Bedtime Hunger And The Need To Pee Alone!
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In my house my children suffer from a horrible disorder. It’s called-I’m Hungry When Its Time For Bed- syndrome.
You see, I’m tired. I’m done. I’m spent. I want them in bed.
I’ve already juggled homework, snacks, sports, more snacks, fixed dinner, washed dishes (again for the millionth time) and I’m starring down the clock ticking off the minutes until I get to pee alone.
Too bad for me, because no matter how hard I try to orchestrate the entire afternoon and evening to lead up to an uneventful get-into-bed routine, this damn annoying thing happens night-after-impossible night!
I’ve searched the world over to try to find a cure for this bedtime hunger. I’ve tried earlier feedings and nutritionally substantial dinnertime meals, with encouraging comments like, “Eat all of it because you’re going to bed in just a half hour.” But nothing, No-thing has abated this most annoying of ailments.
How can one be “I’m so full, I can’t eat anymore” at 7:30p.m. and completely starved to death by 8p.m.?
There’s something mysterious, dark and dangerous about calling out, “Time for bed!” that seems to be the precipitating event.
I’ve been toying with the hypothesis that the symptoms might experience some improvement with a new prescription. So to test my theory I announce, “Hey guys, you can have something to eat but ALL after-dinner snacks must be God-treats.”
“What’s a God-treat?” my hungry, starved, children ask looking at me like I’ve just used an accent that they’re entirely unfamiliar with.
“A God-treat is anything that is God-made and not man or factory-made.” I inform them.
Inside I kinda feel clever but then right on cue the teenagers like to squabble over the details and the semantics. (Annoying) I whoosh the older ones with my evil mom-eye giving the message of let me parent the little ones, thank you.
Our youngest ones giving me a genuinely perplexed expressions as their little minds race, synapses firing in all directions searching frantically for some kind of comparison, something from their experience to relate to. Hmmm…Something made by God and not made by a man or a factory…
I can see them squirming to make sense of the preposterous suggestion (I’m ignoring the teenaged eye rolls), so I give the littler ones an assist. “Like an apple, a banana, some grapes.”
“What?!” they say in indignant unison to my list of fruit options.
Oh dear, it seems the syndrome has begun to affect their hearing as well as their appetites.
Being sympathetic to their hearing impairment, I say, “Yes, if you are hungry eat something that God made because it’s the best food to make a tummy stop feeling hungry.” Then to inspire, motivate and encourage, I add a further sales-pitch to my remedy, “God-treats bring good dreams too” at which I have just lost my teenage audience.
Okay I lied, but as a scientist I think that the placebo effect is real so why not try it at home?
And glad I was that I did! It was absolutely miraculous! I’ve never seen a syndrome cured so rapidly. It’s bizarre you know? It’s almost like they never had the disease to begin with because all of a sudden no one felt hungry anymore!
I’m so happy I gotta pee. “Off to bed!”
Disaster averted…hypothesis solved.