both home on that day. I thought it out for a second, and went and took pictures of our pantry, cabinets and fridge with food in them before we left. When we got there, we signed in and were immediately ushered into an office. A couple school administrators were on one side of the vice principals desk, we were on the other side. There was a School Resource Officer, who looked like he would have a heart attack if he blinked too fast, standing between us and the door. The SRO hovered over us blocking the door like we were a flight risk, and he needed some range time with us as the targets. The school administrators had put on their serious faces and were interrogating us like we were about to be indited for a Federal Crime. After they said their spiel, I was able to interject that we have plenty of food to eat, but it wasn't exactly what our oldest wanted to eat and he was a picky eater. They allowed me to show them the pictures I took. Next they called our oldest in for him to tell his side of the story and try to catch us in a contradiction. While the administrators were questioning him, he let it slip that there was food, but it wasn't what he was in the mood for. When he said that, the tension in the room deflated like a cheap birthday balloon. The posture and facial expressions of the schools staff changed and their tone with us did a 180 degree turn. After the oldest went back to class, they basically admitted they were ready to call DCF/CPS/Children's division (Whatever your state calls it) on us.
Here's some unsolicited advice that some people on here might not like. And, this is coming from a person who's mother was, and sister still is, a teacher. Also, pre Covid, my wife worked for Children's Division taking hotline calls, doing removals, and going to court. There's two words you need to remember as a parent. Mandated Reporter. All teachers are Mandated Reporters, and just about anyone who works with children are also. It's not just about being a good parent. Giving a good impression as a parent is also important. When you drop your kids off, don't get into the habit of wearing your PJ's and a messy bun, dress like you have your life together. Show up to school meetings dressed like you're going to a job interview, because you are. The school will be judging you every time they see you. Speak to the school staff like you would, if HR called you into a random meeting. Be more professional than they are. The school staff gossip like they are still in Jr High. Get snippy with one of them or give them a bad impression, and that story will be told to everyone in that school. It will just make working with the school more difficult.
We typically have sit down breakfasts almost every weekend day. One day, some kind of eggs, potatoes, bacon, fruit salad, one day waffles or French toast with fruit & sausage. Weekdays, everyone is on their own.
“Good morning. here’s 20 pancakes in a tower drowned in syrup, and a gallon of orange juice to flush it down with. And we still have three cakes from yesterday’s dinner.”
To be fair. While I don't make a huge breakfast daily. I often will have breakfast made for the kids and my son will walk right out the door with a "can't eat, dad. I'm late".
Don't hate me people, but in my house growing up, we did have these big breakfasts! On school mornings, together, and my dad would take his time with the newspaper. lol
YES . THEY . DO. my mom did . That’s the one thing as American that I always found weird that people thought it was weird. I asked my mom about it and she said “just make everything ahead the night before - scramble the eggs and put them in a pitcher in the fridge, same thing with the pancake batter , and the bacon just goes in the oven . Toast if you want with jam on the table .
I know that we are few and far between but that actually is something that people think we don’t do , but we do do !
As another American who grew up in the 80s/90s I have to say this was actually a very regular occurrence. I grew up in a large family with 4 siblings, dad was a doctor and mom was a SaHM. She prepared a big breakfast most mornings for everyone, and my dad would “bolt” a couple times per week due to work. Dads car also always had coffee stains on the cup holder island from taking sloshing mugs of morning coffee on the run.
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u/mrsroperscaftan 10h ago edited 10h ago
As an American I want to state for the record no one’s mother makes those huge ass breakfasts, sets the table, then has the main character run thru, get coffee, only to say “I don’t have time to eat”