At 6:48 a.m. on a Tuesday in early May, in a kitchen on a side street in the Munjoy Hill neighbourhood of Portland, Maine, a child named Ezra Rourke ate half a piece of toast and drank a small glass of orange juice. He did this in eleven minutes, with his backpack on, standing at the counter.
Ezra is six. He is in kindergarten at the public school on Beckett Street. His mother, Hannah Rourke, has packed his lunch, brushed his teeth, helped him find his other sock, and is now drinking coffee from a mug that says I Am the One Who Does the Laundry. The mug was a gift.
This piece is about what breakfast actually looks like, across a range of school-age children, in real homes, at real times. The writer visited six families over three weeks in May. None of the breakfasts looked like the ones in cookbooks. All of them looked like family life.
Kindergarten: the standing breakfast. The Rourke family represented the youngest end of the range. Ezra had eaten, by the writer's count, the following over the past week: toast with butter (four mornings), toast with peanut butter (one morning), a bowl of cereal (one morning), and nothing (Saturday, on principle).
Hannah said, with the resignation of a parent who has stopped trying to do better: he eats what he eats. He gets a real meal at lunch and dinner. I have stopped trying to make him eat eggs.
The writer notes that Hannah is a registered dietician. She knows, professionally, that toast is fine. She also feels, personally, that toast is a defeat. Both things are true.
Second grade: the small repertoire. At the McCormack home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, the writer observed a Wednesday morning with two children, ages seven and ten. The breakfast options, the mother Bridget said, had narrowed considerably over the years.
The seven-year-old, Joseph, ate a bowl of plain Cheerios with milk every weekday morning. He had eaten this breakfast since age four. He varied it on weekends.
The ten-year-old, Maeve McCormack, ate yoghurt with granola most days and a bagel on Fridays. She had developed, somewhere around age eight, strong opinions about which brand of yoghurt was acceptable. The family bought it in quantity.
Bridget said the children's breakfasts were the calmest part of her day. Lunch is contested. Dinner is contested. Breakfast, they just know what they want. I just put it in front of them.
Fourth grade: the negotiated breakfast. At the Onyemachi home in Silver Spring, Maryland, the writer observed a Thursday morning with a single ten-year-old, named Adaeze. The negotiation began at 6:55 a.m. and concluded at 7:09.
Adaeze wanted pancakes. Her mother, Chinaza, said pancakes were a weekend food and offered, instead, oatmeal, toast with jam, or a fried egg. Adaeze countered with French toast. Chinaza, who had to be on a video call at 8:00 a.m., said no.
Adaeze, recognizing the limits of the negotiation, ate a piece of toast with jam and a small banana. She left the table somewhat aggrieved. She had, the writer noted, won a small concession on the jam, which was a flavour her mother did not usually buy.
Sixth grade: the silent breakfast. At the Vasquez-Bell home in Asheville, North Carolina, the writer observed a Tuesday morning with a single twelve-year-old named Ramona. The breakfast lasted nine minutes. Ramona did not speak.
She ate a bowl of cereal with milk, scrolling on a tablet her father, Daniel, had set up for the school's morning bulletin. He had also set up, the writer noted, a strict ten-minute screen limit, after which the tablet locked itself.
Ramona looked up once, when the tablet locked. She finished her cereal. She put the bowl in the sink. She went upstairs.
Daniel said, after she had left: she used to talk in the morning. She doesn't anymore. I miss it. I am also relieved.
Patterns. Across the six families, the writer noted three things.
One. Breakfast got faster as children got older. The kindergartener took fifteen minutes. The twelve-year-old took nine. The fourth-grader, with her negotiation, took the longest of the school-age group.
Two. The repertoire narrowed. Younger children were more willing to try different breakfasts; older children settled into routines and resisted variation. This was true even of children who, at dinner, ate a wide range of food.
Three. The role of the parent shifted. With younger children, parents were active participants, often eating with them. With older children, parents were caterers, setting out food and then attending to their own morning. By sixth grade, in two of the homes observed, the parent was not present in the kitchen for most of the meal.
A small note. The writer asked each parent whether they ate breakfast themselves. Two said yes. Two said coffee only. One said she ate breakfast at her desk at work. One said he sometimes forgot until lunch.
The cookbooks suggest, with great earnestness, that families should eat breakfast together. The cookbooks do not have to drive carpool at 7:40.
Hannah Rourke, asked what she would change about her family's breakfast routine if she could change one thing, thought for a long moment and said: I would like Ezra to sit down.
Then she shrugged. He won't. He's six. He'll sit down when he's older. By then, I'll miss the standing.
