5 Steps To Make Family Dinners Meaningful For Kids And Stress-Free For Parents
Moving.
How we are moving two houses into one without tearing our blended family apart.
So, for the past week now we have been moving our blended family into our forever house. The reason I am calling it our forever home now is that, when this is over, I may never ever want to move again 😉 Wow, are we tired. Luckily, the kids are still on summer break, but they sure are missing their routines.
For starters, we have, since Day One, been very adamant about our family meals. Especially about dinnertime. During dinner is when we really connect with our children (and with each other, and even more so on the days that we don’t have all the kids around) and I think it’s one of the most important roles I have ever had to fulfill as a (step-)mother.
When James and I met, his kids were on a pretty strict diet: Pop tarts for breakfast, cosmic brownies for lunch, and mac&cheese with cut-up hot dogs for dinner. On special days with Grandma or Grandpa, they got Burger King kids’ meals as a treat. They wouldn’t touch anything green, if their lives depended on it.
I remember having a conversation with James when we first became friends about our kids and mealtimes/eating habits came up. He was flabbergasted by the variety of foods my kids had eaten at that point and he was probably even a bit envious of our family dinners, even though – up until that point – he had not known about such a thing. None of his friends make family dinners a priority. Not very many Americans do, actually. Maybe the (in many families just occasional) Sunday dinner gets priority. And if you don’t know about other people’s family dinner habits, how would you know what you could be missing?
Actually, in my marriage, I made family dinners a huge priority. It was mega-important to me that, at one meal every day, the family would sit down together for a meal. It’s the European way. Family time is always more important than work. Growing up, my mother would have the breakfast table set every weekday morning by about 6:00 am, so that sometime before 7:00 am, we would all have eaten and had a conversation or two before my brother and I caught the bus to school at 7:00 am and my father went to work. German schools do not go through lunchtime, so we were typically home by 2:00 pm; 3 pm at the latest. My mother would have a hot lunch on the table and sit with us to discuss our day. Or to quiz us on school work, most notably all the capitals of every country in the world, many of them countries most Americans have never even heard of because they are smaller than some Americans’ backyards – Liechtenstein with its capital Vaduz, for instance. Sometimes, she’d quiz us on irregular verbs (only in English and French; my brother was left alone with Latin as my mother never took Latin in school), and – more infrequently – “Dreisatz” (If a:b, then c:x; therefore: x=c*b/a). Kind of like homeschooling, just not quite as hyped up as some people think homeschooling is in the USA, LOL.
My father was home infrequently for dinners, as he often had business dinners out. Sometimes, he would bring his foreign colleagues over to the house for a German dinner – my mother is an excellent cook and it trained my brother and me in making polite dinner conversations in English… win-win 😉
My ex-husband doesn’t eat breakfast, plus, he is a self-proclaimed “horizontalist” – meaning that he doesn’t like to get up in the mornings. By consequence, he likes to sleep in as late as humanly possible, in order to still get ready and arrive at work on time, or a little later than on time. Since I absolutely, as soon as the kids were born, insisted on one family meal per day, the choice of said meal became evident quickly: It would have to be a family dinner. Which worked out well, because I am a total night owl, so I didn’t mind spending most of my evening cleaning up from dinner.
Naturally, the first time James and his kids met my kids and me for dinner, his kids were quite overwhelmed by the salad bar and relegated very quickly to the only mac&cheese dish the restaurant had to offer. Peu à peu, we were able to introduce them to a variety of foods, and now – almost two years later – they have almost caught up with my two kids and are eating pretty much everything we put in front of them. It’s been hard work, but with these five simple steps, family dinners can be stress-free; even enjoyable and entertaining:
1. Make the family dinner special! That means, set the table nicely – real silverware (Gerber offers even toddler silverware, no need to use plastic) and china plates, ice water in glasses (oh, how I LOATHE the stupid foam cups that kids as second-class citizens in America get in restaurants), and candles on the table. Even if your children are still little, you can have candlelight dinners with them. Just move the candle far enough away from them that they can’t touch it.
2. While we’re at it – use good napkins, too. IKEA has great paper napkins, in case you have several little ones and don’t want to add washing and ironing cloth napkins to your daily routine. Just don’t use the hard one-ply napkins with which especially toddlers won’t want to wipe their mouths… those don’t even feel good on an adult’s skin! If money is tight, just get a roll of Viva paper towels; those are soft enough 🙂
3. Sit at the table. All of the family. One table. All at the same time. But… nobody starts eating until an adult says, “Bon Appétit.” Or “Enjoy your meal.” Or “Guten Appetit.” Whatever language you choose to speak with your children – just make sure mealtime is announced by you and not by them. And neither James nor I say “Bon appétit” until we make sure that every child has washed hands and is sitting correctly at the table (not on their knees, or – even worse – with one leg propped up, so we can see a knee behind the table), the girls have pulled their hair back and the boys have taken off their baseball caps. Unless it’s a yarmulke and it’s a Seder, there is no need to be covering your head at the dinner table 🙂
4. Have conversations during dinner. Ours is “Peaks & Pits”. You can read more about our “Peaks & Pits Game here: http://shakenstirredandblended.com/2018/07/17/big-news/
5. Everyone waits for the last person to finish one course before moving on to the next. Unless one child declares that he or she is “done”, with only the vegetables remaining on the plate. As logic dictates, James and I tell that child, “It’s fine that you have finished eating; you do not need to continue if you’re full. But you do need to sit here until everyone has finished.” Usually, that alone makes the child finish his or her vegetables, because you do need to clear your plate before dessert. If someone is too full for the vegetables, he or she surely doesn’t have any room left for ice cream or chocolate! 😉
And, finally, Bonus Point 6.
Involve the kids in planning/cooking the meal, or setting/clearing the table. Start small – for example, James’ kids were used to having their Burger King Kids’ meals set up in front of them and then cleaned up for them. At the kitchen island. In the beginning, we tasked his older child (the eldest of the four) with lighting the candles. My daughter, the second oldest, was already so used to having to help setting the table that she would automatically ask if she could help. When I let her help, I would allow her to choose the seating arrangements. That didn’t sit well with James’ kids, especially his older one who was used to being treated like a little prince before. But because he’s not only a little spoiled, but also incredibly smart, he figured out really fast that if he helped set the table, he would be allowed to choose the seating arrangements. Said, done, he ruled, and dinner took off without a hitch. Especially in a blended family, and even more so if the kids are already past the toddler stage and kind of set in their ways, you have to always give a little to get a lot in return. And our kids, who – by the grace of God – all happen to be sweet kiddos to begin with, have been amazing us every step of the way. Somehow, through tears and tantrums, loving and laughing, we grew together and our kids are better off.
They now try to out-do each other on how many green leafy vegetables they can eat, using their fork&knife! We are truly lucky to have incredible kiddos, and even luckier to have each other to count on to raise them.
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
