What's something wrong with family meals?

Family dinner is something that has affected my life for the better. But the sad thing is that most people don't get the opportunity to eat as a family any longer. If mom is not taking the children to soccer practice, then Dad is working late that night. It looks like an almost impossible task to get a family of 5 to be at the dinner table at the same time. I just want to share what my family has done to have shown victory.



While my husband and I speak about parenting and food, we are unavoidably struck by how immensely different our views are. He spends every day treating people whose life have been ruined, either temporarily or forever, by their relationship with food. These are people who struggle to turn food back into something that stays them alive, who have to unfasten from months of considering food and eating as something completely unusual from nourishment.



I, on the other hand, take sustenance not just from food itself, but from the process of procuring and providing it. Whether I'm recipe-hunting, scouring a farmer's market for ingredients, or experimenting with a new cooking technique, I take enormous pleasure in nourishing both my family and myself. From the satisfaction of a fully-stocked kitchen to the accomplishment of creating a meal to enjoy together at the end of the day, food fulfills me on a daily basis.



Yet the nagging truth is that often, these lovingly prepared meals are consumed in an atmosphere of strife and squabbling. And that's where my husband's and my vastly different experiences of food during the day begin to converge: into a single, stressed-out family dinner. Sometimes it's the food itself that's a problem: one child loves the meal while the other goes on immediate hunger strike at the mere suggestion of eating it. Or else it's the way it's being eaten: manners disregarded, children jumping up and down from the table, food morsels flying in all directions. And at other times, our family dinner simply falls victim to the ineffable mood of the moment: someone's tired and cranky, someone's feelings are hurt, someone just can't stop kicking her sister under the table. It's enough to make us wish, regularly, that we were somewhere anywhere else.



So here we are, a family with great resources and love, a father who organizes his work schedule around being home for dinner, a mother who actually looks forward to providing meals for her family, and even we can't enjoy those meals? Something is wrong with this picture, and we wonder what we can do to set it right again.



Every summer we spend a week at a family resort in Vermont, where we get to swim in Lake Champlain, try archery, kayaking and other activities we haven't indulged in since our own camp days, and enjoy time with other families. But the best thing of all the aspect of the week that some guests joke ought to be the resort's official motto is Twenty Meals Without Your Kids. Yes, it's true: the children eat lunch and dinner and, should you choose, breakfast too with their camp groups, freeing their parents to enjoy mealtimes again. No nagging, no complaining, no bribes, threats or rewards: paradise! It's amazing how revitalized we feel after a week's reprieve from family meals. Yet as much as we enjoy the kid-free meal plan, it also seems another depressing strike against our struggle to pursue the platonic ideal of Family Dinner.



So what can we do to bring the joy back into eating together? There's letting the children take part in meal preparation--when there's time for that, between after school activities and homework. There's picking our battles when it comes to enforcing manners: maybe a dropped napkin or a few unauthorized trips to the center of the room to demonstrate dance moves are ok. But how to get over that last and highest hurdle: making sure our kids eat enough to satisfy their hunger enough "healthy food," moreover without turning them into food neurotics? Do you remember Portnoy's mother standing over him during meals with a sharp knife in hand? I don't want to be her and I really don't want my children to grow up and remember me that way! Not to mention that all this cajoling, threatening and nagging is ruining my own enjoyment of meals.



So that's my goal, then. I know it appears humble and maybe stupid, when there are those whose struggles with food run much deeper and cut more keenly. And I also know enough about parenting by now to understand we are going to reach any goal just in fits and begins, that as soon as we think we might have it figured out, we are going to be impolitely returned to square one. But it seems like one worth striving for: making meals fun again, and shedding enough of the attendant stresses so that we can actually be free to eat and enjoy them. Most of all, harmonious family meals are a huge gift to children, helping them learn that meals, and food, are there both to nourish and to be loved: nothing more and nothing less.



Creating a ritual that is particular and unusual from all the other days of the week might be more appreciated by the kids. One could structure that time together for story telling or summarizing the month's activities. If the kids felt more at ease to be themselves throughout the week's meals they might be more compliant when asked to behave some way once a week.



Copyright by Lucy, a beautiful girl who likes collecting things, shopping online and playing computer, has a coach outlet store and coach outlet online with lots of fashion things.