The Place of Learning

One of the wonderful things about movies is that it exposes us to a number of things we normally wouldn't have experienced on our own. I mean, it gives meaning to perspectives. Considering how complicated and intertwined the world is, learning to see things and picking up lessons from the way others do things is really essential as it saves time and helps one to learn a lot of things in a short space of time. This is one of the gifts movies have given us.

The first time I noticed the importance of eating together as a family was when I What A Girl Wants starring Amanda Bynes. Bynes character, Daphne, was born to a British royalty father but raised in Chinatown in the United States. She never met her dad but sought him out when she was old enough to do so. Her dad, who now has a family of his own and doesn't even know she existed, reluctantly welcomed her and introduced her to the family. Now, we have a girl raised in Chinatown joining a family of British royal. And what was the first thing that gave her out? Eating together.

During the family breakfast, Daphne's conduct was in stark contrast to the others on the table. She was annoying, clumsy, probably rude, and maybe, uncourteous. In all fairness, she probably never meant that. She grew up with her carefree mother where she was not held to any strict standard as regards conduct and mannerism while eating compared to the Royal family where everything has to be in accordance with their high standard in the society. When I saw that I realized the importance of eating together as a family.

For those that attended a boarding school, you'd agree with me that a lot of students struggle with their cutleries, especially forks and knives, in the first few weeks in school. Why? Because they weren't used to using them before coming to the school. In most homes, the major cutlery of use is the spoon. When I went to the secondary school, noodles and spaghetti was rare unlike nowadays that we have it everywhere. I mean, the only reason you'd see me hold a fork back then was to eat yam, and that was also rare because my mama would rather eat pounded yam than yam. So, there was basically no avenue to master the use of other cutleries except spoon. Honestly, I was punished on a couple of occasions for using those damn cutleries wrong in my first year in secondary school.

One of the importance of eating together is that it fosters togetherness. At the dining table, everyone is relaxed and can talk freely about their day. It leads to shared connection that can really help the family grow. For me, considering my horrible early life experience with cutleries, one of the reasons why eating together is important for my young family is that it is also a place of growth. As in, you wouldn't believe the amount of learning little kids do from listening and looking at the way their parents do things. So I see the dining table as a place to mildly teach my little ones values and etiquettes that'll make them proud of themselves on the long run.

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