Knees

This morning I was reading a blog post that mentioned the massive mess small children make with rice, and I said to myself, "...huh, I'd forgotten about that." If you are in the trenches with small messy eaters, I promise it gets better. Gradually, gradually, so gradually that you may think you are just doomed to a life of couscous-covered carpet, it will get better. One day it will be the aberration and not the norm when someone knocks over a glass at dinner.

Here is my #1 tip for cutting down on the amount of food on the floor at the end of a meal: knees. If their knees are under the table, their faces are probably over the table. And if your face is over the table when food falls out of your spoon on the way to your mouth, or falls out of your mouth because you are laughing so hard at your hilarious brother, it will mostly hit the table (maybe even the plate, if the stars align) and not splatter all across the floor.

Kids don't have to sit perfectly still. Most young kids can't sit perfectly still. It's developmentally appropriate for them to jiggle a little bit, or even a lot, while they're sitting at the dinner table. But if the jiggling is happening with their faces over the table, it's less likely to be messy jiggling. Once you get a little practice in with "sit-on-your-bottom-knees-under-the-table," you can shorten it pretty quickly to "knees!" -- a brief, cheerful reminder that's much less likely to disrupt the flow of dinner conversation than "how many stinking times do I have to tell you to be more careful not to spill food all over the floor?" Kids who can eat with their knees under the table are easier to take to friends' houses and restaurants, because it's much easier to brush off a messy table quickly and inconspicuously than it is to tidy up a messy floor. 

Here are two bonus tips. Number 1: if you make it the norm to drink water with meals, the inevitable overturned glasses will cause less wear and tear on everybody. If I were still in that phase of life, with a crowded table and children with developing fine motor skills, I think I would add dish towels to the table-setting crew's list of requirements. That way, every time we sat down together, we'd have a couple of dish towels handy for when someone's glass got knocked over. Another advantage is that across the years you will save money on restaurant meals if everybody knows in advance that the answer to "may I order a drink?" is pretty much always "no, we'll stick with water tonight."

Tip number 2: teaching kids to clean up is such an unpleasant job but also so worth it. If the 4-year-old who is careless about spills learns that he can't build with Legos until aaaalllll the crumbs are out of the carpet, he will learn the rules a little more quickly: the muffin goes on a plate, the plate goes on the table, the knees go under the table, and then I eat the muffin.

Hang in there! It gets better! It's such a pain but it gets better!