For many of us, eating has an emotional aspect. We often consider how certain foods represent “comfort food” for us. Perhaps it is a warming bowl of soup on a cold winter’s day? Perhaps it is a flavour or texture to a food that reminds us of our own family dinners when we were children?
The association of comfort to eating is undoubtedly a positive thing when those associations represent happy memories of nurturing, warmth, safety and protection in the company of our loving family.
Not all of us will have had those kinds of nurturing family experiences. But we can create them for our own children even if we have not had them ourselves.
We can use our family meals to promote a nurturing, sustaining and warm experience for our children. We do this with the wholesome food we offer, like that nourishing bowl of soup I referred to earlier. More importantly, we can take advantage of the impact that the mealtime atmosphere will have on how nurtured our children will feel by the food they eat.
A parent once asked me about whether she should let her children talk at the table. She explained that she discouraged chatting because, in her experience, her children tried to out-talk or over-talk their siblings while simultaneously forgetting to eat their food.
Consequently she then focused on trying to remind the children to eat and trying to distract them away from chatting and back to the food. Invariably the mealtimes became stressful affairs and soon became quite a sterile time, a time simply to eat.
For me (and I have said this before) this misses one of the crucial functions of a meal; the social function. Indeed, in my opinion, the nutritional function of a meal is secondary to this social function.
By encouraging mealtimes to become conversational, social and engaging for children the mealtimes themselves become associated with a positive emotional experience. Children love to have time and opportunity to be with their parents and to share the stories of their day, their fears, their hopes and their frustrations!
Beginning and developing conversations may seem a little stilted and forced, especially if it is not a habit we already have. If this is the case then planning topics for conversation ahead of time will make it easier. Our children may be a little surprised, even bewildered, at first but they will quickly engage with the chat.
In the midst of the things our children might talk about we will have opportunity to guide, direct, advise, accept, empathise with, scold (if necessary!), praise, empower and enjoy them.
These are the building blocks of a solid relationship where we feel we know our child and they feel they know us.
When children can rely on the opportunity of a meal to do all this connecting they soon look forward to mealtimes. Indeed they will prioritise them and when they are all grown up they will remember them as happy and comforting times.
Post a comment