The Family Dinner: Is it "All That"?
Sunday, May 29, 2011
I love the book The Family Dinner. I really do. But I love it in the same way that I love magazines like Style at Home or Luxury Travel Magazine -- it is visually appealing, inspiring, and makes me salivate at the mouth. It is life porn. In The Family Dinner, the food is perfect, the table settings are perfect, the table manners are perfect, and the dinner conversation is perfect. But it just isn't, nor will it ever be, my life.
So I was relieved this week when I read my friend Julie Cole's post Feeding Time at the Zoo. Julie wrote:
It’s not news – families that eat together regularly are better and the rest of us suck. Time Magazine reports that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide. They have a better chance of doing well in school, delaying having sex, eating their vegetables, learning big words and knowing which fork to use.
Julie then goes on to explain the practical and emotional reasons why family dinner isn't one of her priorities. Go read it.
The reality, in our home, is that we do eat together as a family most nights of the week. Yes, we're doing what the studies say we are supposed to be doing. But I must admit that I don't cherish those family dinners. Someone always hates the food. Almost everyone is distracted and their attention gets turned to everything but the food on the table. Things get spilled (often my wine while I'm reaching for yet another squirt of ketchup demanded by the kids to disguise the taste of real food). Everyone talks at the same time. The kids always need to go to the bathroom during dinner, frequently both of them at the same time. No one is hungry, yet they are all starving 30 minutes later when dinner has been packed up or thrown away. Ultimately, family dinners are what they are -- a part of our routine and a way to get food into growing children. But they are certainly not idyllic nor are they truly a time to connect. To be frank, I'm lucky if I manage to connect my food with my mouth.
What I cherish so much more than those family dinners are one-on-one meals with my kids. At the moment, I have a standing Thursday evening date with Emma while Julian goes to swimming lessons. We often go to a restaurant (where someone else can be blamed if she doesn't like the food) and we have time to talk as we wait for our food to be served to us. We can have one-on-one conversation without anyone else trying to speak on top of us or asking for "more ketchup." These dates with my kids, like bedtime, are true opportunities to connect.
As Julie wrote about her childhood:
Meaningful conversation didn’t always happen around our table, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. My memories credit family walks and bedtime tuck-ins as those special moments and important times.
That isn't to say that there isn't anything I can take away from a book like The Family Dinner. There are great ideas and recipes in it that may inspire or move me at particular times. I adore the book, I really do, but it will never be my Bible. Connecting with my kids in ways that are meaningful to us will always be at the top of the agenda, while the life porn books and magazines will continue to be flipped through while sipping a latte or drinking a glass of wine and dreaming about a fantasy world.
What does "feeding time" look like in your home? Do you all eat together as a family? Is it a time to connect?
Reader Comments (76)
We talk at the table, but from your comment it sounded like your talk is more structured (picking a letter and going around the table). More structured feels more forced to me.
We do our best to keep the 2 yr old entertained while we eat, but that's part of why I don't like our dinners together right now. I'd like to eat my meal without having to constantly chatter and make sure she's not getting ready to throw food or stand up in her high chair, etc. On the occasional evening when she really likes the meal and eats without much assistance for minutes at a time, it's bliss. That just doesn't happen most nights.
Just saw this comment. I can see this working when I have somewhat older children, but not with only a toddler now. I wonder if your 2 yr old behaves a little better with older children to model?
Frankly, I'm not looking for advice at this point. I've tried ALL the suggestions here and elsewhere regarding getting toddlers to sit and eat. Interesting food? Check. She likes Nigerian dishes and spicy foods, hates mac & cheese. Talking to her at the table? Check. A book, toy or crayons for when she's finished eating and we aren't? Check. Letting her down to play while we eat? Check. Watching to see when she starts playing with her food so I can take her plate before she throws it? Check.
I still practice those tips I find helpful, they just don't always work, or are something I just have to keep at until she's older. I believe my daughter's behavior is developmentally appropriate and I just need to be patient.
Olivia - I'm glad to read that you think her behavior is appropriate. :) I think if you keep having the family meal, your daughter will "get with the program" over time. I also remove(d) my kids when their behavior indicated they were more interested in anything but eating. That is, food gets thrown more than once = removal; food spitting = removal; shoving plates away and similar = removal after checking they are done. My 5 yo generally eats until he is done. He gets distracted more with friends/family, but I don't see that as a problem. My 3 yo is coming out of a grazing phase (I think?). She doesn't behave better as a result of the older sibling. In fact, the older sibling eggs her on (thanks honey - NOT). BUT since I've seen the 5 yo become reasonably pleasant at mealtimes, I'm pretty sure the 3 yo will too.
