How do you do your meal times? Recently there has been several debates going on my facebook about who eats or is served first. Do you feed your kids or husband first? Sometimes a bigger question might be do you eat together as a family?
Our meal time is pretty routine. We eat early, 5-5:30. It pretty much coincides with when my husband gets home from work. We also eat at the dinner table together as a family most nights. Sometimes activities get in the way and we make adjustments.
We don't take the food to the table, we prepare plates in the kitchen. In our household my husband prepares his plate first. The kids know to wait. While he prepares his plate I prepare plates for the younger kids. Then I prepare a plate for my mom and myself. Then the older kids come in and fix their own plates. Our kitchen is actually too small for our size family so only a few people at a time can be in the kitchen preparing plates.
So my husband is served first. I don't understand why this seems to bother so many people. They say their children are first before their husbands. I say as respect for my husband he should go first. We always have enough food to go around so it isn't as though anyone doesn't get food. We also wait until everyone is at the table before we say a prayer and eat.
Lately I have been really thinking of this practice of putting the kids first. When I was growing up it was not that way. Yes kids need to have their needs met. Yes I love my children very much. However, they aren't always first. I think that creates a huge sense of self-entitlement which I think is a problem today. Yes, I am old fashioned. I think that children are children and should have child responsibilities and benefits. They shouldn't interrupt adult conversations, shouldn't expect that an adult will defer to them. They should be respectful, not just to adults but to themselves and peers. We have lost a lot of this while putting kids up on a pedestal. I haven't seen where it is working out very well for our society as a whole.
So where do you stand? Does your husband get served first?
In our household I'm the one who works farther away and later, so my husband usually preps dinner. We serve family style at the table. After all dishes are on the table, we say grace, and then everyone can serve themselves. So no one really goes first.
ReplyDeleteMy husband is the cook so he typically serves himself last. He prepares my plate (even cuts my meat which is such a loving and appreciated act) and our kids' plates then serves us all. He will only prepare his own after he is assured we are all situated. On the occasions where I've prepared the meal, I do the same as him and serve myself last. But I'm so spoiled with my husband loving to cook.
ReplyDeleteWe both make the kid plates, then make ours. Honestly, I feel men in our society are the champions of entitlememt - not the children - and the "daddy first" route reinforces this. I want my boys to grow up knowing the females around them are of equal status. My husband feels the same way.
ReplyDeleteNormally I sit all the plates on the counter by the stove and fill them all equally. Then everyone comes and gets their plates. One person or another may start 5 or 10 minutes later because they are being stubborn about finishing a job, but we basically all eat together. But now that activities are starting we are more likely to eat in two shifts.
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