Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne

Author:Kim John Payne [Payne, Kim John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-51698-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Family Dinner

In my years as a Waldorf teacher I noticed a curious phenomenon. A regular part of the kindergartner’s day is the preparation of a snack. This process might include chopping vegetables for soup, peeling apples, or kneading dough for loaves of bread. Invariably parents would be dumbfounded to learn that at school their son or daughter ate whatever the snack was—vegetable soup or a warm porridge—with gusto.

“Impossible! Taylor only eats two things: bow-tie pasta with butter, or waffles.” Vegetable soup? How could this be? Throughout the year, parents would figure ways to visit the classroom at snack time, looking for the trick, the sleight of hand that would explain this miracle. They would look at the kindergarten teachers searchingly: “There is something magical about her … but what can it be?”

The magic, it turns out, is in the process. Children who’ve had a role in preparing a meal assume ownership of it. More simply: When children make the food, they’re less likely to throw it, or refuse it. In the wonderful world of the Waldorf kindergarten, “snack” is not just something to eat, it is an event. There is reverence associated with the whole process: the preparation, eating, and the cleaning up afterward. Everyone is involved.

Social scientists have scrutinized the importance of “the family dinner” since the 1980s, when it was clear that this once-sacred ritual was on the endangered list. Numerous years and studies were devoted to chicken-and-egg questions: Was it the quality of the time together that determined the effects? Were kids who did better in school more likely to come from families who ate dinner together, or was it the eating together as a family that influenced the kids’ better grades?

The answer, again, is in the process, not the particulars. Tonight’s dinner may not be a gourmet triumph, the conversation might ramble, and uninvited guests may join the family gathering: bickering, or underlying tensions from the day. Process, it turns out, allows for bad nights, bad moods, even (heaven forbid) bad food. Process (or rhythm) braids those particulars, with the golden moments, too, into a strong, unifying bond. This is what we do together, and mean to one another, good day, good meal, or bad.

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