Teaching Kids to Love the Toast: Resilience in Small Moments
- Big Human Jenna
- Jun 15
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 17
Years ago, when I was learning to be "truly alive" again after losing my twin sister, I wrote about loving the toast no matter what. The metaphor was simple. Think of life like breakfast. Sometimes you get plain toast. It's nourishing, it's good, it sustains you. But sometimes you get toast with melted butter and jam, and that feels like pure magic. Being alive, I realized, is like having that plain toast. Being truly alive is like having the toast with all the extras. Both are good. Both have value. But when life strips away everything that feels like butter and jam, when trauma or loss or overwhelming circumstances leave you with what feels like just the basics, you have to learn to love what's there. Not settle. Not give up on the possibility of butter and jam. But genuinely appreciate the nourishment of what you actually have.
I didn't know then, that this simple metaphor would become one of the most important tools I'd carry into my work with children. Over the years, I've watched kids struggle with their own versions of "not enough"—moments when what they have feels like plain toast while they're desperately craving something more. And I've witnessed the magic that happens when a child learns to love their toast while still believing butter and jam are possible.
The Big Jacket Revelation
Maria was two when I met her in Boulder, CO as her full-time nanny. It was winter, when our epic "big jacket battle" began. Every morning, the routine was the same. We needed to walk to pick up her brother from preschool, which meant she needed to wear what she called "the big jacket," a puffy winter coat that she absolutely despised.
The screaming would start the moment she saw me reaching for it. She would shriek until her voice was hoarse, her little body rigid with fury. "NO BIG JACKET! NO BIG JACKET!" she would wail, as if I were asking her to wear a straightjacket made of thorns.
For weeks, Maria and I were locked in this power struggle. I would explain that it was cold. She would scream louder. I would try bargaining. She would throw herself on the floor. Eventually she would acquiesce, but as we got closer to her brother's school, she would start undressing. Off would come the hat, then the mittens, then she'd try to wiggle out of the jacket itself while I worried about frostbite and felt like the world's worst nanny.
But then came the day when everything shifted. We were walking home from picking up her brother, and Maria spotted something magical: another child building a snowman in their yard. Her eyes went wide with wonder. She wanted to stop. She wanted to help. She wanted to stay outside and play in the snow.
"But I'm cold," she said, looking down at her inadequate sweater.
And that's when the lightbulb went on. "Maria," I said gently, "remember the big jacket?The one that keeps you warm? If we went back and got it, you could stay outside and play in the snow as long as you wanted."
For the first time in weeks, Maria looked at that puffy coat not as a prison, but as a passport to adventure. The big jacket wasn't the thing standing between her and what she wanted—it was the thing that would make what she wanted possible.
The next morning, she asked for the big jacket.
The Wishing Star
Katie was seven when I worked with her at a residential facility for children who had experienced severe trauma. Nighttime was scary for her. That's when the worst things had happened to her, when her nervous system would flood with traumatic memories and she would regress, pacing the halls and sometimes lashing out at other children.
One August evening, after a particularly difficult phone call with a family member, Katie ran outside and collapsed on the playground, sobbing. I learned not to try to coax her or convince her to move. That only made things worse. So I sat down a few feet away on the cool rubber matting and waited.
When her cries finally turned to sniffles, she moved a little closer.
"Jenna, why do you love me?" she asked, needing reassurance that felt impossible for her to believe.
"Because Katie, you are beautiful, kind, caring, smart, and wonderful," I said gently.
"I am?" She looked at me in disbelief.
"Yes, sweetheart. And I'm so lucky I get to spend time with you every day."
She smiled a little, but I could tell she wasn't convinced. Years of abuse had taught her she was unlovable. But then she asked the question that broke my heart: "But what about when you're not here? What about when I miss you?"
I pointed up at the clear night sky. "Do you see that star right there? That's your star, Katie. Whenever you miss me or need to feel close to me, you can always find that star. And when you look up, you'll know I'm here with you. That my love for you is here."
Katie took my hand and looked me in the eye. "But what about when it's foggy? How will I see our star?"
"Katie, you're such a smartie! You're right. How about we make a star together that you can hang on your wall? That way when you can't see the star in the sky, you can always know I'm with you and that you are loved."
That night, I made her a star out of cardboard and aluminum foil and hung it on her wall. It wasn't the safe family she deserved. It wasn't the childhood that should have been hers. But it was love. It was connection. It was a way to find magic in the midst of trauma.
Katie's toast was my presence, our star, and the knowledge that she was loved. Not because it was enough to heal everything that had been broken, but because it was real and it was there and it mattered.
The Ice Cube Lesson
Little Eli was two and a half and fascinated by ice cubes. But this fascination came with a devastating downside: every time an ice cube melted, he would burst into inconsolable tears. To him, the melting wasn't just change. It was loss. It was death. It was proof that everything good disappears.
"The ice is gone!" he would wail, staring at the puddle of water in his cup.
For weeks, I watched other caregivers try to distract him or hurry past the melting moments. But something about his grief over those ice cubes felt important. So one day, I sat with him as he cried over another melted cube.
"The ice is gone," he sobbed.
"You're right," I said. "The ice did change. But look." I pointed to the water. "It's still here. It's just different now."
He looked at me skeptically.
"Want to see something cool?" I asked. I took him to the freezer and showed him the ice cube tray. "We can make more ice whenever we want. The water becomes ice, and the ice becomes water, and then it can become ice again."
His eyes went wide. "Really?"
"Really. They're different, but they're also the same. Like how you're different when you're sleeping than when you're awake, but you're still you."
It took several more melting sessions, but eventually Eli began to see the magic in the transformation instead of only the loss. He learned to love both the ice and the water, to appreciate what was there in each moment instead of mourning what was gone.
The Toast We Actually Need
Here's what I've learned from Maria and Katie and Eli and dozens of other children over the years. Resilience isn't about convincing kids that their plain toast is actually butter and jam. It's not about toxic positivity or telling them to be grateful when their needs aren't being met.
Real resilience is helping children see that the toast itself has value. That what's present in this moment, even if it's not what they wanted or what they think they need, might actually contain more possibility than they realize.
Maria's big jacket wasn't a consolation prize; it was the key to the adventure she wanted. Katie's homemade star wasn't a replacement for the family she deserved, but it was real love in a form she could access. Eli's water wasn't inferior ice; it was the same thing in a different, equally valid form.
The children who develop real resilience aren't the ones who learn to want less. They're the ones who learn to see more. More possibility, more connection, more magic in what's actually here.
In a world that constantly tells us we need more, better, different, teaching children to love the toast might be one of the most radical things we can do. Not because we want them to have lower expectations, but because we want them to have the superpower of finding joy and meaning and connection in whatever circumstances they find themselves in.
Because here's the secret I learned in my own journey back to being truly alive. When you can love the toast, really love it, the butter and jam become possible again. But when you can only see what's missing, even the butter and jam won't taste good when it comes.
So maybe the question isn't how to give children everything they want. Maybe it's how to help them discover that what they have, right here, right now, might already be more magical than they know.
Sending love (and perfectly good toast)
💋🥰 Jenna
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