Peppermint Mocha

I have a confession: we give our hyperactive 6 year-old coffee. Crazy? Maybe. Smart? Maaaayyybeee...While all sorts of evaluations have said otherwise, it does not take a trained individual to see that our child is at the very least 'different' from others. He has endless energy and is active from the second he wakes up in the morning until his little body succumbs to the heavy lure of sleep each night. I am not exaggerating. If he is not engaged in an activity and left to his own devices, he can create some serious damage. The problem seems  to be that his brain just never stops generating exciting new thoughts and ideas. While he is proven to be of higher than average intelligence, nobody has been able to tell us how to help him harness and focus all of this intellect, so we troubleshoot ourselves. 

One of the things we discovered while attempting to have a quiet, lazy weekend morning was that he likes coffee. He would always ask for a sip and would stop in his tracks and savor it. So, using my limited knowledge of children with hyperactive disorders is that some treatments include giving the children stimulants. While I am not against medicating my child, I am a parent who would like to exlpore all options before resorting to it. So, I said to my husband, just make him a cup. We made a K-cup, poured him about a third of it and added skim milk and a dash of sugar. He took his plastic mug emblazened with his name in puff-paint, wrapped his little hands around it and sat down on a windowsill. He sat there savoring each sip and staring out the window. It was like we were having some sort of breakthrough. This is the child who is incapable of watching shows with commercials because once his concentration is interrupted, he loses all interest. This was five minutes of pure, non-hyper activity. Sitting. Still. And quiet....a true breakthrough. 

We try to not schedule anything on our weekends. Our weekdays are so fast-paced with so little family time, that our weekends are ours. Especially the mornings. From our 0700 wake-up until about 1100 when child starts hounding us for lunch, we chill. And all of that kicks off with all of us enjoying a cup o' joe. 

The moral of this story is, if you come to my house and my kid asks for a 'peppermint mochO' and I oblige, do not judge me. His favorite coffee is Green Mountain Organic Sumatran Reserve...Folgers just doesn't cut it. And he LOVES Coffeemate Sugar-free Peppermint Mocha (I am honestly more concerned about the artificial sweetener than the coffee.) This cup of goodness gives us a good 5 minutes of quiet followed by about 30 minutes of chill child. Let us have our precious lazy time. And let him have his peppermint mocha.