Tonight at dinner a disgruntled boy watched his sister ask to be excused and then scoot away from the table. "When I was 6, did I get to leave the table when I was finished?" he asked, in a tone that clearly called for an "absolutely not" in reply. He was surprised when I said, "Oh, yes, you did it all the time."
I didn't blog about it at the time because I was embarrassed we hadn't done it sooner, but at some point we said to the kids, "Listen up, things are going to be different around here." It used to be that when they were done eating they could ask to be excused and leave the table. The trouble was that this inevitably triggered an avalanche of excusees, running away to play while the grownups grumped through their meal. You know how sometimes the start of dinner is a little ragged, on a night when maybe you all say grace but then you realize that people are going to want ketchup...and sour cream...and oops a serving spoon so they're not scooping up beef stew barehanded because BY HECK we have standards around here?
In those days it wasn't uncommon for the first kid to ask to be excused before the parent on bits-and-pieces duty had taken a bite of dinner. I found it demoralizing to spend 5 times as long preparing dinner as they spent at the table. I said, "We need a new plan."
When we told the kids that no big kids could be excused until everyone was done eating, they thought this sounded like an Eighth Amendment violation. They got indignant when people took seconds. They moaned when I reminded them yet again about the new rule. My husband said it was never going to work.
But I, my friends, am stubborn, and I do not like feeling demoralized. Slowly, the kids figured out that the new rule wasn't going anywhere. (There are exceptions, of course, for circumstances that merit exceptions.) And then lots of good things happened: people started eating more dinner, more happily, and stopped begging for snacks later. People tried more new foods, because they had time to observe that so-and-so hadn't turned into a lizard when he put the kale in his mouth and you know, the kale was just sitting there right in front of them. The best part is the conversations, though.
It's not as if we have great conversations seven nights a week, but we have a lot of great conversations. Tonight we were talking about how you might defend an aircraft carrier against submarines. Probably the out-of-context idea of carpet-bombing the Pacific does not make you laugh until you cry, but I had to stop typing to giggle. Mixed in with the silly ("whale salad for dinner again, boys!") were sub-conversations about books (Temeraire) and history (who was the first Secretary of the Navy? (no Google allowed at the dinner table)) and geography.
Pretty soon it will be time for Stella to learn that she needs to wait until everyone is finished before she leaves the table, but I'm not going to work on that this month. It is oddly satisfying, though, to see how complete the change has been: they don't even remember when it was different.
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