I bet your 2 yo will come through just fine. :)
Great post and great comments. I actually do research on family dinner and always say that I promote the benefits of family dinner despite the challenges! Many important ideas here, but I think the most important is "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good." If you have visions of perfect meals and perfect times at the table, every night, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I say, the craziness is part of it. (This comes from a mom of 3 (5 yrs, 12 yrs, and 15yrs), plus a dog and 2 cats!)
Not everyday will be a hallmark moment, but there's something about the routine of family dinner that allows these moments to happen organically, at least every once in a while. Moments that might not be there otherwise. As your kids get older, the daily check-in is invaluable. I might not get the full story of why my tween is moody at dinner, but I get a hint that something's up and I can follow up later. It is way harder with really young kids, but like the chix and egg problem, if you don't start sometime....
I think your quote is telling. "family dinners are what they are — a part of our routine and a way to get food into growing children." For what they are, family dinners are pretty darn good. My only quibble is that it's not actually about getting food "into" kids, it's showing them what it means to gather around a table and be part of a group, warts and all.
Grace:
Thank you for the comment.
I do think that getting food into my kids is a pretty important part of dinner. We have plenty of other opportunities to gather and be part of a group, whether that is working in the garden together, playing a board game, going out in the canoe, etc. But the food element of dinner is pretty important. If they don't eat well at dinner, then they insist they are STARVING when we are trying to get them off to bed.
On 2-year-olds at the table, ours from 1ish until just recently (almost 3) would move from lap to lap when she got restless. Maybe that's too chaotic for other people, but it helped the other 4 of us all get to stay at the table together for a bit longer.
Jennifer sounds like she has a perfect approach. Don't get me wrong, there are days when the kids or the parents are grumpy and it doesn't work smoothly. Like Jennifer, we try to understand when the kids are done eating. Certainly have our two little helpers, the 6 and 4 year old, to keep the 2 yr old engaged is very helpful. We've asked the older kids not to egg the younger kids on, or teach them stupidity. So now the kids egg on the younger kids to do positive things like singing or learning words, instead of mashing their hands into food. They love to teach the youngerlings.
BTW Jennifer: I checked out your blog -- it's full of recipes! Awesome. I'm marking it as a resource for myself.
Yeah, that's one of the things I don't like. She doesn't want to sit in the high chair or play on her own so she wants to sit in my lap (almost always my lap). It's not easy to eat with a squirming toddler on my lap, especially if the meal needs two hands for a fork and a knife.
I don't love it, but as there are two parents and two older siblings, the annoyances were shared. and she slowly began spending more time in her seat. our only "battle" right now is not grabbing from other people's plates.. and we're getting there.
I love this post! So refreshing! I checked Family Dinner out from the library, and I thought it was pretty, but I was immediately disappointed in how flippantly the challenges of family dinner were dismissed. I mean, I get it. Alice Waters recommends that I serve family dinners, using slow-food, locally sourced, organic ingredients, every night. Right. But my baby's bio-rhythms tell him that he's STARVING at 5 p.m. and I get home at 6 p.m., at which point, we haven't even STARTED preparing dinner. So how exactly do we make that work?
I do try to have several family meals per week. And I understand that it may get easier (in some respects) as our baby gets older. And I do crock pot meals and very easy dishes several nights a week. I'm working on it. But I am also SO skeptical of the "studies" that show that family dinners fix all common problems of adolescence. It's always something, isn't it?
And somehow, if you can't manage family dinners, it is the mom's fault for having or job or whatever. As you would say: "Blame the mother." I'm not saying family dinners aren't great. But the impossible IDEAL of family dinners, and the way the burden falls on women's shoulders ... well ...
Alex - Thanks for marking my blog! :) I'm also touched you think we have the right approach. I think it's the right approach for our family, but everyone does need to figure out what works for them and whether the family meal shared is beneficial to them. I think it's a great educational opportunity, but it's not always the time to connect emotionally. However, I can see the possibility of connecting a bit more as the kids are older -- thinking about giving everyone a chance to share about their day or something. More to think about I suppose. :)
We love having dinner together but only have one almost-2yr old so not sure how it would go with more kids.
