The stay-at-home dad: An exhaustive breakdown of a 7-year-old’s microwave egg-making

If you enjoy listening to detailed explanations of basic routines and tasks, please come spend time with my 7-year-old daughter.

She loves control, and she takes any sort of autonomy extremely seriously. Tasked with picking out her own clothes and getting ready for the day, my daughter will spend up to an hour considering, then finally selecting various articles of clothing, jewelry, hair bows, etc.

If you’re willing to listen, she’ll tell you about every single decision.

“At first I thought I wanted to wear my rainbow shirt, but it has long sleeves and I might get hot later in the day. Then I chose my purple unicorn shirt, but I think I want to wear my purple shorts and since it’s not exactly the same purple as the shirt, I decided to go with my other purple unicorn shirt, which still didn’t match, but then I thought I saw my pink shorts in my laundry basket and I only wore them once, and so I smelled them to see if I could wear them again. They smelled good but I saw a tomato sauce stain, so I decided to go back into my drawer and look for some pants…”

She’ll keep going, I promise you.

My daughter also wants to be responsible for certain things even if she doesn’t quite feel confident enough to do them without “checking in” with me on them. She’ll start by asking a bunch of detailed questions about how to do the task (totally fine), then question the logic of my instructions as if she already knew how to do it herself. Then she’ll go do it her way, come back and tell me how her way ended up being way better than my suggestion.

As a recent example, my daughter wanted to make a microwaved egg for herself. I was sitting in my bedroom, which is around the corner from the kitchen but out of my direct sightline.

Her: “I’m going to cook the egg in a mug. Should I crack it into a bowl first then pour it into the mug?”

Me: “If you want, you can just crack the egg straight into the mug. Just clean up if you spill.”

Her (staring at me skeptically): “I’m going to crack it into a bowl first. How long should I cook it?”

Me: “60 seconds and check it?”

Her (after a long pause): “I’m going to check it at 45 seconds.”

She disappears to the kitchen for a minute.

Her: “Dad? I got the eggs out. We have eight left.”

Me: “That’s great.”

Her: “Well, there’s going to be seven left after I make an egg. But right now we have eight. And if I have two eggs, then we’ll have six eggs left.”

Me: “Yep, that’s how that works.”

She disappears for another minute.

Her: “I think I want to use one of the white bowls to crack the egg. What bowl do you think I should use?”

Me: “A white bowl will work. Or one of the red bowls.”

Her (looking at me like I’m a complete idiot): “Why would I use the red bowls? The edge is much harder to crack an egg on compared to the white bowls.”

Me: “I trust you to use whatever you think is best.”

Now she disappears for about 10 minutes.

Her: “Hey dad, I cracked the egg into a white bowl.”

Why did it take so long to do this one thing? Unclear. The details I care about (the ones that may involve a mess or something broken) almost never get shared with me.

Her: “It was a little hard to crack the egg into the bowl, but I’m glad I used the white bowl and not the red bowl. That would have been harder.”

Me: “You don’t need to keep telling me every step of what you’re doing. You can just make your egg.”

She grits her teeth and clenches her jaw. She doesn’t like it if I tell her I don’t want to hear about the process. She glares at me for a full 15 seconds, but with the intensity that feels like more than three hours have passed.

Me: “I’m sorry, honey. Come and tell me how your egg cooked after you get it out of the microwave.”

She disappears for another 10 minutes. I hear multiple unidentified clangs and few unintelligible mumblings coming from her in the other room. I don’t want to know right now, but I’m sure I’ll be cleaning it up later.

Finally, she returns.

Her: “I cooked the egg for 45 seconds and it was perfect.”

Me: “That's great, sweetie. Good job.”

Her: “Checking it after 60 seconds would have been too long.”

Me: “OK.”

Her: “I don’t know why you said 60 seconds.”

Me: “I don’t know either.”

Her: “After I pulled it out I poked it and it looked perfect, but it was still a little juicy in the center, so I put it back in for 30 seconds.”

Me: “So 45 seconds wasn’t eno…”

Her (interrupting): “Actually I added 30 seconds but I stopped it at 15 seconds and it was perfect.”

Me: “So it took 60 seconds total?”

Her: “No. It took 45 seconds. Like I said it would. Then I checked it and had to add 15 seconds.”

Me: “Good job, sweetie.”

Her: “I’m going to eat it now.”

Me: “Sounds great.”

Her: “I think I’m going to want another egg. I’ll come tell you when I’m ready to start another one.”

Me: “Fantastic.”

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 5-11. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.