Dividing Snacks - Day 21 of 30 - Things That Make My Life Easier

Each day I talk about one thing that makes my life easier as a neurodivergent mother raising neurodivergent kids while going back to school full time in my 40s.

Do your kids fight over snacks like mine do? Separate them. The snacks, I mean.

This is so ridiculously simple I feel like a dumb dumb for not having done this sooner - although to be fair, the kids only really started fighting in the last two years. They were best friends before puberty.

Separate those snacks and label the container

I have two kids, so I used two bowls. I taped a card with their names on it and boom. (Could it be fancier? Obviously.)

I don't know how anyone with more than two kids would do this because it would take up a lot of room, but if you can find a container that can be home to your kids' snacks, I recommend it. Heck, I'd even use a sock organizer.

Yeah, I know. I need to wipe down the shelf. I'll get to it when I get to it.

The benefits of separating snacks:

• The kid who doesn't pay attention to when groceries arrive doesn't lose out on snacks because the one who does (she literally counts down the minutes) beats him to all the good snacks and wipes them out within minutes. (The only time he cares about groceries is during summer when it's ice cream season)

  
  

• The kids learn responsibility. They get a certain number of snacks per week and when they run out, it's over. They learn to "budget". And if you're like "Kids shouldn't have to budget snacks", you're obviously not a single mom going back to school on a miniature budget, okay? I don't have money for extra snacks. Period.

So that's it. That's my TED talk for today.

How do you manage fights over food in your house? Leave me a comment, I want to know!

-Jaren