“This is home too” — Deconstructing elements of a home that define our personalities as an Individual

The objective of this article is to try and retain the role of food as a catalyzer and allow this age-old tradition to breathe in the form of habits that these kids can inculcate and take forward as a generation.

What makes a home?

It’s a question asked by each one of us when we start uncovering pieces of puzzles that fit just right into our house to make it a home, a haven. As individuals, we are fairly independent in terms of our identities, but what stays kindred is the way we describe what home means to us. Home is where you feel content and happy. While in today’s age we find home beyond concrete blocks and structures too, it does signify how home to us is everything and nothing at the same time. It’s a place where we have our most important relationships in life, making it evoke our emotional senses.

After the Covid-19 pandemic hit us with a check on reality, there are various elements of our daily lives at home that we as humans have begun to appreciate. And in that pool of elements, the most quintessential one has to be Food.

Food is not merely a form of sustenance anymore; it forms a part of ones’ identity. It is important for people to look at meals with the lens of it being a form of social ritual and call it a time when everyone is in the same place together. The traditions have not been abandoned solely for efficiency, but also to fit into the age of digital tumult.

Togetherness is a very important ingredient in the recipe of what makes a home for us. Finding time to experience a certain level of intimacy with the people you live with can be very demanding as well as difficult. While we are on a constant quest of finding new ways of spending time together, we forget to appreciate spaces in our homes that have been providing us with this chance for ages.

The dining is one such area in the house, which has been hearing roars of conversations for years. Our expectations of what spending time together mean has changed, and thus we are letting go of simple traditions like eating a meal together as a family at home. This makes us think how traditions like these have affected the dining habits across generations in different ways.

The habit of dining together on the dining table has been the first step to socializing for most individuals. Our parents’ dinner table has provided us with forces that bring together the experiences of being a family. It contributes to our personal and individual growth as we discuss and share stories every day with the people who we look up to. Today, as we move towards a more digital age, we forget to appreciate the beauty of simple things that help us transform and enhance our personalities. Eating is one of those activities that really simulate growth, especially among children. So how does the dining table serve a role here? The sensory experience of consuming meals is lost due to the number of distractions.

Distraction Caused by Media

While mealtime rituals have migrated to other parts of the house like the living room and study, the things that require multitasking have entered the domain traditionally meant for eating, which is the dining table.

This habit makes a room for individuals to indulge in digital media which leads them to stay distracted while eating. Although this behavior prevails mostly among the younger generation, this habit is becoming a global trend with time. Therefore, as a result, these devices that otherwise claim to bring people closer, are contributing to making people more distant inside their homes. In modern urban homes, this has a major impact on children.

In restaurants our kids are engaging in conversations and I look around and other families are on their phones, even the kids. I’m determined to make their life as pure and organically happy as possible so I do my best to keep technology limited — Jasmin, USA (Ikea Report-2017)

Changing Family Dynamics

As a generation, we have made a drastic shift of living in joint families to preferring nuclear families over time. While various nuclear families still practice the habit of eating together, there are also joint families where the generation gap causes a lack of interest in sharing a mealtime experience to avoid conflict of opinions.

Separate eating is one of the biggest threats to a child’s general habit formation. Therefore, when in nuclear families parents and the child end up eating separately, it has an adverse effect on how the child picks up basic food and dining habits. The recipe of togetherness cannot be so complicated after all, and it should include factors that make us who we are.

Read : Embrace The Family Meal As Your Family’s Most Sacred Time! https://www.healthbeginswithmom.com/sacred-family-meal/

Lack of Presence

Very often, getting unfinished work home gets in the way og being able to relax at home. This way, most working professionals end up being physically present but mentally absent from the immediate space.

As work-life tends to get busier and demanding, the outside world often seeps into your personal space in the form of technology that we consume. Family dinners are viewed as just another burdensome chore at the end of a tiring day for many individuals. They look at food as a form of sustenance on daily basis rather than an experience, which compromises on so many values as a family. Apart from the time, distance, and size of the house, their expectation of what eating at home should be like is a major obstacle. We forget to really recognize the moments in which we are consciously enjoying the company of people that define home for us.

