Family Dinners
I've been in bed all day, not feeling absolutely horrible, but also having zero energy to do anything else. My thinking was that if I spend one day resting and knocking this out of my system, then I'll be good to go and can avoid a lingering illness. We'll see if I was right.
To fend off boredom, I spent a long time this afternoon doing some significant work on preparing for the poetry workshop that J. and I will be doing in February. As I was working on this, I came across a quote by C. S. Lewis.
"The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal." -from The Weight of Glory (1949)
Since I seem to be on an opinionated roll this week, I thought why stop now, so decided to write on another of my pet topics: family dinners. Ready?
If you hadn't already gathered, the whole reason to my weekly menu planning is so that we can have dinner together as a family. The meal planning is simply a means to an end. In truth, I don't much care what you have for dinner or who makes it, I care far more about that you have that meal together.
I won't rehash the results of the myriad of studies out there that show the overwhelming benefit to families and the children in them from eating dinner together. Google 'benefits of family dinners' and near instantaneously you will have more than twenty millions results at your fingertips. If you aren't familiar with those benefits, I do suggest you look them up. But I want to talk about making family dinners a priority, and then talk about the joy you are missing if you do not.
This is going to sound more than a little bit like the post I wrote earlier this month about taking back your family's life. Because in order to make family dinners happen, taking control of your family's schedule is the first thing that needs to happen. There is no way to eat dinner together if no one is home or if everyone is spending every waking minute in the car. I have heard more than a few mothers lament that they would love to have dinner together, but then with a sigh, they start to reel off what sport or activity happens each day of the week and how it just doesn't work.
(Now, fair warning, I've been stuck all day in bed. I may come across as a bit more snarky than I usually do. It is probably closer to my usual self as opposed to my calm and even keeled writing persona. Hold on.)
What I always want to ask these mothers is: If you don't want to drive to all these activities, then why on God's green earth did you sign up for them? Someone had to sign up, and I'm pretty sure that no one was holding a gun to your head until you registered. I'm also pretty sure that some other person didn't sign their children up for activities while they slept, and upon waking they discovered they were overbooked. In order to take back your family's life, someone has to own up to the overburdened chaos.
But I don't ask these questions because I know that deep down, these mothers may give lip service to the idea of family dinners, but they don't really want them because they would make them happen if they did. If you think you want to do something but actively work against it happening it is the same thing as outwardly saying you do not want it. I think sometimes we don't even realize what we believe because we haven't listened to what our actions are telling us.
To eat dinner together, it might mean that you need to drop some activities. You know what? The world will not stop spinning. Your child will still grow up, get into college, and become an adult. Stopping the treadmill of activity in favor of a slower pace and sharing meals together will not ruin your child, but may very well be the best thing you can do for them. (Go read that research again if you need to.)
You only get a certain amount of years with your children. How do you want to spend them? By creating a family culture of eating dinner together, you will have given them years of memories. Memories filled with the warmth and love that sharing a meal can bring. What else evokes a sense of home more than good food surrounded by people who love you?
Now I don't want to be legalistic about this. We eat dinner together every night that we can. For most nights that means most of us eat together. Sometimes others in the household are at work or are at school. Those who are home still eat together, saving what we can for those who are coming later. On Wednesdays, some of us who have activities at church need to eat early to get there on time. We do that and everyone else sits down together at the regular(ish) time. I love my Bible study, the girls love their youth group, but I really dislike that it cuts into our meal time together, and I'm always a little relieved when the programs end for the summer. I also do not schedule anything else that occurs over dinner time because we have our crazy Wednesday nights. I don't want to give up another dinner time.
Some people cannot eat dinner together because a spouse works. I have heard of some families in that situation changing their family meal to breakfast or lunch, depending on what their schedule is. It is not dinner itself that is sacrosanct, but the fact you are sharing a meal together each day.
But why go to so much trouble over this? Why limit activities that my children might enjoy? Why make this a thing?