The conversations we have with her at the dinner table provide no end of entertainment to us all. She was yelling "fork me! fork me!" every time she wanted a fork today which daddy just thought was HILARIOUS (ok, so it was pretty funny - say it out aloud 10 times fast). It is also one of the few times she is tied down, so still, long enough to have a nice chat with us both at once. Something we all enjoy doing, we tell daddy about our day and then he shares his.
Thank you for alleviating my guilt about not reviewing the book despite (gulp) interviewing the author last year. The book tells you all the reasons why having dinner together makes perfect sense and how to do it perfectly. The author's circle of friends is incredible. (Harvey Karp is her kids' pediatrician.) It's a gorgeous book. I just think it sets the bar a bit too high for mere mortals like me/us. Maybe after the kids leave home and come back to visit? But I don't think that's the point of the book.
"I think it’s a great educational opportunity, but it’s not always the time to connect emotionally" Not sure what "connecting emotionally" means. Would you might describing a time for emotional connection so I understand why that is different? Just curious ... there is a lot of parenting jargon out there. Thanks!
Re: emotional connection. I didn't mean anything very specific or maybe it's more of one of those "I know it when I see it" things. :) I feel emotionally closer to my kids when we are snuggling with a book or saying the Jewish blessings for Friday night or when one of them reaches some milestone and we all celebrate (e.g., my son just learned to ride a bike without training wheels and he's REALLY excited). Another time I feel emotionally connected is when one of us reaches out to the other with some act of affection and has that returned. Both kids will randomly hug me or my son will just say out of the blue "I love you." During an actual meal, I don't feel like we're "bonding" as much, even when the meal runs pretty smoothly. Meal time can get silly between the kids and/or annoying between the adults and kids, so I find it harder to feel warm fuzzies in that moment. Maybe "warm fuzzies" is what I meant by emotional connection? I guess I meant something like a moment when both kids and parents are enjoying being together rather than when one side is happy/silly and the other side feels differently/opposite.
Does that make any sense?
Perfect sense. So definitely dinner at our house is emotional bonding then. It's hardly ever us vs them, and often it's silly but I can be a very silly person so I am all over that. We love to make each other laugh or surprise each other in our house, so that kind of behaviour is no problem. I dunno, I think kids are silly naturally at the ages of 2,4,6 like my kids, so we join with that. They behave well, they clean up after themselves, they don't throw things (anymore) and everyone's involved -- it's "family time". The "adult time" is something we don't get much at dinner, but we get that in the evening after the kids go to bed.
I'm going to review this book because I love the emphasis on dinner time, and actually preparing one's own food instead of stopping for takeaway. Daily cooking/eating/conversing is a powerful bonding exercise. Beyond that - the recipes I've tried are really tasty.
I would say that we eat together at 6 days a week, on average. But I use the term "together" loosely. My youngest is 2 1/2, so he often gets up and runs around during dinner. It's a safe bet that at least one of my kids hates whatever food I've prepared, and there are endless requests for another drink / condiments / a new fork / etc.
It's not idyllic, not by a long stretch. But I try. Hopefully it's the thought that counts.
I posted earlier in the thread, but I just wanted to point to a Family Dinner Survey that I am conducting on my non-profit, independent site. I am trying to get more information from parents about whether family dinner is really important to them and if so, and why it is, and what works best to helping make it happen. I really think that we should shed the "guilt" about family dinner as well as this "ideal" of family dinner is supposed to be. I would appreciate any (honest) response, whether you love family dinner or thinks it's a crock!
http://www.eatdinner.org/p/survey.html
[...] twisted around so that no one feels good about it and the point gets lost. Reading the blogs Annie (PhDinParenting) and Julie (Mabelhood) reminded me that even something this simple has the potential to cause a [...]
I totally agree. Mealtime at our house is so often about teaching table manners and learning about different things to eat. We also use it talk about letters (b is for broccoli), colors (peas are green, beets are purple) and numbers and maths(please eat three bites of fish. you ate one, now you have to eat two more, etc). It's also a great time to learn family rituals (wash hands, bring your plate to the table, say grace, etc).
I hope that family dinner time segues into some time for conversation. Growing up we always had family dinner time without tv distractions and now my family is very close and has many stories to tell about things that happened during those dinners. My son is 2 so he's not much of a conversationalist but sometimes he really does love to tell us something that has happened that day or something that he remembers from whenever or we can get him excited for a fun event or prepped for one that has stressed him out in the past (swimming at daycare can be an awful time or a great time).
