The fear generated by the Cuban missile crisis and my fourth air-raid drill in a week disappeared in the daily certainty of a family gathered around that table graced with Del Monte canned peas, cloverleaf rolls, and oleo (margarine). Regardless of the day’s schedule or demands, the kitchen table brought us back together for roll call at 6:00 P.M. every night.
And following my dismal task of doing dishes at a time when automatic dishwashers were country club novelties, I returned to the kitchen table to sweat bullets over homework. I read “Dick, Jane, and Spot” stories aloud to my father, who then did his “homework” while I wrote and rewrote the math tables I carry in my mind even today.
Each morning that table sent me off fed and duly inspected for clean fingernails and pressed Bobbie Brooks. No one left that table without a review of the day’s events and assigned chores. That kitchen table nurtured. It was my constancy amid the insecurities of crooked teeth, more freckles than skin, and geography bees on state capitals.
Years have gone by since my days of Black Watch plaid and white anklets. Life has given me more challenges, joy, and love than I could have fathomed as my legs shook beneath that kitchen table when faced with parental inquiries. When I return to my parents’ home to visit, I find myself lingering after breakfast to enjoy their company around the kitchen table. After dinner, the dishes wait as my father and I discuss everything from the Jackie Onassis estate auction to potty-training.
And then shortly after we restore the kitchen to its spotless pre-dinner state, my children return. We sit together, three generations, as Breyer’s ice cream and Hershey’s syrup melt, drip, and stick to new tiny faces at that old table.
They tell Grandpa of their spelling tests and which word they missed. And Grandpa explains, “Your mother missed the same word. We sat right here and reviewed it. She still got it wrong.”
Perhaps it’s in the genes. Or perhaps it is that kitchen table. That magical simple place where I learned responsibility and felt love and security.
As I struggle each night to get dinner on my kitchen table and round up my children from the four corners of our neighborhood, I wonder why I just don’t send them to their rooms with a chicken pot pie and Wheel of Fortune. I don’t because I am giving them the gift of the kitchen table.
In all the treatises on parenting, in all the psychological studies on child development, and in all the data on self-esteem, this humble key to rearing children is overlooked.
A recent survey revealed that only half of our teenagers eat dinner on a regular basis with their parents. Ninety-eight percent of female high school students who live with their birth parents go on to college. Teenagers who don’t have dinner with their families are four times as likely to have premarital sex.
Last year my daughter said she could only find one other student in her homeroom who had dinner each night at the kitchen table with her family.
They are both honor students. The other kids, my daughter explained, “make something in the microwave and then head to their rooms to watch TV.” They have no company, no questions—just Wheel of Fortune, and the grades to show for it. How sad that not all children’s lives are touched by the miracle of childhood. There’s something about a kitchen table.2
Notice how the traditions around this table are renewing to this woman and her family. They’re physically renewing—but they are mentally, spiritually, and socially renewing as well.
I know one family that builds spiritual renewal into their family dinner by having their mission statement on the wall near their dining table. They often will talk about some aspect of it as they discuss the challenges of the day. A good percentage of families build in spiritual renewal by having prayer before they eat.
Many families also build mental renewal into the family dinner by using it as a time to share the learnings of the day. I know of one family that has “one-minute speeches” during dinner. They give a family member a topic—anything from honesty to the funniest thing that happened that day—and the person speaks for one minute on it. This not only provides interesting conversation and keeps everyone entertained and often “cracking up,” but it also builds mental and verbal skills.
Another family keeps a set of encyclopedias by the dinner table. When anyone asks a question, they look up the answer on the spot. They once had a visitor from Delaware who mentioned that his state was very small.
“How small is it?” someone wondered. So they went to the encyclopedia and discovered that Delaware is two thousand square miles.
“Is that really small?” someone else asked. They looked up some other states. Alabama, they discovered, was about fifty-two thousand square miles—26 times as big as Delaware. Texas was over 131 times as big as Delaware. And, of course, Delaware was a giant compared to Rhode Island, which was only twelve hundred square miles!
There is so much to know! Which state is the Peach State? Does it produce the most peaches? How much can a bird eat in a day compared to its body weight? How big is a whale compared to an elephant?
While it may not be very important for children to know just how big each state is, it is extremely important for them to love learning. And when they find that learning is exciting and that the adults in their life love to learn, they become enthusiastic learners.
There are many things you can do to make dinnertime a time of mental renewal. You can occasionally invite interesting guests to share your meal and conversation. You can play a classical music selection and talk about the work and the life of the composer as you eat. You can borrow a different work of art from the library each week, hang it on the wall by your dining table, and talk about the work and the artist. The very food itself gives you the opportunity to talk about manners, nutrition, or different countries and their cuisines and customs.
Cynthia (daughter):
Mom always felt the dinner hour was really important. We always had dinner together, and everyone was always there. Mom was also really big on educating us during dinner. Two or three nights a week we’d have a theme. She would have some centerpiece, and we would have a discussion, usually correlating with the current holiday or event. On the Fourth of July, for example, she’d read two or three things about Patrick Henry or about the Declaration of Independence. Whatever holiday or special thing was coming up, she would share something educational about it, and then we’d have a family discussion. Sometimes we’d sit there talking for an hour and a half, eating and talking. This got to be really fun when we were in high school and college and could really talk about issues and other things. Those dinner table conversations got us interested in education and in the world.
David (son):
I remember a time when I was going through a difficult time in a relationship with a girl who was not good for me. One night when we were at the dinner table, everyone started talking about people who had not been good for them and how they got out of difficult situations. They shared their feelings about how good it was to get out of those situations.
It was all geared toward me, but I had no idea at the time. I didn’t even know what was going on until later. I just thought it was a family dinner. The comments were good, and they seemed very applicable to my situation. Later I realized what a great thing it was to have this support system of people who genuinely cared about me and my welfare and my success.
Sometimes a family dinner can be expanded to include an additional purpose, such as showing appreciation and giving service.
Colleen (daughter):
One of the things I really enjoyed was our “favorite teacher” dinners. Mom and Dad were very involved in the education process. They knew all our teachers and how we were doing in each class, and they wanted our teachers to know that we appreciated them. So every couple of years Mom would ask each of the children who their favorite teacher was that year. Then she made a list and sent them an invitation to dinner at our house. It was a dress-up dinner. She used her best china and made it really special. Each of us would sit by our teacher and have dinner with him or her. It got to be funny after a while because the teachers knew about this dinner and each year would hope to be the favorite teacher.