Because it brings us joy. Eating dinner together is pretty much the highlight of they day for nearly everyone. We enjoy each other's company. We laugh. We have fun. Teens sometimes employ their recreational bickering skills. We talk about what we did. We discuss things we've learned. Inevitably someone needs to look something up on their phone to win a discussion (otherwise phones are not invited to the table.) We enjoy our food. And we laugh some more. If everyone is home and at the table, someone generally starts crying because they are laughing too hard. It's loud. It's a bit chaotic. And it's wonderful.
Oh, every so often we'll have an off night. If people are over tired or not feeling well things are less enjoyable. Or if a couple of people are feeling at odds with one another, it can bring down the tenor of the table. But this doesn't happen often, and tomorrow is another day and another dinner.
This ability to sit and eat and discuss at the table didn't happen over night. We have been doing this every since... well, ever since we became a family. High chairs were always pulled up next to the table and babies practiced with finger food while the rest ate. Toddlers sat at the table with us, being toddlers but also learning what a family meal looked like and how one behaved. When children were all very young, the heavy lifting of the conversation was done by J. and I, but it didn't take long for children to start to join in. There is no better place to learn conversation than sitting at a table together.
What if this is all new to you? What if your children haven't had years to practice table manners and dinner conversation skills? All the more reason to start right now! It will take a while. It may feel awkward. You might have to employ some conversation generating tactics to get you over the initial hump. (Google 'dinner conversation starters' and you'll get six million pages of suggestions.) Manners may be rough at first. Give yourselves some grace. Decide on one dinner skill you want to focus on and start with just that, letting everything else slide. This is what we do with our newly home older children for whom this whole dinner-thing is often a mystery. Along the way we've also had to be pretty specific about table rules ourselves... I've had to explicitly state no feet on the table more than once for example.
But most of all, enjoy yourselves. Make it fun. Make it something your children want to do every night. Have a joke night where everyone brings a joke to the table. Tell about the funniest thing that happened to you that day. Laugh. A lot. Remember how fast the time with these amazing people who are your children really goes. You won't regret it, I promise.
To fend off boredom, I spent a long time this afternoon doing some significant work on preparing for the poetry workshop that J. and I will be doing in February. As I was working on this, I came across a quote by C. S. Lewis.
"The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal." -from The Weight of Glory (1949)
Since I seem to be on an opinionated roll this week, I thought why stop now, so decided to write on another of my pet topics: family dinners. Ready?
If you hadn't already gathered, the whole reason to my weekly menu planning is so that we can have dinner together as a family. The meal planning is simply a means to an end. In truth, I don't much care what you have for dinner or who makes it, I care far more about that you have that meal together.
I won't rehash the results of the myriad of studies out there that show the overwhelming benefit to families and the children in them from eating dinner together. Google 'benefits of family dinners' and near instantaneously you will have more than twenty millions results at your fingertips. If you aren't familiar with those benefits, I do suggest you look them up. But I want to talk about making family dinners a priority, and then talk about the joy you are missing if you do not.
This is going to sound more than a little bit like the post I wrote earlier this month about taking back your family's life. Because in order to make family dinners happen, taking control of your family's schedule is the first thing that needs to happen. There is no way to eat dinner together if no one is home or if everyone is spending every waking minute in the car. I have heard more than a few mothers lament that they would love to have dinner together, but then with a sigh, they start to reel off what sport or activity happens each day of the week and how it just doesn't work.
(Now, fair warning, I've been stuck all day in bed. I may come across as a bit more snarky than I usually do. It is probably closer to my usual self as opposed to my calm and even keeled writing persona. Hold on.)
What I always want to ask these mothers is: If you don't want to drive to all these activities, then why on God's green earth did you sign up for them? Someone had to sign up, and I'm pretty sure that no one was holding a gun to your head until you registered. I'm also pretty sure that some other person didn't sign their children up for activities while they slept, and upon waking they discovered they were overbooked. In order to take back your family's life, someone has to own up to the overburdened chaos.
