The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids (18 page)

Family mealtimes can be a trial. There is the fidgety writhing of the eight-year-old boy who seems incapable of sitting still. He has ants in his pants. There is the wild three-year-old who flings food around the room and drops it in his glass of water. And there is the self-pitying whine of the six-year-old girl: ‘Henry’s got the stripy bowl. I never,
ever
get the stripy bowl.’ How did we create such horrors and why do they behave so badly? And why do we get so angry with them? Do we really care that much about table manners? Perhaps those families we hear about who never sit down to eat together but stuff themselves with TV-dinners on the sofa have got it right. Why do we parents put ourselves through the hell of it? Well,
it’s because mealtimes together, sharing food, can be a huge pleasure. Dad can give vent to the full range of his dry humour. The children can laugh together, and Mother or Father can take pleasure in the preparation of food. And we idle parents want to resist the atomization of eating, where everyone eats something different, even in different rooms. The idle parent at all times wants to harmonize, not separate.

Let’s look at manners first. It was the conviction of A. S. Neill that we all get ourselves in too much of a bother about mealtime manners. His experience was that kids learn good manners naturally as they grow older, and from example rather than authority. Certainly we all know that our children tend to behave better in their friends’ houses than when they are at home.

Neill makes a distinction between good manners and mere etiquette. Manners he sees as a natural result of a calm and generous soul: ‘Manners cannot be taught, for they belong to the unconscious.’ Etiquette, he says, ‘is the veneer of manners’. ‘Artificial manners are the first layer of hypocritical veneer to be dropped under freedom… in Summerhill we ask for no manners at all, not even a “thank you” or a “please”. Yet again and again, visitors say, “But their manners are delightful!”’

I agree with Neill in theory. There is something unpleasant about the hovering parent, who is always there prompting the child (‘What do you say?’) when it is given something. The child will smirk and mumble, ‘Thank you.’ But in practice, though, it’s not so easy: I’ve tried to ignore bad manners, but I tend to fall at the first hurdle. When I see Arthur writhing at the table, apparently unable to use knife and fork, stuffing his mouth with his fingers, I confess that my inner Puritan loses its temper.

We all seem to behave badly at home. Today, for example, I hang my head in shame because I threw a pair of wellies at Arthur and they hit him. He had been whingeing and asked me to carry him from the car to the house rather than undergo the inconvenience of putting on his wellies and walking himself. So I lost my temper, furious at his wimpiness. When V. saw his muddy face she was furious with me, rightly. And anyway, who has bred this lack of fortitude in him? I have only myself to blame. We must concentrate on our own pleasure in simply being rather than trying to change the outward actions of those around us.

We all do appalling things and perhaps we parents need to improve our own manners, towards the children and towards our partners, before imposing courtesy through force of authority. After all, if the children see the parents behaving with a lack of respect to each other, then they will surely follow suit? Can we
demand
manners and respect from our children? Neill thinks not: ‘When a person really gives respect, he does so unawares. My pupils can call me a silly ass any time they like to; they respect me because I respect their young lives… My pupils and I have mutual respect for each other because we approve of each other.’

In former times, and in old-fashioned cultures today, courtesy was insisted upon from a young age. There are wonderful guides to table manners from the medieval era:

So goes one couplet from a late-medieval poem called ‘How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter’. Similarly in
The
Romance of the Rose
we find a disquisition on table manners aimed at the lady of the house:

In the thirteenth century elegance of manners was an important part of social harmony, and while I agree with Neill’s arguments on manners in general, I make an exception when it comes to table manners and come down on the side of the medieval etiquette writers. Certainly we could benefit from the reinjection of ritual into mealtimes. Nowadays we all fall on our food as it is put in front of us, with no saying of grace or even the faintest suggestion of a ritual. Ritual is good because it slows us down and creates a little space for reflection. We need to make time for meals. Less TV, longer periods sitting at table.

What really drives me and Victoria crazy at home is the kids’ fussiness over food. After Victoria has spent an hour preparing them a range of delicious dishes it is terribly disheartening – nay, enraging – to hear our spoilt little Western kids saying:

‘It’s dis-
gus
-ting.’

‘Yuck!’ (followed by a dramatic spitting out and reaching for the water glass).

‘I
hate
cauliflower/broccoli/raisins/potatoes/pasta/fish pie.’

Yes, their tedious lists of likes and dislikes. ‘What makes you think we’re interested?’ asks my friend Alice when the
kids start reeling off their lists of preferences. It is perhaps because they have such little control over other areas of their lives, so over-regulated are they, that in this one small area they revel in exercising their lordliness. Perhaps, also, we have given them too much choice in the matter. We are always asking them if they would
like
something, rather than just giving it to them. I think again the answer may be to go back to a medieval approach. Give them each an empty plate (or better, a piece of bread – less washing-up!) and place the food down the middle of the table, cut into small pieces. Then let them grab away with fingers, a sort of tapas arrangement. Provide rose-scented bowls of water for cleaning the fingers. Perhaps it’s the British habit of piling up a huge plateful of preapproved components that our kids object to. It simply looks too daunting – and it has been imposed by an authority, so what better way to state one’s own desire for independence than to reject what’s been offered?

