Why Raising Kids Feels Like Working a Restaurant Shift

Buying a 3,000-square-foot, industrial log of plastic wrap might be one of the best purchases I’ve made. It lives on the kitchen counter now. Proudly!

My wife hates it there. (let's be honest, I put it away before she can comment most days).

Part of the problem might be that it doesn’t exactly match the carefully curated cottage aesthetic she’s built in our kitchen. The other possibility is that after nearly twenty years working in hospitality, seeing industrial-sized plastic wrap triggers deep restaurant-kitchen trauma response.

Either way, the thing is incredible.

Zip. Zap. We’re batching homemade waffles.

Oh that Brussels sprout slaw we made last weekend? ZAP! Covered, in the refrigerator, ready for action like a backup pitcher in the bullpen.

Sometimes my wife looks at the giant box like it’s an intruder in the house.

But I’ve made my position clear.

Cool your jets, cowboy. This plastic wrap isn’t going anywhere. As a matter of fact, this town is big enough for the two of us (no it's not. She wins 10/10).

The truth is, raising small kids has way too many similarities to working in a busy restaurant kitchen for me not to comment on it.

For starters, the verbal demands can be absolutely wild.

One minute the house is quiet. The next minute someone is yelling:

“Daddy waffles!” or demanding a 'pouch' every time I walk by because I keep forgetting with the overwhelming number of tabs open in my brain.

And suddenly I’m in full breakfast service mode, sweating over a waffle iron under a strict time crunch because the baby is screaming for an entirely different meal at the exact same moment. Nothing like a 7:37 a.m. breakfast rush to really get the blood moving. A real booster shot of

adrenaline. As if the three cups of coffee already in my system weren’t doing the trick.

But somehow, we manage to coast through the morning shift with only minor turbulence.

Lunch is usually manageable. A couple quick items, PB&J, fruit, chips. No biggie. You start to believe you’ve got this whole operation under control.

And then dinner service arrives.

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know the feeling. The tickets start coming in. Everything needs to happen at the same time. The pace ramps up quickly.

That’s dinner in a house with little kids. Someone flying in the door, throwing bags on the counter, washing their hands and immediately getting after it.

Mom and Dad zipping around the kitchen like short-order cooks.

One kid needs food cut into microscopic pieces. Another needs perfectly tempered sweet potato puree. Someone spills milk. Someone else suddenly hates the thing they demanded five minutes earlier. Bam, it’s on the floor.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad are trying to assemble their own dinner, which usually ends up being leftovers or something extremely simple eaten in small, hurried bites while standing at the counter.

Every movement feels minute-to-minute.

Get the plates down.

Wipe the spill.

Refill the cup.

Negotiate two bites of something healthy.

Locate the missing spoon.

It’s constant motion with the shared goal of getting everyone through dinner and into pajamas without a full-scale emotional meltdown.

Eventually, (usually) miraculously, the kids fall asleep.

The house goes quiet.

My wife and I collapse onto the couch like two line cooks finishing a brutal shift. Legs throbbing. Brain fogged. Dishes piled in the sink.

We laugh about something ridiculous that happened during the day.

Maybe we eat a bowl of granola because cooking anything else feels wildly unrealistic.

Then we sit there for a few minutes in the quiet, the way restaurant workers sit down after closing time, when the lights dim and the chaos finally stops.

Tomorrow morning the shift starts again.

Rinse.

Repeat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8yHuQVZrXU

Written by Nick Ristoff LMHC

https://www.naturallightcounseling.com/

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