But I don't ask these questions because I know that deep down, these mothers may give lip service to the idea of family dinners, but they don't really want them because they would make them happen if they did. If you think you want to do something but actively work against it happening it is the same thing as outwardly saying you do not want it. I think sometimes we don't even realize what we believe because we haven't listened to what our actions are telling us.
To eat dinner together, it might mean that you need to drop some activities. You know what? The world will not stop spinning. Your child will still grow up, get into college, and become an adult. Stopping the treadmill of activity in favor of a slower pace and sharing meals together will not ruin your child, but may very well be the best thing you can do for them. (Go read that research again if you need to.)
You only get a certain amount of years with your children. How do you want to spend them? By creating a family culture of eating dinner together, you will have given them years of memories. Memories filled with the warmth and love that sharing a meal can bring. What else evokes a sense of home more than good food surrounded by people who love you?
Now I don't want to be legalistic about this. We eat dinner together every night that we can. For most nights that means most of us eat together. Sometimes others in the household are at work or are at school. Those who are home still eat together, saving what we can for those who are coming later. On Wednesdays, some of us who have activities at church need to eat early to get there on time. We do that and everyone else sits down together at the regular(ish) time. I love my Bible study, the girls love their youth group, but I really dislike that it cuts into our meal time together, and I'm always a little relieved when the programs end for the summer. I also do not schedule anything else that occurs over dinner time because we have our crazy Wednesday nights. I don't want to give up another dinner time.
Some people cannot eat dinner together because a spouse works. I have heard of some families in that situation changing their family meal to breakfast or lunch, depending on what their schedule is. It is not dinner itself that is sacrosanct, but the fact you are sharing a meal together each day.
But why go to so much trouble over this? Why limit activities that my children might enjoy? Why make this a thing?
Because it brings us joy. Eating dinner together is pretty much the highlight of they day for nearly everyone. We enjoy each other's company. We laugh. We have fun. Teens sometimes employ their recreational bickering skills. We talk about what we did. We discuss things we've learned. Inevitably someone needs to look something up on their phone to win a discussion (otherwise phones are not invited to the table.) We enjoy our food. And we laugh some more. If everyone is home and at the table, someone generally starts crying because they are laughing too hard. It's loud. It's a bit chaotic. And it's wonderful.
Oh, every so often we'll have an off night. If people are over tired or not feeling well things are less enjoyable. Or if a couple of people are feeling at odds with one another, it can bring down the tenor of the table. But this doesn't happen often, and tomorrow is another day and another dinner.
This ability to sit and eat and discuss at the table didn't happen over night. We have been doing this every since... well, ever since we became a family. High chairs were always pulled up next to the table and babies practiced with finger food while the rest ate. Toddlers sat at the table with us, being toddlers but also learning what a family meal looked like and how one behaved. When children were all very young, the heavy lifting of the conversation was done by J. and I, but it didn't take long for children to start to join in. There is no better place to learn conversation than sitting at a table together.
What if this is all new to you? What if your children haven't had years to practice table manners and dinner conversation skills? All the more reason to start right now! It will take a while. It may feel awkward. You might have to employ some conversation generating tactics to get you over the initial hump. (Google 'dinner conversation starters' and you'll get six million pages of suggestions.) Manners may be rough at first. Give yourselves some grace. Decide on one dinner skill you want to focus on and start with just that, letting everything else slide. This is what we do with our newly home older children for whom this whole dinner-thing is often a mystery. Along the way we've also had to be pretty specific about table rules ourselves... I've had to explicitly state no feet on the table more than once for example.
But most of all, enjoy yourselves. Make it fun. Make it something your children want to do every night. Have a joke night where everyone brings a joke to the table. Tell about the funniest thing that happened to you that day. Laugh. A lot. Remember how fast the time with these amazing people who are your children really goes. You won't regret it, I promise.
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