Dysfunctional Family Dinner

I envision a day when everyone sits down for dinner as a family. Mommy and daddy engage in witty yet educational conversation, while the children sit quietly and add the occasional comment demonstrating their academic acumen. The children eat cleanly and politely, and help clean the table after the meal. The children spend the rest of the evening playing brain-boosting games while the adults tend to the minutiae of keeping a house running. As long as I’m dreaming, I also envision a money tree in the backyard, and a colony of magic elves taking up residence under the floorboards to help clean the house.

Obviously we have a long way to go before realizing my dream dinner. Right now, I’m happy when I finish eating my meal and cleaning the kitchen before the second episode of Dora ends. It’s a bonus if the kids eat a measurable percentage of the food I place in front of them.

I’m tackling things one at a time. The kids deserve credit for eating cleanly. They used to eat meals without shirts, but Abbie has developed a sense of modesty that coincides with her rise in ability to wield a spoon. She insists on wearing a shirt while eating, and she mostly keeps it clean, except when eating something like chili, but that’s so inherently messy it doesn’t count. Tory also does an admirable job staying clean in spite of his limited months of experience. Almost all of his yogurt goes into his mouth. He could eat with a shirt, but he enjoys eating au natural, and I enjoy avoiding the danger of shirt-ruining stains. As for Ian, we love him no matter what.

Now that they seem able to avoid the accidental messes, they need to stop committing the intentional messes. Instead of announcing, “all done” at the end of the meal, Abbie still prefers the throw her dishes method. As soon as she’s done eating, her dishes go on the floor, regardless of the amount of food still on those dishes, or how frantically I’m screaming at her to not throw her dishes. I keep explaining to her that she should simply say “all done” when she’s done, and she keeps demonstrating to me that she’d rather just throw her dishes. The boys, unwilling or unable to see why they should be more responsible than their sister, also throw their dishes when they’re done.

I’m trying a couple things to encourage Abbie to not throw her dishes. If she throws her dishes, I may leave her strapped into her booster seat until I’m good and ready to release her. It may teach her a lesson, and it’s not like she can make a bigger mess with nothing left in front of her. I also make her pick up the dishes and bring them to the sink after she throws them. The idea is to teach her the consequences of her actions, but she picks up her dishes just as happily as she throws them. The lesson of not throwing dishes doesn’t sink in, but she does seem to enjoy hunting down and depositing dishes. I can no longer keep a glass of water within her reach because she will dump it in the sink. That forces me to grab a new glass of water, but at least I can count it as helping to clean the table after the meal.