Treat breakfast like a battle; valuing breakfast is valuing your health.

Breakfast is like going into battle. That is the biggest takeaway since September.

After September, Huang Xiaolu started elementary school, and her arrival time jumped all at once from 8:50 in kindergarten to 7:50. Although the school is only a ten-minute walk away, for a first grader used to taking things slowly after waking up, it was still a frantic scramble. I often saw Huang Xiaolu open her bedroom door, still bleary-eyed, only after 7:10, and then I would hear the adults say: "Hurry! Get dressed! Hurry! Brush your teeth and wash your face! Hurry! What do you want for breakfast?! Hurry! It's almost 7:40!"

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

This is Huang Xiaolu's breakfast life, and I think she is not an exception. I once heard a friend who lives in Wugu but sends her child across districts to Dunhua Elementary School say that their family gets up at 6, then the whole family hops into the car at 6:30, and then they solve breakfast in the car; often when the child gets out of the car, she still has half a sandwich in her mouth. I cannot help but wonder: after the child finishes after-school care and comes home, how does this family fight their way back from the city center to their home in Wugu? And where do they solve dinner?

This is a hurried city, and we are raising a group of exhausted children. We plan for them the learning environment we think suits them best, and then let them shuttle back and forth every day like they are on an assembly line between home, school, and after-school care. Finally, on the weekend, everyone sleeps until noon and then gets up and eats lunch as breakfast; we call this LOHAS, and this city even cheers because so many coffee shops selling brunch have opened. But when even "making breakfast with your own hands" is outsourced by parents, what exactly happens to the bond between us and our children?

Of course I know that maintaining a lifestyle of "being able to eat breakfast properly" requires a lot of material conditions to line up: first, the parents have to get up early; second, the school has to be close; third, the child has to go to bed early; and someone still has to prepare it. But I always feel that if we do not try to break the speed of this spinning top, or even change the way it spins a little, one day this top will sweep everything into it, and then we will be unable to change anything.

Yes, this is a long-term battle. What we need to adjust is not only the wake-up time, but also the speed and attitude with which we face breakfast, this buffer time before adults and children enter the battlefield (both the office and the school). We do not need an overly lavish and gorgeous breakfast (so please put your German sausages back in the freezer). What we may need is just a bowl of plain congee, a few slices of crisp pickled melon, half a hard-boiled egg, and a spoonful of salmon floss. If you are Christian, please read a passage of the Bible to your child at the table. If you are not a believer, please talk more with your child. We all know life is tiring, so this may be the time when we can best look at each other properly.

While we still have the strength, and their eyes are still so clear.