Thoughts on family meals

I was reading around on the internet, digging blogs and blog prompt sites. Yes, I love prompts. Even if I don’t use them, I like the idea of inspiration being out there if I can’t find any myself. It seems to me that May is all about food. Yay! I love food. I think about it. A lot. That doesn’t sound like a healthy thing to say, I know. Let me explain.

This morning, while my husband was having a late breakfast and our son was having a morning snack, he looked at me and said: I wonder why it is that as children we didn’t make any fuss about healthy eating and were happy to eat the healthy things our parents chose for us. Why didn’t we just keep it that way? And how come we feel in a certain way deprived if we would eat the things our little boy is enjoying?

I took it as a compliment, because little boy is eating quite healthy. There’s a lot of variation in his food, he’s okay with fruits and veggies and plain yoghurt and every healthy food option we could make. Because of that, I do give him the occasional cookie or pudding or other sweetened treat, or a baby meal out of a pot (and I do not feel guilty about it). This morning my Little boy has eaten a slice of Italian bread and some pieces of apple for breakfast, his snack was plain yoghurt with fresh blueberries and a corn cracker and while his dad took him for a walk, I prepared his lunch: carrots, potatoes and veal. I think his afternoon snack will consist of a pear and some carrot crackers (not unhealthy, but not very natural either) and his evening meal bread with maybe some cheese or homemade soup that I have frozen in little portions. He drinks plain water and a bottle of milk in the morning and in the evening. The kid loves to eat and he is not hard to please.

I think the general food habits of my husband and I are very similar. Tonight, we’ll be having the same thing as little boy ate for lunch. I’ll be drinking water with it. The only thing that’s really different is the snacking. I love salty crackers and crisps and my husband has a sweet tooth. We try to be careful not to eat when it’s not time for little boy to eat, which means in most cases our snack time happens after dinner. And that is not a good habit. It may even be my worse. While right now it is not a big problem on an educational level, there will come a time it is. I guess that’s what my husband was pondering. In my mind I was also adding our trouble to have a meal together. While I think it’s important and I was raised having meals as a family, we don’t seem to manage. It may get better in the future, but still not the way I would want it to be. The thing is… my parents were both teachers and had a very similar schedule. My husband and I, like most families I guess, have a very different job. My husband works long hours and uses his weekend to slow down… but little boy is awake quite early and lives at a faster pace during weekends than my husband does. So no family meals and I don’t know how I can turn it around giving both of them what they need.