Type A Parenting: Family Dinners are Sacred
by Mir KaminMy name is Mir, and I want you to sit up straight, get your elbows off the table, chew with your mouth closed, and tell me how your day was. If you want to compliment my cooking, too, well that's just a bonus.
That's right; I'm a stickler for the family dinner.
You might think that I was raised this way and have blindly continued with tradition, but it's just the opposite -- there was no such thing as family dinner when I was growing up. We all fended for ourselves with the cooking, most of the time, and we all ate in front of the television. Usually different televisions, in fact. Dinner wasn't a time to bond or expand our palates. It was a time to eat Spaghetti-Os and watch reruns.
When I visited with friends whose families gathered for the evening meal and talked and laughed while eating meals cooked from scratch, I vowed that one day my home would be like that. It felt cozy. Eating that way was fun rather than a necessity. I wanted that experience in my own home.
And now I have it. Don't get me wrong; my children still bicker periodically and at least one meal a week brings groans of "Why did you make this? I don't like [insert world's most horrible food here]!" Sometimes I'm tired and cranky and it's not unheard of for my husband and me to be standing in the kitchen at 6:15 going, "Wait, I thought you were cooking tonight! Crap, what can we make in 10 minutes?" It's not a perfect system. We're far from a perfect family. But family dinners are one of my very favorite things.
As far as the food goes, we try to do menu planning and grocery shopping on the weekends. A week's menu typically includes one night of planned leftovers and a "portable" meal for Friday night, when we gather 'round the television (see, I'm not completely opposed to eating in front of the TV) and eat dinner to a recorded episode of Mythbusters or a movie. We average 2-3 wholly vegetarian meals each week, and menus including meat require a meat substitute of some kind for my vegetarian daughter. While I do most of the cooking because I'm home more than anyone else, my husband cooks a night or two each week, and the children have started having "kids' nights" where they put together a menu for us, as well. My freezer almost always holds an "emergency" frozen pizza, but the bulk of our meals incorporate very little in the way of convenience foods. Children are required to taste everything on their plates (though I don't make them clear their plates or otherwise finish foods they dislike), and discussion of how gross/yucky/boring a food appears is not permitted.
But the beauty of the family dinner really has very little to do with the food we eat. I care about the food, of course, but the food is almost ancillary in my mind. Family dinners 'round the table are about ritual and bonding. The kids are off at school all day. My husband is off at work. I'm here working in solitude. After the kids get home, it's a flurry of homework and activities and often I'm still scrambling to finish my work as they embark on their afternoon pursuits. By the time my husband gets home, the kids are up in their rooms or outside or off with friends. He and I discuss scintillating matters like the day's annoyances and bills and whether anyone got the mail.
And then... it's time for dinner. We gather together -- often for the first time that day, really, as different school schedules mean we're not all eating breakfast at the same time -- at the table and we say grace. We say thank you for the food, for our family, for allowing us to spend this time together. And we have the first relaxed meal of the day. Together.
We go around the table and everyone shares the best and worst parts of their day. We tell my son to take his elbows off the table a minimum of three times per meal. I exhort my daughter to sit up properly and to please take smaller bites. My husband jokes about sending the kids to finishing school to learn how to eat more like humans and less like wolves. It happens every night, and woven in-between the food and the ribbing about table manners is our reinforcement of what it means to us to be a family; we go out into the world and away from each other, but we always come back together to break bread and share our experiences.
Proper dinner manners are required; napkins go in laps, silverware should be held as such and not like daggers or shovels, pleases and thank-yous are expected, and at the conclusion of the meal the children must ask to be excused and then clear their dishes. That doesn't mean dinners are a somber affair, though. It's amazing how many pleases and thank-yous can be inserted between stories of the skit they did in class about how not to behave on the bus, or discussion of today's science experiment, or what we want to do next weekend.
I think it's very easy to lose family time in the hustle and bustle of our modern schedules. For us, the family dinner is my way of making sure that we have some of that time every day. I hope my kids grow up with impeccable table manners and adventuresome palates as a result, but even if they don't, I trust they will look back fondly on the time spent together just being a family gathered around the table together.
Check out a few blog posts from parents who are blogging about family dinners:
Be sure to visit our featured Spreadsheet Parent, Frugality Mom. If you're a stickler for the family dinner, blog your story and leave a link. We'll be featuring another Spreadsheet Parent next week and it could be you.
What others are saying: Type A - Spreadsheet Parent!
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Comments
I think this is nice, Mir
My mom worked outside the home and we commuted some distance, so looking back what amazes me is how often she managed this kind of thing on a smaller scale (because my father often worked odd hours or played softball so he wasn't there or we were all out together.) My grandparents were my after-school caregivers and we ended up there a lot, where meals were always family affairs.
My ex's mother was home all day and they did family table meals each night and he (sorry dude) had the most deplorable table manners of anyone I've ever met who came out of such a circumstance. It really does depend on the person and the details of each family situation.
