The Importance of Family Mealtime

Put away the screens and take advantage of this time together.

 “We were in a casual restaurant today and saw a 4-year-old watching videos with headphones in, and her mom was spoon-feeding her. It took all my willpower not to say something. I feel like parents still aren’t getting the message about parking kids in front of a phone or tablet for meals.”

A reader sent me this email. I didn’t have to be there to imagine the scene—it’s all too familiar—and to feel sadness at what that poor 4-year-old was missing out on. I have written before about the importance of family mealtimes (see my post called The Art of Family Dinner), but I do think it’s a topic worth revisiting periodically.

The description raised alarm bells for numerous reasons. The “meal” described, if it can be called that—more like a feeding session—sounds like such a stunted version of what a meal can and should be. The child probably had no memory of what she ingested because she was so absorbed in whatever fast-paced show was flashing across her screen. She likely never made eye contact with her mother, let alone exchanged a word. I suspect the mother didn’t particularly enjoy the meal, either. The child would have walked away from that table no better off than when she sat down at it, apart from the presence of some nutrients in her belly.

That’s not good enough.

At its most fundamental, a meal is for nourishing the body through food, but it also serves other important purposes. Meals are a chance for family members to take a pause from daily life, interact with each other, catch up on what is happening in each other’s lives. Meals are a time to communicate through conversation and eye contact and body language. They provide an opportunity to recharge not just physically but emotionally, reminding children of the family unit they belong to and helping to ground them in the world.

Mealtime is a training ground. It is an ideal time of day to teach etiquette to kids—how to eat with good manners, how to participate in conversation, how to eat whatever’s served without complaining, and how to sit patiently while waiting for food to arrive and while everyone eats at different speeds. Kids have to know how to do these things so that they are well-adjusted and polite adults someday.

Meal training starts as soon as they’re eating solids, and it is cumulative; it has to occur day after day, month after month, year after year. Of course there will be exceptions, but a pattern must be established and made the norm.

When you plunk a kid in front of a screen and spoon-feed them a meal, you’re missing the point entirely. Arguably, you’re missing the entire point of childhood, which is not to blend life up into a metaphorical smoothie and pour it down a child’s gullet to quell their hunger pains. That’s insane.

Childhood is a time to expose your kid repeatedly to experiences that rehearse, test, and stretch their abilities so that they learn how to do things better and independently. When a parent opts instead to spoon-feed their child while they stare at a screen, they are not only making their own life far harder than it needs to be, but depriving their child of a critical developmental opportunity. Ultimately, this benefits no one.

It is ironic that many parents rely on screens to distract their child in order to get them to eat. Staring at a screen impedes eating. I discovered this when my son’s kindergarten teacher put on movies during lunch time to occupy the children, but he came home every day with an uneaten meal. “I was too busy watching, I forgot to eat,” he said.

I wished instead that the teacher would take the delightful approach described in Bringing Up Bébé, where children in French daycares are instructed in the art of fine cheeses and other foods. In France, mealtime is acknowledged as the important training ground that it is.

So, how can we reclaim mealtime?

First, get rid of the screens. Kids get far too much screen time as it is, but mealtime, of all times, is arguably one of the worst times to hand over a device. Banish screens from the dinner table forever, for kids and adults alike.

Carve out time each day for meals. My own family is very busy, so we only sit down together for dinners, but that time is sacred. I defend it like an angry mama bear. That doesn’t mean it cannot be adjusted; we will eat at whatever time works for our schedule, which could be anytime between 5 and 8 pm, depending on extracurriculars and other obligations. But we will always sit down together, with almost no exceptions.

If you do not create these opportunities consciously, they will not happen. Kids are elusive creatures, in many ways, and that only becomes more apparent as they grow. It’s almost impossible to get a teenaged boy to describe his day in detail, but over food (and maybe with a few of the discussion games I described in this post), you stand a better chance.

This, of course, means giving yourself time to cook a proper meal, which can be challenging. I do most of the cooking and I rely heavily on planning in advance to make it go more smoothly. Often my husband or kids pitch in, following whatever directions I’ve left before heading to the gym after work.

Related Post: How to Make Cooking More Efficient

I think it’s important to make good food that people want to eat. Don’t do the bare minimum and think of meals as mere carriers of nutrients; food is also food for the soul, and it makes an impression on children. You’re training their tastebuds, after all, and you’re imprinting memories on them that they’ll carry forever. Put in some effort to master and refine a handful of delicious recipes and make these your go-tos. When you have great food on the table, everyone will be eager to sit down and partake.

On a related note: Abolish snacking as much as possible. There was a fascinating recent piece in The Atlantic on America’s obsession with snacks, and how we’ve replaced three square meals with endless grazing. This is troubling, as snacks lack the nutritional value of whole foods and (like social media!) are designed to be hyper-palatable and difficult to resist. Grazing changes the rhythm of our days, which used to be shaped around proper mealtimes. We need to reclaim that rhythm, override the alluring drumbeat of snacks, and ensure our kids sit down hungry at the dinner table each night.

That leads me to a related point: It’s OK for kids to feel hungry by the time dinner rolls around. I let mine snack after school, but then they have to stop and wait. I want them to be hungry so that they eat decent portions of whatever meal I’ve worked hard to make. An unenthusiastic response feels disrespectful of any cook’s efforts. It helps if you do not buy packaged snacks. Snacking becomes less appealing to kids when it’s limited to whole-food ingredients, and they’ll be more inclined to wait for the real meal.

As for restaurants, it becomes far easier to eat out with kids if they’re accustomed to a certain standard of etiquette in the home. If they know how to sit around a table and eat politely and talk and wait at home, they’ll be able to do it in a restaurant, too. In fact, it’ll be even easier in a restaurant because there is so much more to see and do. Occasionally, when we take our kids to fine restaurants, we have a chat ahead of time to set expectations for behaviour. I remind them that people are spending a lot of money to dine there, and that they are expected to be on their best behaviour.

Don’t forget the power of parental modelling. If you’re on your phone at the table, your children will want to be on theirs. And even if they’re not, who will they talk to if you’re busy checking emails? Show up for your kids at the table. Hold yourself to the same standard that you expect from them.

Lastly, invite people over. We have frequent spontaneous dinner guests, adults or kids who join our family meals without any advance planning, and everyone enjoys it. My children become more engaged when there’s fresh company, and the guests, particularly those without families of their own, always seem to like immersing themselves in the family chaos for an hour or two. It gives a celebratory air to an otherwise ordinary routine.

You Might Also Like:

• Cooking Lessons From My Mennonite Grandma

• Screen-Free Road Trips

• The Internet Takes the Amazon

• Seventeen Seconds

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