Beck Vass: Why I hate sharing food with my kids

Is this an all-too-familiar scene in your house? Photo / Getty Images

There's something I need to confess that no one seems to talk about.

I hate sharing my food with my kids. I know - I'm a horrible person.

Of course, I do it - just somewhat begrudgingly.

Lots of parents spend a lot of the day hungry. It's easy to forget yourself when you are putting little people first or when they are making noises that make you want to jump out a window.

Before I had kids, I would hear people say they gave their kids their last bite of something delicious. I couldn't understand loving anyone so much you would do that.

Get your own snacks you little scavengers, hasn't your mother sacrificed enough for you?

Her body, her mind… her sanity?

But now I understand. It has nothing to do with love and everything to do with just wanting them to shut up.

Such is the pain of your own children's sounds, that if sacrificing the last bite of something keeps them from whining at you even just for four seconds, you hand it over.

Recently, I was in the middle of a quite stressful morning. After months of the kids being pretty cruisy, they had hit hard work mode again.

I don't know why after their entire lives of pretty much the same morning routine, asking them to get dressed seems to come as such a surprise each day.

I was finally about to eat a couple of bits of toast before flying out the door for my daughter's (then aged 4) swimming class when she and her brother, 2, heard the toaster pop and simultaneously announced they were hungry.

After the Weetbix, fruit, yoghurt and toast they'd already had.

I haven't eaten since 7.30pm last night but hey, I guess you guys are starving after the four-course feed.

So, they ate my breakfast and there wasn't time to make more toast.

By 10am, at swimming, my son was complaining "I hungee, I hungee" (hungry) on repeat as my own tummy rumbled and I became more and more tense.

We got into the car after swimming and I gave the kids their lunchboxes. A sandwich whizzed past my ear and landed at my feet, near the brakes.

"I DON'T LIKE MARMITE!"

Oh, you only asked for it yesterday and ate it happily, you little $#!*! I could have eaten that but now it's covered in sand and dirt.

For all the complaints about how starving they are, every time you make anything, none of it is ever good enough.

I can't tell you how many times they have whined throughout meals I had waited ages to eat, only to give in, hand over whatever piece was left, then watch it get spat out in disgust.

Did you just spit out my last McNugget! Are you even my kid? Not any bloody more you're not!