The Power of a Placemat

I just read today of a placemat the features the colors of balanced diet, available for free, in Brooklyn, NY.

As a mid-century, middle-class American, I grew up on a diet of a paper placemats at the predecessors to today's fast-food chains. (Yes, there was a time before McDonald's.) Sometimes the placemat featured simple games to pass the time. Sometimes the placemat was accompanied by crayons for kids to draw. Sometimes the placemat simply featured the children's menu or desserts that would boost the price of the check.

When I became a Late 20th Century Mother, my respect for mats grew and grew. As soon as my daughter was ready for a high-chair, I knew we needed a "splat mat," one of those yards of plastic material with inane decorations to cover the floor under the high chair for the debris of baby and toddler meals.

When it was time for the table, a placemat was in order. Then, as now, street vendors in Manhattan sold these for reasonable prices such as $3 or 2/$5. Even I knew my "genius" wasn't ready for multiplication tables so I bought the ones with pictures of farm animals and the like. As she got a little older, but meal-time spills remained a constant, I branched out to dinosaurs and other illustrations.

She is now in college and as she wrote in her application essay, "A plastic placemat with pictures of the presidents piqued my interest in history....My future may include a doctorate in history for work as a scholar in a university, museum or historic village. Hard to believe I owe it all to a placemat."

Bravo to Brooklyn's introduction of the nutritional placemat. I'd like to see placemats handed to parents at each immunization and well-child visit. The placemat as teaching tool warrants recognition. It says, "An adult cares. An adult ensures there is mealtime. And an adult spends that time talking with you." And that is the true power of a placemat.

Comments

[SamThornton]

Interesting, Marilyn. I taught myself to read using SuperMan and BatMan comics. Got curious about what that squiggly stuff in the balloons was all about. Thank you Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Still searching for the Bat Cave.