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Recently we attended a Seder, and I’ll bet that many people agree: A fancy dinner with small children is a nightmare. The people are delightful, the food is good, and the kids are perfectly normal, yet the hours drag by punctuated by screaming children, broken glassware, agitated adults and a completely frustrated host or hostess. Overcooked chicken, cold veggies, and grape juice on the white tablecloth. Just another dreadful Passover. Why is this night different from all other nights? It is not, really; we just try harder to fit little people into adult expectations and the result is pandemonium. Almost every time I join family or friends for a meal with their preschoolers, I regret it.
IMHO, a perfect storm has been created, making mealtimes with my grandchildren and small friends miserable. There are two factors: first, the ubiquitous and warring diet narratives among the adults about what constitutes healthy food. And second, the collective belief that a family dinner where everybody sits down in one place and eats together at the same time is essential for family happiness. The result is that grumpy children, geared for battle, are brought to the table girded for conflict. “I don’t like chicken,” begins even before the tush hits the chair. “You just have to taste it” chimes the parent, as the child grabs a knife to spear his brother.
I am going to discourse on both diet narratives and sit-down dinners and propose a hack to get out of this unfortunate pattern.
Despite or because of the obesity epidemic, global warming, and animal welfare concerns, Americans are fascinated by diets. The current fad de jour is the keto diet, a variant of the old Atkins diet, that promotes eating mostly fat and protein to shift the body from burning carbohydrates for energy to burning body fat. This naturally occurs in marathon runners as they “hit the wall,” in the last few miles of a run. It also occurs in type 1 diabetes when blood sugar levels drop too low. Now I can spot a techie from a distance. He or she is very skinny, and wears a black t-shirt or long-sleeved t, with skinny black jeans. This may be accessorized with an Apple watch or a ten thousand dollar Swiss chronometer. He, usually a he, won't eat anything with carbohydrates. However, it seems that many of my friends and colleagues are fundamentalist vegans, gluten-phobes, or allergic to everything from broccoli to rosemary. Multiple chemical sensitivities allow people to shun Dawn, scents, and soaps. It is difficult to host a food gathering because each adult has a list of dos and don’ts. No brownies, for sure!
Then there is research showing that families who sit down together for one meal a day without screen time may be happier or more stable than families who don’t. That sounds fine!
However, in my little universe, the result is that dinner is a nightmare. Passover is special because of the tablecloth and red grape juice, not to mention the expectation of a protracted discussion or reading at the table. The kids are already full of sugary juice before they…I don’t think you can call it sit. They perch or stand or climb on the table. The parents say, you have to try at least one bite of everything. “I don’t like anything orange or green” whines the 4-year-old. The parents vigilantly observe, did the child taste the veggie? Usually not. The children seem to want the white rice or potatoes, spilled copiously on the floor as they grab it from the serving bowl across the table. There is no time for any adult conversation let alone a service.
Here is my proposal: Let’s lose the family dinner for a while, as a training scheme. Not forever. For TRAINING. This is a proposal to detoxify mealtime conflicts, eventually to make food fun again.
Judith Lipton’s diet for kids plan: Abolish mealtime.
1. Throw out everything in the kitchen with granulated sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
2. Weigh the kids before you start. Repeat at most once a weight in a week, not before.
3. Follow Michael Pollan’s basic advice to eat good food, mostly plants. This begins at the grocery store. Do not put anything in your cart with sugar, cane syrup, or ingredients that you can’t read and understand. If you didn’t take O-Chem in college, all the better, because you’ll be left with substances like apples or carrots or beets.
4. Put an array of good food on a cookie sheet in a place where the dogs or cats won’t get at it, but children can see and reach it.
5. Include chopped veggies, fresh fruit. Nuts. Bites of cheese. Hard-boiled egg slices. Bits of meat such as organic hot dogs. Little cups of yogurt. Put anything on the tray that is healthy and nutritious. Whole grain donuts without sugar. Carrot slices. Jerky, beef or turkey.
6. You can augment protein in snacks without buying expensive protein and creatine supplements. Make your own power bars and donuts, with organic flours, nut butters, fruits, eggs and milk.
7. Put some water bottles near the tray. You can buy boxes of UHT milk that tolerates not being refrigerated and is easy to drink with a straw.
8. Photograph the tray.
9. Ignore the food for 4 hours. Don’t worry about a mess. Play with the kids.
10. Take a new picture after around 4 hours. You may look to see what is missing. Do Not Comment to the children. Throw out or give to your dog any perishable meat or dairy tidbit (unless it has chocolate or cocoa in it). Replenish the perishables,
11. Go on about your day. Keep the high value foods available for grazing, but do not mention a word about it to the kids. The idea is to let them eat or not eat as they choose, but without pressure and making sure that what is available is healthy.
12. At the end of the day, make sure they help you clean up.
13. Keep this up. They will not starve.
14. No ice cream, peanut butter cups or food rewards or deserts. Take pictures to document what they liked or not.
15. Don’t force your own current diet infatuation onto your kids. Provide them with healthy options for high value foods and leave your personal and family ideology out of it.
It may take several months to detoxify the dinner table concept. Don’t worry: by the time the kids go to college they will be able to sit in a cafeteria. The key idea is to reduce the conflicts over food, to reduce the demands and resistance. Give them no choices but healthy ones, and then don’t hover. I guarantee you, they won’t starve or waste away, and within a year you’ll have the potential for calm sit-down meals, sans drama. Maybe it will even happen in time for Easter or Ramadan, Passover or Earth Day, 2019.