Think how we hover about them and encourage the development of likes and dislikes when they are little, and the disastrous results: ‘Some water? No, not water? Some juice, perhaps? Apple? No? Orange, then. In the blue cup? The red cup, then. Please don’t throw it on the floor. Henry, if you do that again, you’ll be out. Henry, did you hear what I said?’ and so on.

At home we have become somewhat mean and ascetic, partly because it simply makes life easier. We put a jug of water on the table, no juice or squash. They get used to it quickly enough. My aim is to create a sort of Dotheboys Hall in the kitchen: the family lined up neatly on our benches, gratefully eating and drinking whatever is put in front of them. Water, porridge, bread: that’s it!

We should try to keep the food simple. If we don’t put so
much effort into cooking for them, then we won’t be too disappointed when they whine ‘I don’t li-i-i-ke it.’ I tend to feed the children baked beans on toast when I am alone. I know they like it and it’s easy to make. And although we never have ready meals, I do think we could make the occasional exception and keep a few pizzas in the freezer, for those times when you can’t be bothered to cook a proper meal.

Simplicity and good bread: this was the solution recommended by Locke. This would be proper home-baked bread, though, not that cottonwool stuff from the factory. He advises a largely vegetarian diet for the small ones: ‘[F]lesh should be forborne, as long as he is in [petti]coats, or at least till he is two or three years old.’

For breakfast, Locke suggests porridge, ‘very sparingly seasoned with sugar, or rather none at all’. Porridge, I understand, is what they call a superfood, and we find that our kids like it very much, especially as we give them maple syrup with it. It uses no milk and is very cheap. We buy the wholesale oats in 10kg sacks. No breakfast cereals. Locke is also a great fan of brown bread: ‘I should think that a good piece of well-made and well-baked brown bread, sometimes with and sometimes without butter or cheese, would be often the best breakfast for my young master.’

Well, that’s easily arranged. Rather than a choice of five breakfast cereals (are we running a B&B here?), let them just have porridge and bread. If you fancy it, cook some good bacon and eggs too. You see how easy it is to provide the sort of life that the seventeenth-century’s finest philosopher recommends for his young gentleman?

And now here’s a surprise from the ever-practical Locke: he is against regular mealtimes! He says we should shift the times and feed children lots of snacks:

I find this piece of advice liberating. Too often babycare and childcare manuals put forward strict prescriptions for precise timings of meals. But it is precisely a too-rigid adherence to clock-time which can cause the difficulties. Clock-time acts as a sort of abstract authority figure in our heads, ‘ticking us off’ as the writer Jay Griffiths puts it. We get behind schedule and then we scream at our kids for dawdling, when all they are really doing is expressing their natural urge to enjoy the moment. Therefore to reject, at least partially, clock-time, wherever possible, in the happy anarchy of the idle parent’s home, would seem to be an excellent scheme.

We now turn to the vital topic of talking while eating. I have read that both the Yequana Indians and the families of Lark Rise in Flora Thompson’s account of 1880s rural life took their meals more or less in silence. While this may occasionally seem attractive I confess that in fact we like a good deal of noise and laughter at table. Mealtimes are great for telling funny stories and jokes. Make the experience of eating together enjoyable and the kids will look forward to it. Mealtimes are an opportunity to teach children how to talk and also how to listen, and that means not interrupting. It
appears that in the seventeenth century as much as today kids had little truck with the idea of waiting their turn to speak:

Clearly this is a personal bugbear of Locke’s. But it is hard to disagree. Locke then continues, rather in the manner of a contemporary radical anthropologist, to hold up the example of the native culture of the Americas, as evidence that there may be a better way of doing things: ‘The Indians, who we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done and then answering them calmly and without noise or passion.’

Somehow, in conversation as in business, the civilized world has introduced conflict rather than harmony as a guiding principle. I’m sure Locke would have been shocked by the rudeness of some of our contemporary radio interviewers and their subjects. Another point of manners that we try to insist on is for the child to look an adult in the eye when being spoken to. I can’t bear that shuffling, ground-staring thing that kids do.

If children have a natural inbuilt sense of dignity and a resistance to authority, then when it comes to food it makes sense to involve them in its preparation. Then they are less likely to turn up their noses at the results. I would recommend much bread-baking at home, as it is work that can be shared by everyone. Making bread is an enjoyable and satisfying activity, and even three-year-olds can help with the kneading. Henry makes his own little loaves, which, of course, he loves to eat. And children can also be encouraged to add their own ingredients to the mix: raisins, nuts, oats, seeds, bits of Terry’s Chocolate Orange – whatever is lying around. Then they have made their own unique bread. They can name it: Arthur’s Wonder Bread. And they can decorate the loaves or buns.