39% people in India agree that they feel the need to spend more time with their children. (Ikea Report-2017)

Uninviting Dining Space

One of the most concrete issues in the bigger problem is the problem of space. In cities like Mumbai, people find it difficult to maneuver a space dedicated to dining and thus end up having a multipurpose table that ends up being cluttered for most parts of a day.

It is a proven fact how we are attracted to things that soothe our eyes even before we experience them. It remains relevant to food as well as space where food is designated to be served — The dining table. As mentioned earlier how other tasks have entered the domain meant for eating, as humans we automatically start looking for spaces that provide us an escape from those tasks, and this entire process, the experience of sharing a mealtime is hampered the most. This is causing the practice of ‘heading out’ to eat to become more popular.

“Dining tables are most often usd as a dumping yard for any purchase made or any work left unfinished. It is the only space in the house that doesn’t have a designated role anymore”- Juhi Jain, Mother, India

Adverse Effects on Children

One of the key reasons behind this shift in traditions is also because of the way we perceive the idea of engagement. We are constantly on the lookout for objects and things that keep us entertained so that there is absolutely no room for boredom. Habits like these that we practice on a daily basis at home, later form our general personality as adults. Therefore, when in nuclear families parents and the child end up eating separately, it has an adverse effect on how the child picks up basic dining habits and general habit formation.

“I serve my child fod in a plate made out of delicate material so that they learn to respect the food, as well as making sure that this plate cannot be taken elseware in the house other then the dining. Although they eat on the table, it is still a forced decision on them as nothing in inviting enough” — Niyati Kapadia, Mother, Mumbai

In one study, American kindergartners who watched TV during dinner were more likely to be overweight by the time they were in third grade. The association between TV-watching during dinner and overweight children was also reported in Sweden, Finland and Portugal.

According to a child psychologist and counselor Dr. Debmita Dutta, children will follow if the parents practice the habits they want their kids to imbibe. “Parents need to realize that eating is never about filling the stomach, they need to obsess less on how much the child eats, rather focus on how much time does the child take to finish what’s on his plate”

• Consuming food is a multi-sensory experience that starts with the process of Salivating. Salivating is the first step for digestion, which is initiated only when an individual sees someone eat.
• A child most often will feel hunger being induced when they engage their bodies in rigorous outdoor play and exercise.
• Due to the ample number of distractions, children tend to lose this trigger.

Slow eating is a habit among children as a result of such factors acting upon in our homes. Lack of mealtime rituals with the families causes the child to lose out on enriching conversations that help the children with personality development including Etiquettes, Vocabulary, and Posture.

“Home is where the heart is”, they say. When we think deeper, it’s the comfort, stability, happiness, an expression of self that defines home as the safe haven. In this advent of technology, the interaction with people who make these spaces home has been decreasing day by day. As per the Ikea report 2015, 39% of people in India have expressed the need to spend more time with their children. The simple act of sitting together while having a meal that has been a tradition in many cultures for years is slowly seeing its end. Today, people prefer sitting in front of TV sets, bring home unfinished work, prefer to have as less of interaction with fellow humans as possible. In 2008, researchers at Brigham Young University conducted a study of IBM employees and found that sitting down to a family meal helped working moms reduce the tension and strain from long hours at the office.

“When people come to me expressing family issue, the firm homework I give them is to go home and have a meal with their family, no media included”- Dr Debmita Dutta, Child Psychologist and Counselor

Shared family mealtimes have been associated with such diverse outcomes as academic achievement, language development, physical health, and reduced risk for substance abuse. The context in which mealtimes occur is a complex one affected by access to healthy foods, advertising and marketing to children, and feeding practices embedded in a family’s heritage. Realizing the values and benefits of this age-old tradition is essential for our generation.