My Dinner Time

Dinner time with children can be a real test of patience. I think anyone who has kids, once they get past the baby phase, can attest to this statement. It’s a pretty universal truth, that by the end of the day, attention spans and fuses are shorter than they had been a few hours earlier.

I’m someone who enjoys making a nice meal. I’ll take time during lunch if I’m working from home to start something cooking like a pulled pork or bolognese sauce. I really want my kids to grow up to have a healthy appreciation for food. Things like where it comes from, how it gets to our table,  how to make tasty meals and importantly how to sit down and enjoy a meal with people. Not to go full Anthony Bourdain, but I do believe that food is the window to culture and people.

I was also raised in a house where table manners were important. It’s something I’m grateful for. It’s something that my Dad especially instilled in us as we were growing up and there have been countless times in my adult life that I’m really grateful that he did and that I knew what to do. It’s also always been a time of connection, people pause and sit together and I really want that for our family. To sit down together and connect in between the hectic after school activities and bed time it feels like a nice window of potential calmness and togetherness.

The problem I have with dinner time is that in our house it’s usually quite fraught. Someone doesn’t like what we’ve made, even though they’ve never tried it. Or they aren’t hungry because they spent the preceding 30-45 minutes eating snack food. Or they just won’t sit at the table because something over in the lounge has suddenly become unbelievably interesting to them. For some reason this gets to me at dinner time, more than any other meal.

Breakfast is usually a staggered affair based on when different members of the family wake and also done while getting ready for school etc. and lunch is either done at school or on the weekends in between activities. So dinner most of the time feels like the only chance we have to sit down as a family and share a meal. But, like I said, it seldom plays out as the civilised affair I hope it will.

I find it frustrating and depending on where my head is at after the working day, it can for lack of a better term, bum me out. I’ve made something I think is delicious and that I know they would like if they were in the right frame of mind, but they won’t try it. Won’t even consider giving it a go. Then they leave the table as they suddenly remembered that they need to go to the toilet, or they have homework, or the toy that they never usually play with has suddenly become the most interesting thing in the world. It’s pretty easy to get worked up.

I try to remind myself that, just like me, by the end of the day, the kids are pretty zonked too. But sitting down and sharing a meal is a key life skill. Eating with good manners is a key life skill. Appreciating different cuisines will open so many doors and allow them to be a bit more comfortable in places and situations that are foreign. However, after a day of school or daycare they sometimes don’t have it in them to do that, and that’s OK. It’s normal. But that doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating for me as a parent who put effort and love into the dinner I make for them.

That’s an important point. I think food is an important love language for me. I’ve always enjoyed making nice food for my wife. I love the way she responds to it, how it makes her feel and, for me sometimes that’s the easiest/best way I can show her my love and devotion. By pouring my time, energy and love into something that she’ll enjoy and that nurtures her. I guess I’m probably trying to do the same with the kids too. That’s asking too much of them for that to be interpreted as such though. I read somewhere recently about expecting kids to be mind readers and how that leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. If I want them to understand the love aspect of the meal, I have to explain it to them in ways that they’ll understand without getting frustrated.

We try to do a thing every night over dinner where everyone in the family says what their favourite part of the day was. I like it because it seems to elicit a better response than the time-honoured parent/child interaction of ‘what did you do at school today?’ - ‘I don’t know’. But it also gives us a chance to practise some gratitude too. So I feel a bit sad that when dinner doesn’t play out as I hope that we sometimes miss out on this too.

Anyway, I know this is a universal thing. Kids have been exasperating their parents at meal times for as long as we’ve had dinner tables! But letting it impact your frustration levels and overall headspace is a choice. It’s how you frame it to yourself, not in a sense of lowering expectations, but in the sense that not every meal will be perfect but the effort remains the same. I have days when I don’t nail it, when I make the thing they devoured last week and this week it’s ‘disgusting’ and it pisses me off. But I always try to come back to the fact that those life skills I mentioned earlier are a long game. They don’t need to have them nailed by six or eight or whenever. We’re chipping away at it, so that one day down the road, they’ll be out there experiencing the world through food and it will have all been worth it.