Enjoying dinner with your kids

Open wide

In her book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee”, Psychologist Wendy Mogel asserts that: “Our dining table with our children is an altar. It has the potential to be the holiest spot on the earth.” Well, that sounds very nice. I’m grateful for her use of the term ‘potential’, though. It tells me that, although my family’s dining table may at times resemble a zoo at feeding time, there is a little bit of hope.

My mother, when serving a meal, is very adamant that every food on the table, whether it’s meat, vegetables, or pasta, gets equal attention. If you choose to grab the potatoes first, she will ask: “Don’t you want any green beans”? It’s as if she is insulted on behalf of the dish that didn’t get picked first. When I was young, and I would leave things on my plate, she would actually ask me if the food had “committed a sin”. “Yes’, I wanted to answer, “that particular piece of liver has committed the sin of being on my plate.”
Of course I said nothing, and obediently took a bite.

My mother is proud of her cooking; she is also always grateful that there is food to begin with. She hasn’t forgotten that things used to be different. I sometimes think that a small part of her is still mildly surprised that there is not only food on the table, but such a variety of it. I resemble my mother in the sense that I am proud of my cooking, I make healthy meals from scratch every day, and I like my children to actually eat these meals. This, of course, is easier said than done. Anyone who has ever been within 500 feet of a child, your own or someone else’s, knows that a cookie will beat a carrot every time. Spend an hour and a half in your kitchen trying out that new, organic, super healthy casserole, and the kids will ask for a peanut butter sandwich. Make a nice, fresh salad and they’ll check the fridge for nasty leftovers from last week. However, if you tell them that just this once, they are allowed a piece of candy, they’ll say they want an apple instead. Children are annoyingly inconsistent that way.

How, then, do we create this “holiest spot on earth”? I think in answering that question, we need to examine our own behavior, and our priorities. What do we demand of our children at dinnertime, and are those demands reasonable? My personal priorities at dinner are twofold: I want to see and hear some appreciation for the food, and I don’t allow arguments at the dining room table. In exchange for those two things, I’ll try my best to ignore the food on the floor and the elbows on the table.

While I think my two demands are perfectly reasonable, and certainly attainable, so far I’ve met with little success. At the rate we’re going, my children will learn perfect table manners by the time they finish graduate school. My daughter will regularly request healthy foods, which I then cook to perfection, only to hear her say: “Mo-om, I’m just not hungry”! I fall for it every time. As far as my son’s behavior, the amount of food he throws on the floor would make Mr. Clean cry. I imagine hundreds of thousands of “other people’s children”, perfectly behaved, finishing their meals with a smile every time, and decide once again: from now on, I’m cooking Brussels Sprouts every night. See how they like that.