Excerpted from THE FAMILY DINNER: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David with recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt. Copyright © 2010 by Hybrid Nation, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
I would be remiss in writing a book about family dinner if I didn't include families who are dealing with divorce, myself included. Today half of all marriages end in divorce. That's an awful lot of family dinners in jeopardy. It's unfortunate that just as kids need rituals most, when they are the most fragile and insecure, a great stabilizer like family dinner is often the first thing to go. Lots of factors contribute to this: the pain of the empty seat (no one wants to sit there, and if they did they would regret it when the reprimand came: "But that's Dad's seat!"); the emotional wreckage of the remaining parent; the sadness of the kids, often masked by sullenness; the convenient mindless tempting escape of the television . . . the list is endless.
When marriages break up, kids need the comfort of routine more than ever. When life is suddenly unpredictable and scary, rituals come to the rescue doing what they do best, providing a sense of predictability and normalcy, stability and security, comfort and love. I speak from personal experience. All the rituals I had spent years establishing helped me and my kids enormously, and Larry, too. Continuing them sent the message loud and clear that although our family was changing, life would go on, routines would continue, dinner would be served.
The first month of transition out of my marriage is a complete blur now, but I do remember insisting on dinners as usual every night at six thirty with my daughters. No one felt much like eating, but that didn't really matter.
Soon after, Larry and I decided to try something a little unorthodox. It's called "nesting." A split couple move back and forth in and out of the shared house so that the kids don't have to. Larry got an apartment, but had dinner with the girls and stayed at the house every Monday and Wednesday night. I would leave right before dinner and stay at my sister's house nearby.
Nesting isn't something everyone can do; both parties really have to cooperate and have the resources to do it. Luckily for us, it worked: Rituals remained intact, bedrooms stayed the same, even Dad coming home two nights a week helped every- one ease into the change. Still, I remember a lot of brooding meals and awkward, forced conversation between bites. I also remember making a lot of pleading phone calls to family members and friends begging them to come to dinner to help relieve the tension and provide some distraction. Skipping organized dinners and letting everyone do their own thing would have taken some of the pressure off the kids and me, but only temporarily. I was desperate to get back to feeling "normal" as soon as possible, and the fewer things that changed, the better off we would all be.
If family dinner had stopped, the lesson to my kids (and to myself) would be that we weren't whole anymore, that something was broken forever. I honestly didn't believe that to be true. The message I did believe, and the one our continuing dinners provided was--This family is changing, we are in a transition, but we are still a family! Not only that, but we are a family that is going to get through this and come out strong and connected.
Family dinner helped all of us weather the rough days by forcing us to deal with one another, by reminding all of us every day that we were still a family. Thank goodness for that toolbox of table games. When things got uncomfortable and no one was talking, I would toss out a spelling challenge, or play the Pet Peeve game. My new full-time job was to make sure that despite this change, my family didn't fall apart. Our dinner rituals, thank goodness, helped me accomplish that.
Then I took this concept one step farther. I had the notion (hope) that eventually I could even get my ex back to the table, with me sitting at it, for a once-a-month, dare I say once-every-other-week, family dinner. Crazy, you say? Maybe it was, but I was eager to try. I wanted a different divorce model for my kids. They had lots of friends who were from broken homes (okay, that is a crazy expression we have to stop using. Could we make people feel even worse than they already do?), and whose parents were in constant battle. I didn't want to put my girls through that. They were innocent bystanders and deserved better.
Furthermore, I wanted them to understand that just because the marriage ended, it didn't mean you no longer care about the other person or wanted them cut out of your life completely. I believe it's possible to have a loving divorce. It takes an enormous amount of courage to change your life. No one wants a marriage to end; no one wants to have that heart-crushing conversation with his or her kids, but it happens.
Most parents going through a divorce want to do what is best for their kids, and that is always, always going to be an amicable split and co-parenting arrangement. I wanted an open line to my girls' dad so that we could be in sync as we headed into those turbulent teen seas. I wanted access and a united front for all the important decisions and issues looming ahead. I wanted both homes to have consistent values and rules if possible. I wanted to disarm my kids' potential bag of tricks. You know, the game where they play one parent against the other: "But Dad said . . ." or "At Dad's I can . . ." I wanted communication and transparency.
I also didn't want to cheat myself out of seeing one of my kids' most important relationships change and evolve as they got older. I didn't want to be excluded from all the laughs and inside jokes they shared with their father, and I didn't want to have that awful sense of feeling left out of half of my kids' life. I didn't want my kids thinking that their two parents weren't in constant contact and in total agreement. I didn't want to lose too much parental power.
Ultimately, I wanted Larry and me to remain captains of our family ship, a perfect analogy coined by parenting guru Susan Stiffelman (Parenting Without Power Struggles). She says, "Kids need us to be the captain of the ship in their lives. This isn't about parents being in control; it's about being in charge. When we refuse to deal with reality as it is we leave the child without the sense of comfort that comes from knowing he has someone capable of getting him safely through whatever crisis he might be experiencing. When we fully inhabit the role of captain of the ship of our family, we set the stage for providing the quiet and comforting authority that our children so profoundly need." Big agenda, I know, but I have taken on big challenges before! Family dinner would be the vehicle to get me there. Slowly, I started to ask Larry if he would have dinner with the kids and me on one of my nights. I received quite a few emphatic nos and then, lo and behold, I got a yes.
