To finish off your family dinner, you baked a mouth-watering chocolate chip cake, with gooey chocolate icing or your grandma’s fudge brownie recipe with those big chunks of walnuts and smooth, creamy icing. The entire house smells so good! The kids eagerly finished their meat and vegetables, a criterion for the dessert, and now they are ready to dive into a piece.
After cutting everyone a slice, you set the plates before the kids. Before you can even turn around, you hear voices echoing out, “They got a bigger piece than I did!” How did you know that was going to happen? Certainly, it would not have anything to do with the fact that you have heard it so many times before. No matter how hard you try, every time you serve dessert or provide something of the same to the kids, the battle begins. The next time you get ready to hand out the plates, change your method.
For example, if you have three children, use a rotation process that makes them accountable. Call all three kids into the kitchen. Depending on the ages, you may have to help the younger one just a tad or if the youngest child is too young to eat dessert, then you would just use the two older children. As they stand there, anxiously waiting to sink their teeth into the yummy dessert, use this sure-fire method of putting their bickering to an end.
For this scenario, we will say your kids names are Susan, the oldest, David, the middle child, and Sara, the youngest. Explain that you will be starting with Susan but the next time you have dessert, it will by David’s turn, and then after that, Sara’s. You will keep rotating so every child gets the same number of turns. Now comes the fun part.
Turning to Susan, you tell her that she is going to be responsible for cutting dessert for everyone. She might immediately be thinking that she can cut her piece just a little bit larger than the other pieces. However, the kicker is that David and Sara get to choose which piece they want first, leaving Susan to take the last piece. You can be 100% guaranteed the once lopsided cutting will now be a perfectly even cut. Susan will be overly careful to ensure that each piece is Identical in size.
With the sizes all being exact, there will be no more wars over the size being bigger for one child over another. This exercise teaches your children two specific things. First, it teaches them to be fair. By putting them into the equation forces them to make it fair for everyone. The second thing is that it teaches teamwork. They will soon realize that by working together, the arguing is greatly diminished, and everyone is happier. You will be amazed at how effective this tip is for the entire family. Finally, you will be able to enjoy dessert in peace!