merryb wrote:
> When I was a kid, we always had dinner as a family, and I still think
> it's important- my dad insisted on dinner at 6:30! I recently heard
> that most families do not eat dinner together, and I find that rather
> sad. I do understand that with conflicting schedules that is not an
> option, but if it's possible, it's a good time to catch up on the day.
> How about you- is it important to you to dine as a family?
Like you, as a child it was. We all had breakfast and dinner together
and when not in school lunch as well, except for pa who would have been
at work on weekdays and often saturdays.
For the last 15 years i have lived with a person who fixed their own
(and often as not my) breakfast, any sort of "lunch" was not any sort of
structured meal but i always, for 15 years fixed an evening meal usually
sitting down to eat it around 7 - 8 pm., depending on the time of year,
later in summer, earlier in winter.
And occasionally a midnight snack could turn into a sit down meal
And even more than "catching up" or discussing current events, i think
the family meal, "at table" (rather than scattered about the house
plugged into various electronic media) is as much a school desk as a
table to eat off of. It is where children learn some of the less
instinctual and more formalized of manners and deportment.
And that as much in any hillbilly cabin as any Royal Palace. The
rituals and manners are more similar than different. Even if one house
lays its forks tines down rather than up and/or the soup spoon
horizontally above rather than vertically beside the bowls
Were i in a position to do so .... "I" would dictate such gatherings as
a sort of family requirement that takes a very good excuse to get out of
much less be late for, if for no other reason than such an early
training of family routines programs a child to such a rhythm and
regularity of social custom that can help the child in not getting
swallowed up in every thing out side of the family, and thus losing a
more immediate & genuine sense of self, can help create a 'touch
stone' effect or other focusing metaphor that does not get lost or
hypnotized, at least as much, by the external seductions of the material
world. A place one can go for "reality" when the illusions of the
'material world' become too much. And that in these effects of family
as much as their physical presence, or lack there of.
I am appalled to see how many adolescents simply refuse to eat like a
normal person at table. And insist on and get away with sprawling on
the floor and stuffing their face while watching "T.V." in all its
various forms.* Even taking a meal in their rooms so they can "study"
while they eat, while a good excuse, should still, imo, be discouraged,
and a parent being able to tell the difference between an honest concern
for discipline and a feeble excuse.
Course i made it easy for me own mum.
.."...one time when he was in 2nd or 3rd grade maybe 6 - 8 years old and
just didn't want to get out of a warm bed on a cold morning he told his
mother he couldn't go to school because he was having his period."
It worked for my sister 7 - 8 times a month
So i gave what latter came to be described as a good imitation of my
sisters suffering from menstrual cramps, and i do remember thinking it
odd how i perceived my mother suddenly getting very rigidly angry at me,
her whole body and face stiffening up, like i had or was just about to
do something wrong, but then her grim face broke and she just started
laughing
Made me a cup of hot chocolate and told me to get ready for school
I shrugged it off, got up, dressed an went to school, one day blended
into the next and then about 15 years latter as i was arrogantly
posturing around, "cock sure" in my full alpha male plumage (military
uniform) she reminded me of me of the incident, and that at 21 or 22 i
might not understand as much as i thought i did.
--
JL
*i know more than one family where the parents and older children have
just accepted an essentially anti social behaviour on the part of the
younger members. Apparently if you force them to eat like normal
people, good food at certain times they make the experience so psychotic
that its just easier to let them take their food to their t.v.'s
computers or whatever other electronics they are addicted to.
And i have been told that short of sending the recalcitrants to an
expensive military style private school they feel checked or stymied,
the more the parents insist on a bare minimum of presence and decorum
the more hostility and psychosis they get and are hoping its just a phase.