A couple of weeks ago I posed this question to my kids, "When you grow up and someone asks you what dinner time at your house was like, what are you going to say?" (And EVERYONE has a response to that...what is yours?) Faith cracked me up, "It usually starts with everyone talking and then ends awkwardly silent." I totally knew what she was talking about. Will stated the obvious, "I think I'll probably say that I was always the last one at the table." Yes, getting that one bite of something nourishing takes the longest for him.
I asked them about dinner time because I'm currently reading, "The Surprising Power of Family Meals; How Eating Together Makes Us Smarter, Stronger, Healthier, and Happier," by Miriam Weinstein.
The title really says it all, and the whole thing might not be worth reading (I'm only half-way through,) but it has influenced me to make a few changes in my routine. I am already (mostly) in the habit of cooking every night, but when the kids aren't busy with homework I have started inviting them into the kitchen to help with food prep. and cooking because of a scene the author shares from one of the families in a study she cited:
"This fleet-footed conversation is as textured as a Shakespearean play. It begins with the mother trying to get her child to converse, and with the child pointedly ignoring her efforts. Then the child says,
TC: Love at first sight, huh?
MOM: Yeah.
TC: Dad? Never mind. Was it really love at first sight with you two?
MOM: Oh, please.
TC: It was probably a divorce at one point. (snickers)
MOM: No.
TC: Is this how you do it?
MOM: Oh no, honey. First you toast it.
The conversation moves to food preparation details that escalate to the child insisting he doesn't want cheese, and then, apparently, throwing some food.
TC: The cheese just sort of stuck to that, I swear to God.
MOM: You think it's gonna be love at first sight for you.
TC: No.
MOM: Oooh, you have ketchup on your finger.
TC: It's gonna be kill at first sight.
MOM: That's lovely. What's that supposed to mean?"
When can you have a conversation like that? It was so poignant to me that I had Will and Faith help me make a salad for dinner that very night, and what happened in our kitchen that evening? Faith and I had a conversation very much like the above one: food prep mixed with love and family history.
I have also noticed the conversation at my dinner table a lot more and tried to "keep things going" more. Last night we talked about how when Sister Ryan picked the kids up from school, she had to tell them the code word (which was "flap your wings"), but now we needed a new code word because that one had been used. It kind of devolved from there into a circus of kids telling me that the next code word should be "the code" or I should make my friend act like a monkey for the code or do the little One Direction hip shake. The kids ended up bouncing off the walls and laughing in a pile on the floor at the end of dinner. I really hope I'll get better at this, but maybe a pile of laughing kids is one step up from "awkwardly silent" at the end of dinner.
It has made me reconsider meal making and dinner time as the centerpiece of our day. I no longer feel guilty for not signing my kids up for extra curricular activities - I can now cite dinner time as my excuse not to do too much. I wonder if much of the mighty work I have been doing happened right in my kitchen when I wasn't paying attention.
5 comments:
I like your book. Isn't it wonderful when you find reading material that helps make life around the table more interesting and elevated?
I like that it changed your perspective and made you live in the moment more. I have always been sure that dinner time would be so much easier for me if it didn't happen at dinner time. How do you get good things to happen when everyone is hungry and tired--especially the mama?
This sounds like a book I need to read. I have always known dinner time was important and I usually like cooking. I just struggle with delegating and letting the kids help and the preplanning to have the right stuff there to make it consistently.
You have helped me realize I need to renew my efforts. Thanks!
Thank you for pointing out that mothering is "mighty work" and it really is done in the kitchen. That's not even a retro attitude -- it's openly scorned by most of our culture. Fact is, though, that the way to a kid's heart is through EVERY avenue: the eyes, the ears and most importantly, the mouth. Family food makes that all work together.
I think having a baby or babies around make it especially difficult and definitely make mama more tired...so I don't know, Heather. I have been at your house though and you have delightful dinners around a table with the whole family when everyone is hungry. Those are all part of the success equation in this book.
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