Before I had children, I used to imagine what my family would look like. That fantasy often revolved around a table. It’s probably because so many of my favorite memories from my own childhood exist around a dinner table. I’ve always believed that some of the most meaningful moments in life take place in the simplest of circumstances – all you really need is good food and good people. When I imagined my own family’s table, I imagined a place to unwind after a long day, kids laughing as they slurp spaghetti into their mouths, lingering for a while over dessert or a board game.
I’m going to be honest with you. This is not what my family dinner table looks like.
With a four year old and a two year old, my dinner table is usually more like a war zone. The evening usually starts with my husband trying to peel my screaming two year old off of my leg so I can pull a hot pan out of the oven. I dish everyone’s plates and finally get everyone seated when the 4 year old announces she needs to poop. I’m not kidding you guys. Every. Single. Night. At two years old, Owen is a loose canon at the table. Some nights, he eats every bite of the orange glazed salmon. Some nights, he won’t even dip the chicken finger in the ketchup. Tonight he mixed a whole container of yogurt into his casserole, refused to eat it, and announced that he was “done.” We don’t usually go to battle with him – he’s very strong-willed and it’s usually a battle that is not worth fighting. I recently listened to a podcast that talked about how before two, children eat, they don’t dine, so it’s okay if they’re not a picture of grace and dignity at the table.
When Ellie returns to the table, we say a blessing (which is my favorite part of the evening. Is there anything cuter than toddlers talking to Jesus?!) Ellie usually eats whatever fruit is on her plate and then asks if she can color. At this point, we have to make a decision. Are we going to battle her to eat? Are we going to let her be done and go play, allowing her to return in a few hours? Are we going to set her in our lap and spoon feed her? Are we going to bribe her to eat with the promise of treats?
The truth is that I often dread dinnertime. It rarely goes smoothly and after a long day, it is often where I have the least amount of patience for my children. I spend a lot of time thinking and planning for what I’m going to feed my family every week and while I truly enjoy cooking, it’s also a lot of work. It can feel disappointing and frustrating when something that I prepared special for my children is refused or when an attempt to get some real nutrients into them fails miserably. I should not really be complaining – comparatively speaking, my children are actually pretty adventurous eaters for their age. Ellie won’t eat everything I prepare, but she will try most things and she actually prefers things like bell peppers and hummus to a cheeseburger. We never know what Owen is going to eat, but the promise of some form of “dip-dip” often does the trick to get him to try and he will slurp down a green smoothie like it’s his job. The problem is getting them to actually sit at the dinner table and have a meal without all the theatrics.
I have been thinking a lot about this time of day and why it is such a source of struggle. I think that part of the problem is that I’m focused so much on the end result of what I want my family dinner table to look like and forgot that toddlers aren’t born knowing table manners. We’re going to actually have to teach them. Ughhhh. It’s the crux of parenting, right?
But an even bigger problem than my own unrealistic expectations is a lack of clarity of my meal time values. I know what I want to teach my children about food and meal times, but my actions and words around that table often don’t match what I value.
- I want my children to regulate their own eating, but I forget that children, even more than most adults, are very good at managing their own hunger cues. The expectation that they finish their plates every night may not be a realistic or healthy goal, and yet I’m often guilty of badgering, and even bribing them to do so.
- I want my children to try new foods and flavors and yet I don’t always offer believing that they will probably be refused. The other day, Ellie asked me why Owen doesn’t have strawberries on his plate. “He doesn’t like them,” I replied. But as I thought more about that, I realized that the last few times I have given him strawberries, he did not eat them, so I stopped offering….but if I never offer strawberries to him, he may grow up believing he doesn’t like them. At these ages, I should just keep offering knowing that their tastes and moods change constantly.
- I want my children to learn moderation and have a healthy relationship with food. I want to teach them about healthy foods and nourishing their bodies, but I also want to teach them the splendor of brownie sundaes. If I’m constantly using sweets as bribes, they may come to associate them as taboo or something that has to be earned and I don’t want to set them up now for unhealthy ideas about food or their bodies.
- And finally, I want my dinner table to be a place of peace and rest and safety. I want it to be a place that my children look forward to and not a place that they dread. I know that we are planting seeds now and that if we continue to fight the good fight, we will reap fruit in the years to come.
I have been working hard over the past few months to change some of my actions to better reflect my dinner-time values. It’s so difficult to change, especially when you’ve been doing something one way for so long.
But if I want my table to be a place of solace, I need to stop making it into a battleground.
For now, our only hard and fast rule is that everyone has to sit down together at the table. There are no distractions – no coloring books, no phones, no television. We really encourage the kids to try everything on their plate – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m completely open to serving things differently to my children so they will eat it. Last week, I made pulled pork, but I knew Ellie wouldn’t eat it as a sandwich, so I put hers in a taco with all her taco fixings. She gobbled it. We have stopped saying things like, “If you finish your broccoli you can have a sucker.” If Ellie is eating well, I will sit with her until she is done eating. If she’s distracted and clearly not very hungry, I’ll excuse her to go play and she can come back to finish later. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t. And if we made brownies, everyone gets a little piece. This is the hardest one for me -it is so ingrained in me that dessert needs to be earned. But sometimes we have to realize that our own ways of thinking or the way we were brought up is not necessarily how we want to raise our children and we have to rework our brains to think differently. It’s a work in progress.
I’m hopeful that one day my dinner table will look like a Norman Rockwell painting.
For now, it’s smeared with yogurt and ketchup and mayhem.
Life After Birth 