We have a joke in my house that I could save a lot of effort by creating a tape-recording to use at the dinner table. One click of the Play button and there would be an endless loop of “Napkins on laps. . . I shouldn’t be seeing your knees above the table. . . That’s not finger food . . . Use a knife to cut that . . .” while I sit back quietly and enjoy my meal.
So it was with some surprise that I saw kid-and-food expert Ellyn Satter‘s opinion, articulated in yesterday’s post, that “keeping after [your child] to use her silverware or napkin” is applying too much pressure at meal times. Because truly, without the low-level but fairly constant correction going on in my house, we’d all be living in a barnyard.
I went back to Satter and asked for clarification. Here’s her response to me:
To put a finer point on it, it has to do with making eating unpleasant. Children are entitled to enjoy their meals and will eat and learn best when they do that. Children push themselves along to eat the way their parents eat. Keeping after them about table manners takes away their pleasure in eating and interferes with their learning.
I think, then, what Satter is saying is that it’s a question of tone and frequency. The occasional pleasant reminder about manners is OK, but hectoring a child is not. I also think there’s a difference between constantly correcting the toddler or preschooler, for whom mastery of silverware and other niceties is asking an awful lot, versus the older, school-aged child who can reasonably be expected to use good table manners, at least most of the time.
Overall, I agree with Satter’s basic principle that mealtime must, above all things, be pleasant. Not that it would happen very often anyway, but we would never lecture or discipline our kids at the dinner table for something that happened earlier in the day, nor would we discuss any other topic likely to upset someone.
It’s always really touching to me how disappointed my kids are if, for some reason, it isn’t possible on a given night for everyone to eat together. I know how hard it is for many families to pull off the family dinner – for reasons entirely out of their control – and I feel privileged that we’re able to do it on a regular basis.
But with Satter’s advice ringing in my ears, I’ll ditch the idea of a tape recording and maybe tone the manners thing down a bit. Just don’t blame me if my kids come to your house, put their feet up on your kitchen table and proceed to snarf and slurp with abandon.
[Ed Note: See the follow-up to this post here]
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Love it! Bring your kids to my house!
Snarf and slurp!
I totally agree with making family meals a priority and to not talk about distressing topics during that time. We do however discuss things, current events(which I guess could be upsetting too), what our day was like, successes big and small. I think we are lucky that with a teenager we still are able to have a Family meal.
I think we could have done better in the manners department. This fork goes here, use this fork with the salad. A fancy meal at a fancy 4 star may be a horrible embarassing time for our kids.
Please and thank you, napkin in lap, excuse me, may I please be excused I’ve had a sufficent quantity(thank grandma for that last one) no problem.
As I’ve said before I teach 3 year olds.(usually 8 or fewer in a class) I eat lunch with them. We eat our growing food first. We have conversation. We say please and thank you. Meal time is learning time. Not only at school but at home. As long as it is a pleasant time and the reminders are gentle, voices are soft, laughter is present, a good time may be had by all.
I don’t think I have ever hectored a child. At school we play matching games:
I have carrots, who else has carrots. I’m drinking water… Are grapes growing food? It keeps them occupied and hopefully interested in eating more of their good foods.
Yes, well, mealtimes should be pleasant for the adults present, too, and while I do understand that hectoring is bad in a general sense, I think excessively ill-mannered kids make things unpleasant for all. When I was about 8, I had dinner at the house of one of my mother’s friends and was absolutely horrified at the manners of the friend’s son, who was about my age. He chewed with his mouth open, talked with food crammed in there (a lot of food– some of it came out), and stood up and grabbed whatever he wanted. And I was 8! The image haunts me to this day….
I’ve been thinking of this post for 24 hours now. I find myself riled up somehow, by Satter’s words or maybe just my interpretation of them. Certainly there’s an age cut off somewhere. Yes, when a child is LEARNING to eat, all forms of eating and lack of table manners are acceptable. But is dinner and eating just meant to be a hedonistic event of slurping and snarfing?
There’s a huge difference between my 4 year old picking up broccoli with his fingers in an effort to get it in faster and finger painting with his ketchup. I may be making his dinner less than pleasant by correcting him but there’s a time and place for manners and a time and place for finger painting. It’s usually pretty clear when a kid is grappling with utensils or just goofing around.
I guess what’s bugging me is how far do we take this concept of “not making things unpleasant”. Are we here to raise civilized humans or just make our kids lives as pleasant as possible? Maybe I’m thinking too black or white here. Don’t get me wrong; we have tons of great fun. But to sacrifice manners for making dinner not unpleasant doesn’t seem right either.
I half jokingly like to say: I’m not raising a son, I’m raising a future husband. On another note: my mother never scolded us for bad table manners; money was taken out of our allowance…A QUARTER for every fake burp…fascist.
Since the post was taken out of full context, maybe I’m over reacting to her point. Maybe this is addressing just picky eater or very young children? I just had to unload.; 24 hours is a long time to be thinking about one blog post
Anytime I’m getting you thinking about a blog post for more than a minute, I consider it a blogger-victory!
I think I want to expand on Satter’s position (from her book) and see where we come out. Stay tuned. – Bettina
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