Cartoons and budget stories have no place at the breakfast table

Declan often struggles with grasping the logic behind the restrictions I place on his entertainment time. I had hoped his understanding would grow as he did, however, it seems his questions have only become more complicated and his knack for arguing more seasoned.

"No cartoons! Why are you being so mean to me!' he snapped at me earlier this week when I implemented a ban on morning cartoons.

Declan had been enjoying cartoons with his morning cereal for the past couple of weeks and it seemed to take longer and longer each morning for him to finish his breakfast. After several consecutive mornings of scrambling to get to school on time I implemented the ban.

I held my ground, despite his arguments and claims I was the "worst Dad ever." I tried to reason with him and explain the importance of starting our day without a mad rush but he insisted I was just being mean.

We continued to make better time in the mornings as the week progressed, but he would renew his pleas for cartoons each morning and I would wonder to myself how much longer I could hold out, or whether it was even justified.

I have been corresponding with one of our local community leaders recently pertaining to a story I am working on identifying city budget trends. The parallels I experience between my dialogue with Declan and those in my professional life are often uncanny.

My intent with the story is to offer a glimpse of trends within the city budget over the last 10 years. While that sounds simple enough I have discovered in my time as a journalist if a story is simple, I have likely overlooked something.

The community leader is anxious to see the story, as it stems from conversation with him. Over the past couple of weeks he has inquired as to the status of the story and has grown at least a little impatient in recent messages as I have continued to push back my targeted completion date.

I attempted, unsuccessfully, to explain the level of complexity involved in the story in my most recent reply and he responded with a message venting his frustration with government today.

I agreed with many of the points he made pertaining to today's government, even accusations that it is unnecessarily complex at times in an intentional effort to conceal the truth from the public.

However, I have also found there to be times when issues are extremely complex, with a myriad of factors contributing to the result. In those situations, it has not been uncommon for me to find hard-working civil servants presenting the truth of the matter in the best possible manner they can, one that requires significant effort to understand.

The city budget is a great example of this with its myriad of funds, departments, state, federal and grant funded projects, as well as other complexities. I hope to eventually pen a budget story that identifies a few interesting trends without complicating the topic further, hence the patient and unfortunately slow process.

As I walked into the kitchen this morning Declan sat at the dining table hunched over a bowl of cereal, his attention focused on something other then his breakfast. I fetched myself a cup from the cabinet and braced for his typical assault of requests to turn the cartoons on.

"There is a chance of rain Friday," he excitedly announced as I poured myself coffee, "with mostly sunny highs in the mid 60s and lows in the mid 30s."

Both of our excitement grew as he finished the sentence and I realized he was reading from the newspaper.

Declan's eyes lit up as he spread the paper out on the table in front of him and opened it up to the next page, reading one headline after another out loud.

I may not have been capable of offering Declan an acceptable explanation pertaining to our morning ban on cartoons at the time, but his subsequent discovery of the morning newspaper told me I was on the right path.

Similarly, I may not be able to provide an acceptable response to my fellow budget enthusiast when it comes my sluggish story process, but something tells me I am on the right path.