On Oct 27, 5:04*pm, "M. JL Esq." > wrote:
> 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..

I love the way you think, JL Wish more people were on the same page!