I think it's nice that you do this with your family, especially having followed your story for a long time and knowing what it took to get there. As people and as families we focus on what matters to us and in this case the care you're taking is evident. I know they'll look back and appreciate (and do now, but it's our job when young to complain at least a little. ;))
Laurie
LaurieWrites
Photos on Flickr
Thanks, Laurie
I hope they do look back fondly. Or look back from therapy. Either way. ;)
It's true, the path I took to here has a lot to do with why this is an important issue for me. We could just as easily work on 90% of the issues we handle at the dinner table in another setting, it just works for us to incorporate it into the dinner ritual.
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Mir Kamin
(BlogHer contributing editor)
Personal: Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Having it all with less: Want Not
Every family does it differently
Your family traditions are your own, and I'm glad to hear you don't associate it with how nutritious or healthy your kids are.
Politics & News Contributing Editor
Queen of Spain
exactly
This is all about tradition/ritual, and only a teeny tiny bit about nutrition. Though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping that that tiny bit will stick with them, too! :)
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Mir Kamin
(BlogHer contributing editor)
Personal: Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Having it all with less: Want Not
The best hour of the evening
Stories around the table. Talking about your day. Leaning how a conversation should flow at the table. It's things like these that are a highlight of my day. They are what separates the mongoloids and savages from the less than classy later on in life. There's so much to be said about table etiquette. A very valuable and pertinent lesson.
Work In Progress
I've got to say that this aspect of family life is a challenge for me, as you can tell from my post! I LOVE the idea of sitting around at the end of the day, and enjoying each other's company...But working all day, and getting my butt home and getting it done is taking it's toll! Need to seriously brush up on some 30 minute meals! :) Last night I just couldn't come up with anything...So we had pancakes! :)
my secret
The best tip I can give to those who are time-strapped (and really, aren't we all??) is this: Learn to love your crock pot.
This is where meal-planning really helps. Even when I worked out of the house, I found life completely unmanageable unless I usually knew what we were having for dinner that night. So either dinner went in the crock in the morning before we left (see A Year of Slow Cooking for inspiration and to learn just how versatile crock cooking can be), or I cooked stuff on the weekends that could easily be reheated during the week.
Sometimes even just planning to chop stuff up in the morning so that it can be taken from the fridge and dumped in the wok that evening can be a tremendous help. A little planning goes a long way! You can do it! :)
--
Mir Kamin
(BlogHer contributing editor)
Personal: Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Having it all with less: Want Not
If you decide to do it, you do it
When my kids were young and I was still living with their father, we had dinner. When I became a separated parent and later a widow, we had dinner at the table. Now in my second marriage with kids in distance cities, I sit down to dinner with my husband most nights. As a busy professional, cooking dinner and sitting down to it are a way to separate work time from home time (even though I'll be back to work and avocation later in the night).
What I've found is that if you decide that eating dinner at the table is something that has value for you, you'll make time to do it.
In addition to crock pot meals, I used to cook several meals on Saturdays or Sundays that could just be reheated with a freshly prepared salad and I even wash my salad greens every other day. Kudos to you for making this part of your family time.
http://blog.candelarisilva.com
Good and plenty!
A family tradition we're passing on.
Thanks for this fantastic post about the importance of family dinner. Traditions like this really set the foundation for years to come, don't they? Growing up, our family sat down to dinner almost every night. Although I didn't value it then, I certainly value it now. My sisters and my parents still love eating together and often have so many laughs over meals. Unfortunately, we all live scattered around the world. I've been trying to keep family dinners with our kids. But I must say that it's hard now that our eldest is in school. It's tempting to over schedule them with activities that often run into dinner time for younger siblings.
Although the family I grew up in had family dinners, we didn't often talk about thing that matter in each of our lives. Instead we talked a lot about the food we were eating and gossiped a lot. My hope is that with our kids dinner time can become a time were we take turns to share about our lives and practice that kind of healthy communication. Since our kids are so young, we're still learning about taking turns to talk and sitting still at dinner. Once in a while, we'll have a gem of a conversation.
We've also found that traveling together is a tradition that fosters great communication and team work. It also gives us wonderful shared experiences that we draw upon when we are at the dinner table. That's why we have been so passionate about building Trekaroo into a resource to help families travel together.
LiLing Pang
Trekaroo - Kids. Trips. Tips.
Trekaroo is review site dedicated to exploring and traveling with kids. It is built by a community of travel savvy parents.
Website: http://www.trekaroo.com
Blog: http://trekaroo.wordpress.com
My tale
When I was growing up, and I'm embarrassed to even say it, my parents would eat dinner while watching the news on tv and us kids would eat by ourselves in the kitchen. I've never talked to my parents about this but I'm sure it's affected our relationship to this day. That is I think we might be closer if we'd eaten together.
So, with my son and I, I make sure that most of our dinners are spent together at the kitchen table although I must admit my laptop is also there and I do have it open sometimes. I must make a conscious effort that meals are for meals, not checking Twitter!
And, Mir, I'm constantly telling him to get his elbows off the table.
Jen at Semantically driven and Safari suit
Life is busy but we do sit down together
We make an effort to eat dinner together every night. My husband is busy in the morning and leaves for work early, so we can't eat breakfast together. Dinner is our chance to reconnect all together. It's a tradition for us. I know that once the kids get older and have more activities that this will change but for now? We eat together with the TV off.