What's Saving Dinner For You Right Now?
Asking for a friend. (It's me. I am always the friend.)
So many of you have been sending me your thoughts about yesterday’s conversation with Naureen Hunani about feeding neurodivergent kids. And one theme that’s running through all your notes is how much Naureen’s perspective and advice is helping you rethink your family dinner routine, and maybe make a tweak or two that will take the pressure off, make it less work, and make it more, dare I say, fun to eat a meal with your family.
This is, of course, my love language. Dinner is a perpetual work-in-progress at my house and I’m always thinking about why it’s so hard (like in the broader sociological sense) and looking for strategies that will help my kids feel more comfortable and connected to us at the table, and that will make it less work for us to execute, but still delicious for me to eat.
One such hack that a friend texted me this week: “When we’re having a really tough day, we let [our 8-year-old] read at the table and that keeps him there for way longer than he would be without a book. And he goes in and out of reading if he hears something interesting we’re talking about.”
I mean, genius. Eating while reading is my literal favorite. (And something I have many good memories of doing with my mom when I was a kid and we ate in restaurants almost every night.)
So now it’s your turn: What brilliant strategy (as Naureen would call it!) have you stumbled upon to make family meals just that little bit nicer and less stressful for everyone?
It absolutely does not matter if this strategy is nutritional or “good” parenting (whatever that is!) or measures up to any other external standard by which we judge our meals. It only matters that it is working for you and would maybe work for some of the rest of us too.
Child-free folks, please chime in as well! Feeding ourselves every day is hard work no matter who else is at your table.
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As always, let’s keep things friendly and follow my Thread Ground Rules. This is a fat positive, food positive, no diet talk space.
We don't actually always eat at the table, but we do eat together. So, like, if the kids are playing with trains on the living room floor, fuck it, let's pull up some of the nesting tables, put everyone's food on it, and eat together while we talk and play trains. I do not have the energy to chivvy everyone to the table every night, our table is a goddamn cluttered mess anyway, and in general, we are not together enough to serve everyone a beautifully plated meal at the same time anyway.
So we all tumble through the door sometime between 5.30-6.00, one of us stays in the kitchen while the other gets the kids ' shoes and coats off and gets them settled doing something, anything, and then the kitchen person brings out drinks and plates as they are ready. This works for us for now, when the first kid bedtime is 7pm, so we don't even always have an hour between arriving home and starting bedtime. Eventually, I hope we can all, like, sit and eat the same food together, maybe at a table that the kids help clear. But for now? This works for us, and I think it's pretty good.
What worked for us was letting our ADHD 11 yr old be excused from the table as soon as he was done eating his main course, and allowing him to play then return to the table for dessert, so at least we started and finished together.