PATTERN No. 2 MAKING BREAKFAST FOR SMALL
CHILDREN
Key
technologies: kitchen cupboard.
Interactional Setting of the Pattern: Kitchen; breakfast time
(weekday)
Time: 07:19. Date: 12/05/98. Study:
#2.
The
sequence of interaction is situated in a small kitchen in a family home.
Involved in the sequence are one adult male (Dad: approximate age: early
thirties) and two young female children (Eden: approximate age: seven; and Levi:
approximate age: three). The sequence displays the adult male and children
making breakfast. It is part of the primary patterns making breakfast and getting ready for
work.
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Organizational Context of the
Pattern
Getting small children to take breakfast requires that they
consent to eat particular things. This pattern articulates how the task of
getting small children to consent to eating something specific for breakfast is
organized.
The Pattern of Technology
Usage
Kitchen cupboards are sites where a wide variety of
particular objects reside and kept ready to hand for the occasions on which
those objects are required. In the case of making breakfast for small children,
the pattern of use consists of inspecting resident objects contained in the
cupboard and using those objects to work up candidate solutions to the question:
what do you want to eat?
The Work of the Pattern
Synopsis: The work of this simple sequence consists of
asking what the kids want for breakfast? Answers to that question are worked up
concertedly through considering a series of options made available by the
contents of the cupboard which holds the breakfast cereals.
Transcript: 07:19. Adult male and two small children enter kitchen from upstairs. The children are talking to one another.
Dad:
Levi what you having for breakfast?
Eden:
Can I have a drink of your juice daddy?
Levi:
Porridge.
Dad:
Porridge.
Dad
looking in kitchen cupboards.
Dad:
Which is your own juice Eden?
Eden:
We haven’t got any of our own.
Dad
looking in cupboard.
Dad:
Then what you on about then.
Eden:
[Inaudible] points at Dad’s glass of juice on table
Dad:
Do you want some of that?
Eden:
Yeah, but in our own glasses.
Dad:
What you having for breakfast?
Eden:
I don’t know.
Dad
looking in cupboard.
Dad:
Bite-size shredded wheat, or porridge?
Levi:
[inaudible].
Dad:
Bite-size shredded wheat or porridge.
Levi:
[Inaudible].
Levi
climbs onto kitchen chair and peers into
cupboard.
Levi:
Er, wheatabix.
Dad:
[Is] that branflakes?
Levi:
Yep.
Eden:
That’s what I want as well.
Dad gets bowls from another cupboard and prepares kids breakfast. He then puts the bowls of cereal on the table.
Eden: Can I have milk on?
Dad: Yeah.
Levi: I don't want milk on.
Dad: Yes you do.
Dad pours milk on cereals.
Dad: Can you get some spoons Eden?
Eden: What?
Dad: Can you get some spoons?
Eden: Oh - all right.
Eden gets spoons while dad pours the juice.
Levi: No, I don't want some of that (the juice).
Dad: Don't you, do you want milk?
Dad: Do you want milk Levi?
Eden: Look at the drawer Levi, it's full up.
Dad: Do you want milk?
Levi: Can I have one of the them (spoons)?
Eden
gives Levi the spoon she wants and dad puts the juice and milk on the table. The
kids sit down and talk to one another as they eat their breakfast . Dad takes
his breakfast over to a the kitchen work surface. The kids carry on with their
conversation and dad joins them at the table. Sequence ends:
07:24.
The Practices Ordering the Work of the
Pattern
This
simple pattern is organized 1) through the asking of questions; 2) through the
placing of objects at a resident site (breakfast cereals in the kitchen
cupboard); 3) through the joint inspection of the objects placed at the resident
site; and 4) through the joint formulation of possible options given those
contents.
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Connected Patterns