Eating as a family
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- September
- 20
When Rafael was still a toddler, we didn’t make him sit with us at the dinner table through every meal. The adults in this house would sit and talk and argue and often discussions reach high decibels, depending on who was around for dinner.
We lived with my mother-in-law and, for a while, my brother-in-law as well. Sometimes my father-in-law dropped by. And when my family was in town, that just added to the mix.
Not angry arguments or anything, just one of those families where discussions get loud and, frankly, humorous. But kind of boring for the little kiddies, for the most part.
So if Rafael wanted to wander away and play or even watch a little show on Noggin, we were OK with that. In fact, it often was easier to get through a meal if he weren’t at the table, as he’d usually eat before I got home from work, and so wouldn’t be hungry any longer.
We’d struggled with keeping him at the table until common sense, advice from others and, yes, those ubiquitous advice columns in parenting magazines made us realize we were fighting against the tide and it wouldn’t scar him for life.
But now that he’s a bit older and Markus is still in the high chair (not that that’s going to last much longer), we’ve reset the rules.
He can eat a little snack in front of the tv; some Goldfish crackers and milk, perhaps, but all meals are at the table, with the whole family.
But now it’s just the four of us in the house most of the time. My mother-in-law is in the midst of moving to the mountains; my brother-in-law has his own place again.
So, we eat breakfast together at the dining room table. Daddy eats lunch with the little guys. When Mommy gets home from work, we all sit down in the dining room together. Even if Rafael and Markus only eat a snack because they’ve already eaten dinner before I got home, they’re still at the table, eating with us.
We discuss the day, what happened at school. Anything exciting that happened at work. What Markus and Daddy did while Rafael was in school.
It’s a boisterous affair, and fun. And Rafael loves to help clear the table (I’m sure that won’t last many years), so the family time extends even past the meal itself.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 3:22 pm by Amy Vernon.
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