I'm also a big proponent of meal planning with my husband, cooking in advance/in the crockpot and making simple meals. I think this helps get dinner on the table in a reasonable amount of time so we can do other fun things -- which we often do discuss over dinner. :-)
My husband comments at least once a year about how family's that eat together are so much better off then those that don't. The problem is that when my family tried that when I was growing up it was a nightmare. I was a child that had suffered some unusual trauma at a young age and needed a calm and loving environment to heal in, and instead got enforced family dinners in which I was the focus of my fathers vitriol when I wouldn't eat everything on my plate. And now that I have my own family I seem to have an allergic reaction to "family dinners". I adore my family and have lots and lots of wonderful daily moments in which we connect and talk about our days. I therefore wish that everyone would stop all of this preaching that family dinners are this holy grail for a healthy family! Just be a good parent, care about your children, talk to them, get to know them, take good care of them! There are LOTS of ways to do that, and family dinner time is not one of them for me.
My husband comments at least once a year about how family’s that eat together are so much better off then those that don’t. The problem is that when my family tried that when I was growing up it was a nightmare. I was a child that had suffered some unusual trauma at a young age and needed a calm and loving environment to heal in, and instead got enforced family dinners in which I was the focus of my fathers vitriol when I wouldn’t eat everything on my plate. And now that I have my own family I seem to have an allergic reaction to “family dinners”. I adore my family and have lots and lots of wonderful daily moments in which we connect and talk about our days. I therefore wish that everyone would stop all of this preaching that family dinners are this holy grail for a healthy family! Just be a good parent, care about your children, talk to them, get to know them, take good care of them! There are LOTS of ways to do that, and family dinner time is not one of them for me.
I really like that idea, I Think I make dinner time too serious and become frustrated when all my 5 yo wants to do is be silly and play instead of eat, maybe if I lighten it up a little and eat a little slower she will catch up to me...usually hubby wants to rush off to the Tv and I rush to get the kitchen work done, got any great tips on how to retrain a hubby...lol
Ugh. My 6 year old, shamefully, eats her dinner in the car 3 nights a week on the way home from swimmming or gymnastics. We're driving as a family, does that count as family dinner? I guess it is difficult to get her bathed, homework done, read outloud together and have "cuddle and talk time" laying in bed before lights out if I have to add in cooking dinner. Other nights we make it work out, but I guess my priority is having time for reading and cuddling instead.
Looking back over the last 9 years in a blended family that started out with grade schoolers and a baby, with the occasional adult child at the dinner table, and is now teenagers and an 8year old, with guest adult children and frequent grandbabies at the dinner table, I will say that our decision to make the family meal a cornerstone of how our blended family rolls has been more about the better than the worse. I like the connection that we have as a family, and the conversations that the kids have with each other. I borrowed a page from Shmuley Boteach's Parenting with Fire and jumped at the chance to invite delightful people to dinner as guests on occasion, and it was really interesting to see how much the kids remember from those dinners. I like that the kids have an *expectation* that we sit down as family together. I liked when they got older and could help with the meal, and with dishes. I like that they can go out to a friend's house and know how to hold a knife and fork and have a polite conversation.
What I didn't like, and still struggle with, is how the downside seems to be amplified at the dinner table. Anyone having a bad day wasn't happy at dinner, and some of the children had less capacity to meet expectations to behave a certain way than others, which created a rather constant inequity that I never really figured out how to fix.
And the wine spills, oh the wine spills! And a left-over aversion to having ketchup at the dinner table that I inherited from my mother which makes me take instant offence at the quality of my food when someone asks for ketchup.
And the separate food eaters who are unhappy on stew night. And the one who used to cry if I served fish.
And the stage they all go through when any hint of fart, even just the word, generates so much giggling they fall off their chairs.
And the stage they go through where they are so starving hungry they can't keep from gobbling or gulping to the point where I feel nauseous.
It's not perfect and there were times I felt betrayed by this magic bullet that was supposed to, but failed to keep my kids, my family, away from the ragged edge of disaster.
But on the whole I'm glad we tried to hold the family dinner sacred, even if we didn't live up to it all the time. I have learned to use the family dinner as a barometer for our family's climate - dinner goes well, all is likely going well. Dinner falls off the rails, something more is happening. And I value it for that.