Meal Plan Update

Well, our week of kid chosen meals and conversational topics ends today, and I give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up! (Damn---I hate it when Dave's right!)

If you recall, each child chose the meal for an evening and was then responsible for the direction of the conversation. Because the meals were kid friendly, there was very little complaining (in fact, Ben gave Maddie a big hug when he realized she chose hot dogs as her meal!) The main problem here is that kid friendly meals aren't always the most nutritious choice, so I know the whining will be back the next time I design the menu. However, the best part of the meal was the talking that took place around the table. It took a day or two for it to really kick in, but they loved telling us what to talk about, and everyone joined in the conversations with very few stops for correctional words and nasty looks from mom for burping or for the catapulting of food across the table.

Here were the topics:
-Dave-What would you do if you were president?
-Beth-What would you do with a million dollars? What are your 3 favorite foods?
-Maddie-What is your favorite candy? What is your favorite fruit?
-Ben-What would you do with 100 dollars? What are your favorite songs?
-Jack-What cars do you like? What do you like at the beach?

They didn't do well with Dave's president question...it was a little too abstract or something. Their answers revolved more around how they would behave as president for the day, i.e. "I would go bowling because there's a bowling alley in the White House", although Ben did decide he would shorten the school day! They loved thinking about and talking about their favorites all week, and Maddie's answer to what she would do with a million dollars? Take a bath in a gold bathtub filled with Sprite. And she'd have a straw handy.

Thier insights were interesting and they were so busy thinking about their answers and listening to everyone else, that very little time was left for complaining and horseplay.

Yay us! Maybe someday we'll move on to politics and current events, but for now, I'm just so thrilled that our meal time was actual quality time, that I'll take it as is.