Personal Resilience: Family Dinner - The Key To A Countercultural Life
The mind control is everywhere. The only way to become more free is by leading an intentional counter-culture lifestyle, practicing daily conscientization in one's own being and using every single opportunity to conscientize one's children.
The single best place to conscientize one's immediate family, especially the children, is the Family Dinner Table. More below.
When our oldest was about to enter kindergarten, we instituted the family dinner as the non-negotiable centre-piece of our family's daily life.
At our dinner table, we parents ask every child this, the most important of all parental questions:
And everyone had to listen to and discuss with that child/parent's day and it's triumphs, boredom, disasters. We had a policy of total acceptance and total honesty. We discuss everything with compassion, support, and laughter. A lot of laughter.
Each of our three kids was assigned two days of the week. On their day, that child spoke first and after dinner assigned the dinner cleanup chores to those who did not help cook. This helps in establishing what we military people call a "command presence." Over dinner clean-up. No kidding :=)
Two-and-a-half decades we still do it and always will. After two years of having only our youngest with us, our two daughters are coming to live with us. Our daughter-in-law has learned our tradition during visits, but now she will experience this countercultural reinforcement every evening.
Talking about every family member's day over the non-negotiable family dinner table is the only, only way to conscientize (much more about that to come) a family into a counterculture life that promotes personal honesty, family fealty, and creates a firm foundation to negotiate the human world of lies.
Everything I need to know, I learned from kindergarten, (TY, Robert Fulghum) and my children's movies :=)
I would really like to hear your stories of family dinner and especially how your family succeeded in overcoming the toxic elements of our culture and society.
Peace be with us, if we learn how to instill countercultural values in our selves and our family,
gerrit
Comments
When ours were little, family table
unless Daddy was out of town, and then dinner might be popcorn or pancakes or forage. A mother's day off.
The Big One was Thanksgiving (American date). Candles and dim lighting. Then the four of us around the table would join hands and each verbalize some thankfulness. Then kids grew away. Some painful stories. But still maintained, limping, with one missing, then two.
After my husband died, my daughter came back and shed a boyfriend, almost baby-dad. That TG was different. Vegetarian bad-diet daughter made mac-and-cheese for dinner. We sat.
I have done a few Thanksgivings and Christmas (another family meal) alone now. Both children, now adults, launched successfully into their lives. We get together as a band of three (plus two trailers now) for significant family events like graduations and a death day.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
That is wonderful riverlover. And the tradition continues!
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
One of the best things I ever did for my family...
was KILL my TV.
Course we don't have a family dinner table, but the tradition of talking about the day is present. Course there's only the two kids and me, so we discuss it every day as soon as they get back from school. Usually over homework, which is the first thing that happens.
Other things we do that are fairly counter-cultural are weekly trips to the library, walks every day and honest and frank discussion of what is and isn't propaganda in their school. (Drug warrior BS gets an immediate dissection and deconstruction around here...)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
When my two were growing up
we decided to not get satellite (local cable Co told us $10K to bring a cable to the house). We had network TV, from an antenna. With the switch to digital, lucky kids were gone, and the signal was so bad I had to go to satellite DirecTV. Fun, for about a year. I cut the cord two years ago myself. Propaganda is depressing. But my kids got far without other contaminants.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Right on, DMW, that sound real cool. You've created a perfect
family environment for your kids to become learners and conscious of ways better than the toxic elements in our culture. I love libraries! I was raised like that and we always made sure to take our kids to the library every weekend. My son has difficulty reading, but he would get comic books and later caught up. Libraries make invaluable contributions to child and adult development. TY for this mate, and best wishes,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
Beautiful diary
I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Alcoholism, abuse, emotional abandonment, addiction - you know... the typical working class fam. *snark*
But we did sit down to eat. It was always a miserable experience. It was almost it was scripted out. My brother would try to not make any eye contact, I would try to swallow without making any unpleasant sounds so as not to set my father into a rage which would turn my mother into a co-dependent mess. The dishes were the easiest thing to clean up... our lives however weren't. I was hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. At 13 and at 5 feet and 5 inches, I was only 68 pounds.
So flash forward to now. I've broken many chains. But my family is a bit different than others so the family table is as well.
We mostly eat in the living room after we all get home. We TRY to eat together but sometimes that's just not possible. What with me having to work split shifts in retail and shit.
Also my oldest is autistic. For the longest time we tried eating at the table... but it just didn't work out. He'd get up and run.
Our solution, we eat while watching either a "comfortbale movie - usually a DVD we've seen a thousand times and therefore talk all the way through) or a hockey game. Hockey is our passion here. But during games with dinner we can just chill and talk about our days in a very non-confrontational manner. It works for us.
Recently I gave up my retail hell job and so my new schedule is a bit better, I'm mostly home now to have dinner made for the others when they arrive. I try to make two day meals when I have early days so that I can somehow try to stay ahead of "the game". I don't know how parents with two jobs each do it. Or how a single parent can do it.
"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison
Big Ty, D.Janet for this: for the back story and for how you've
made your family different from the one you had grown up in. We're big believers in "what works." And when circumstances change, then often "what works" changes too. And we figure it out and adapt. You've found a way to make the family dinner a family event that works for you all. Most people don't even try. Yet, you've managed to overcome a brutal childhood and have found ways to make your family tight even under your tough schedule and with health challenges in family members. It is so worth it. I salute you for making family dinner happen and happen meaningfully. Best wishes,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.