When I was growing up, my mother always made sure we were together for dinner. Even as we got older, and through our busy teen years, the dinner table was full – and if you were home then you would sit with the rest of the family to eat. When I got married and moved out, I tried to keep up this tradition because it was important for me. Eventually, my hubby and I fell out of this ritual because he was working late nights.
Now that my daughter is old enough to communicate with us, I felt that it was important for us to start eating at the dinner table together. I noticed that she was falling into poor eating habits lately, and I wanted to create an environment where we would all sit together to eat without the television getting in the way of communication. I usually use the tv to distract her so I can get some food in her belly – but this is not the direction I wanted my family to go. I always felt that the dinner table was the most important place to get to know the people in your family and not lose touch with them.
Yesterday I declared that we were going to eat as a family. My hubby grumbled at the thought of not having access to the big screen at the dinner table – but I insisted, and he wasn’t going to ruin this for me. I prepared pork chops, oven potatoes, and green beans and hoped my little one would actually eat her dinner and not go to bed hungry another night. This has been a huge issue for us, because she wakes up in the middle of the night hungry and will only take milk. I fixed her a big girl plate with whole wheat pasta, a pork chop, and green beans. To my amazement, she ate her beans and her pasta, leaving behind the pork chop. It’s ok – the more you expose children to foods, the better chance they will eat it. She is a good meat eater – but the panko-crusted pork chop just didn’t appeal to her this time.
While we were cleaning up the dinner table, my hubby admitted that he actually enjoyed sitting at the table again. We both agreed that it feels more like family with our toddler at the table – when we were newlyweds, we missed the comfort of many family members around us and sitting at the empty dinner table wasn’t cutting it for either of us.
Do you sit down to eat with your family?
I am a big believer in family dinner. We eat ate the table as the norm. There are of course times when that doesn’t happen, but at least 5 days a week, as a family, we eat together at the table.
You will really learn to love this a bit more as your little one gets a little older. The older kids share things at the dinner table that I think otherwise they just wouldn’t. It’s an open dialogue and they choose to share as opposed to sharing when asked. Does that makes sense?
For me, it’s not something I am willing to bend on. I love our dinner time together! 😀
Great post!
I think my picky preschoolers would eat more if we all ate at the table.
We’re the same way. Growing up, our families sat together at the table, but after we got married, it just seemed too lonely to sit at our table so we moved to the living room. However, in the last few weeks, we’ve gravitated back to the table to sit down with our 15 month old and we all eat together. It’s a great feeling to be able to sit down as a family and eat together, and it’s something I think we’ll continue to do as she gets older. Dinner family time was one of my favorite times growing up, and I’m hoping it becomes a favorite for my daughter, too. 🙂
We bought a new table and chairs about 4 months ago, our other one was falling apart. Since we got them we have being eating together and I really enjoy it. My husband works at 11pm-7am right now, so we eat dinner just after he gets up from sleeping, it’s really his breakfast, but we have a great time eating together. Our son is picky and our daughter doesn’t want to stop eating. It’s funny sometimes. I try to give about 3 choices like you do so that the kids will eat something for dinner.