That first dinner was exactly what you can imagine: awkward and miserable, but mercifully quick. The girls downed their food in one gulp and hightailed it out of the kitchen with excuses of showers and homework. Larry left pretty quickly, too. Time was on my side, though. One meal turned into several, and soon enough we got back to our old family dinner ritual of "If It's Sunday We Must Be Eating Chinese Food." I would order the favorites and he would do the pickup on his way over to the house.
Eventually, the meals got a little longer, a little more relaxed; one night Larry even stayed for a movie afterward. Within the year, we branched out and started including local restaurants--still mostly Chinese, but at least we were out of the house! To this day I enjoy the surprised look on people's faces when they recognize Larry and realize he is having dinner with the kids and me! I'm sure one day I will read a gossip item saying how Larry was out to dinner with a woman who looks just like his ex-wife! Ha. It is his ex!
I wanted a happier, more inclusive divorce than what is generally the norm. I fought for it, but I couldn't do it alone. It took both parents and two great kids and a hexagon-shaped table, all the interactive recipes in this book, and all the word games that forced us to laugh even when we were hurting. During the most challenging time in my life, family dinner provided the space to reconnect with one another, to shore one another up, to remind us that we were okay. The shared meal was the path in. Amen.
Marina's DIVORCE BROWNIES
YOU NEED
8 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate 1 cup (2 sticks) butter 5 eggs 3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla 11⁄2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 21⁄2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts, toasted 1 teaspoon orange zest
TO MAKE 24 BROWNIES
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13 pan. Over low heat, melt the chocolate and butter in asaucepan. Set aside. Beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla at high speed for 10
minutes in a mixer. Fold in the chocolate mixture, flour, and salt until just mixed. Stir in the nuts and lastly, the orange zest. Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. (Don't overbake.) Let cool at room temperature.
This can be served slightly warm with ice cream. It's delicious with berries, too.
Brian Gresko: The Real Magic of Parenting Doesn't Happen on Christmas
Thanks for sharing and the best of luck on the rest of your journey in life.
My dad moved out when I was 2, and I grew up setting the table with a fork and spoon (mom and me) and always asking if we needed a knife (dad). We got along without him, but at what cost? Later, as a husband and father myself, I struggled with how to do it. It has not been easy. Overall, I think it should be harder to get married and have children than it is to get out of it.
To put so much thought and effort into getting along, after the divorce.
Wouldn't it have been better for the children to work at the relationship while still in the marriage?
I have one divorce under my belt and now one almost 30 year old marriage. Yes, we discussed divorce when things were bad, but neither one of us could go through with it. Now, I know why. Because together is better. Now better than ever! And no little kids who come knocking on the door!
Isn't it better than ironic that these two figured out how to heal some of the the damage they'd done to their marriage, and to their children who lived through their split by crafting an unconventional, caring post divorce life?
1. "The Ten Year Rule": Do not do or even say anything without considering what effect actions or statements will have in ten years.
2. Always eat with your children, and not in front of a screen.
I ignored lawyer advice to "crush" my ex financially. How could that possibly be in our child's best interest? I made a point of cooking dinner and serving it, even if it meant night after night of baked chicken or plain pasta. (The main criterion back then was "no black specks" in the food.)
The effort I put into adhering to these two rules pays off today. We are enjoying discovering new foods and places (and soon, colleges). The extended family of parents, step-parents, and ex-es gets along well and we invest our love and emotion where it belongs: in our own families and not in the past.
The Davids experiences are nearly identical to mine, just without the groundbreaking comedy shows or leadership positions in the environmental movement, though ether of those would have been nice to have along the way. I recommend this article to any family now going through divorce.
With the kind of money that she and her ex have, they can afford to be "unorthodox" in their approach towards co-parenting. That's a rare luxury that most people can only fantasize about.
My advice: avoid a custody battle at all costs. I can guarantee that if the Davids go down that road, none of them will have a nice family dinner together, ever again.
I'm glad if it works - and needless to say this particular family's resources are vast.
But were it not for Ms. David, what would have happened?
In my situation, I learned a lot more about the father of my child AFTER I finally left the marriage: he married a student half his age, and has been completely oblivious to our daughter. Any attempts I made to keep him connected to her daily life, and to co-parent were rejected. Even now, ten years later, it still burns in my heart, the way he could so blithely abandon his daughter.
My point: in general, it is the woman/mother who understands what the children of divorce go through emotionally, and who works to make their shattered world bearable. Mr. David strikes me as a typical self-centered guy, who is lucky to have such a devoted mother to his daughters.
I love that you created your own definition of what divorce means rather than merely accepting some tired traditional roles where all too often family members tend to go in different directions. And it's great that each of you have devoted yourselves to make the love of your family stronger.
Thanks for the link to The Family Dinner. I will bring it with me for the family holiday dinners.
One thing that drove my kids nuts was the fact that their Mom and I still talked after the divorce, and they couldn't get away with anything. If it weren't for my wonderful current wife, I don't think I would have had as positive relationship with my ex-wife. In addition, the family dinner (sans ex-wife) was a hassle for my older kids (from the divorce) because they weren't used to that at their Mom's house. But, they both now live with me and, while they won't admit it, the family dinner makes them feel, well, part of the family.