Ask Auntie Leila
How mysterious dinner together is!
The School for Housewives brings you short, practical, and thoughtful messages to inspire you to make your home. If you’re new here, go to the homepage for the previous Lessons; the categories are arranged in the menu bar at the top.
Yesterday, Sarah commented:
Could you flesh out what you mean by, "Don’t make them the center of attention while, paradoxically, keeping them to whatever standard is appropriate to their ages."? I find this very compelling but also mysterious.
What I mean is mysterious! Children learn so much about life at the dinner table. They learn awareness, listening, mirth, and how to be interested and interesting.
It is a mistake to focus on them entirely, because then everything will be at toddler level, or that of the most disruptive person present. We must guard against raising narcissists!
It is a mistake to ignore them entirely, because then dinner becomes quite unpleasant. We have no wish to be surrounded by barbarians!
For instance, I do not recommend mother and father sitting next to each other at one end. Yes, you can then converse, after a fashion. But what are the children learning or experiencing? Certainly not benevolent hierarchy. Father and mother are the foundation, but not in a way that excludes the children, of course.
So it’s a balance requiring checks on behavior, to the extent necessary to maintain some order, but also resistance to having the whole thing devolve into a correcting session. Excusing a child is perfectly reasonable. “Off you go — you may be excused. Put your dish in the dishwasher and go play [or go to your room, if naughty]”
I delve into this whole subject at length on my blog and in my books. Start here and here.
Don’t forget that dinner together is essentially a ritual, forming everyone with the notion that even the simplest things are best lived as part of the cosmic liturgy. We can carry this out at our own humble level, as always — of course, with that sense of humor so necessary in things involving family life!
As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take my ideas, coming from my experience of 45 years of marriage and raising seven children, and apply them to your situation with discernment, prudence, and confidence — and a sense of humor!
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For the longer version:
My book on how to live with the Liturgical Year: The Little Oratory