Long before the research emerged showing the many benefits of family dinnertime, my parents enforced a fairly strict rule around eating together. It was one of their only strict rules, and it remained in place throughout my childhood: dinner was eaten together (especially our Friday Sabbath meal), without other distractions, and with the expectation that everyone would participate in the conversation.
The dinner table is where I learned to debate, learned about what was happening in the world, learned table manners, and where I spent the most time with my three siblings and my parents – especially during my teen years. And while I can’t prove this, it’s also what I credit with helping build an enduring closeness among all of the members of my family.
Now I have my own family, and my husband and I get to make our own rules of engagement. Our girls aren’t yet at the age where outside activities might pull them away at dinnertime, but they are at an age where it’s important to us to set the routines that will endure through their childhoods.
As is the case with many little kids, our dinnertime conversation used to revolve around one topic: the food. Here some snippets from the kinds of back-and-forth that usually marked our meals:
“Eat your dinner.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You liked it last time we had it.”
“I don’t like it.”
Or:
“You need to eat three more bites before dessert.”
[Child pushes plate away defiantly.]
“Okay. No dessert.”
[Child bursts into tears.]
Or:
“Did I eat enough to get dessert?”
“No.”
“How many more bites?”
“Three.”
“How about one?”
“Three”
“One?”
Etc.
As you can imagine, dinner was an unpleasant affair – especially with three kids – and it rarely afforded the opportunity to talk about anything other than the dinner itself. So we needed a different approach. Over time, we started making changes, and over time things got infinitely better.
First, my husband – a neurologist always interested in the workings of the brain – thought it would be good to memorialize what happened each day with a reflection (an idea he stole from Marilu Henner). This would be something that each person offered that they wanted to celebrate and remember from the day. This tradition quickly took off, and now we never miss a night if we’re eating at home. Our daughters have begun participating even as young as two, and even though our littlest one often has the same reflection every night, “I play with Rylan and Max,” and our five-year-old, sweet Eeyore that she is, often has to be redirected from a list of the day’s grievances, it’s always a light that shines on the individual joys of each member of our family.
The next thing to follow was a radical decision about dessert. We always offered something little – a small piece of chocolate usually – with bigger desserts saved for weekends or special occasions. The constant looming promise of dessert meant that it became an extrinsic motivator, and the reward at the heart of all of our cajoling. One day I was bemoaning this state of affairs to my friend Jen, and she shared some wisdom:
· Give the kids healthy choices that are reasonably suited to their palates and then disengage from food fights (i.e. don’t bend over backwards to accommodate, don’t serve them food laced with Thai chili peppers, and definitely don’t argue with them about any of it).
- Enforce behavioral rules around table manners, but never around food.
- Stop stressing about what they eat! They won’t starve themselves and will eat if they’re hungry.
On her suggestion I also started reading about building healthy eating habits in kids, and I started realizing that my kids had usually gotten a whole lot of nutritious food in by dinner and generally didn’t eat a lot no matter what was on their plates. And in one of my readings I came across a radical idea: serve dessert first. The concept was simple – dessert shouldn’t be big enough to fill a kid up, and by giving them control over when they eat dessert, you neatly remove the object of so much tension around eating.
And so we tried it. We serve the kids healthy meals that have at least a few kid-friendly components. And they get to pick a small dessert at the start of the meal and get to choose when to eat it. Our rule-bound oldest usually saves hers, or perfectly apportions it to last through the meal, while my impulsive younger two girls usually devour it all within a millisecond of choosing what they want. But you know what? It works! No more drama, no more arguments about how many bites to eat to get dessert, no more stressing about getting food into them. And so we have space for much more rich conversation.
Our last two innovations have helped even more to make the dinner table a place of connection and also a place where we can help our kids build the skills they’ll need to thrive in the world. The first one is question of the day, which we do sporadically, but which is always fun. The idea is this: someone asks a question about anything and everyone takes turns answering. When it’s my husband, me, or our oldest asking, the question is usually something to the effect of: “If you could fly, where would you go first?” Or, “If you could build any kind of house for yourself, what would it look like?” When our five-year-old asks, the questions are a little stranger: “If you were on a skateboard and you were a tree, what color would you be?” Our creativity gets a workout when she’s in charge of the question!
Finally, the part of dinner I like best: my favorite mistake. We each take a turn (the littlest is still a little young for this one) sharing something we did wrong in the day, and how we fixed our mistake. We do this to normalize failure and get a daily reminder that mistakes are part of life and that it’s the recovery that counts. It also reminds our kids that even parents make mistakes, and even parents can and should admit their mistakes. And it sends the message that you’ve never done anything so terrible you can’t share it with your parents – a message I hope will stay strong through their teenage and adult years.
No doubt these strategies won’t work all the time for everyone. But the ways in which they have enriched our evenings, and in turn our family life, have been immeasurable. I hope one day my daughters look back on these meals as the source of so much good in their lives. I know I will.