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Tiny Diners
Including Toddlers in Family Dinnertime By Laura Cone
When you include your toddler in the family dining ritual, prepare to spend time fishing fish sticks out of your hair or wiping mashed potatoes off the floor. But even though toddlers may leave a mess as they feel, mash, smell and examine their food, it's important to include young children in family mealtime.
Kem Baker of Wesley Chapel, Fla., and her husband share a family dinner with their children, Derek, 3, and Maridith, 4, nearly every night. The Baker family is more the exception than the rule with only one-third of U.S. families eating dinner together most nights.
"Everybody is so busy," Baker says. "I think we are fortunate to be able to sit at the dinner table and have dinner. So many times families can't do that. My husband is on a normal work schedule where he is home for dinner."
Baker says her children are not picky eaters. "They are usually pretty good until they are done and then they just want to get away from the table," she says. "We always try to make it family time and talk about what we have done for the day."
"I think toddlers have a strong need to belong," Faull says. "They are social little people. They want to be with the family. So quite often if a parent is cooking dinner, they will want to be at their highchair nibbling at Cheerios or having a little cheese. If the whole family – mom, dad, grandma, older brother and sister – is sitting down at the table, they want to be included too because it's a socialization process."
Even though toddlers like to be a part of family dinnertime, parents need to remember toddlers are not sophisticated, well-mannered creatures. "Toddlers don't dine," Faull says. "A lot of times they will sit no more than five minutes or eat a little bit and start mashing their food around seeing how cheese squashes versus macaroni versus applesauce. And they start throwing things on the floor because they are learning about gravity. There is much more going on at the meal than just eating, but they want to be included."
