Rules At The Dinner Table

My ex is Indonesian. His mother was insane abusive. Beat him up with fishing gear. But with food? Dutch food is bland and tasteless, so they had to force their kids to eat that stuff. We have an old book/ tv program of a boy who said he refused to pray for brown beans. We got that every day. Brown beans. No seasoning. But they got rice meals. Don't want these fabulous beans with fantastic tasty sauce? No problem. Take another vegetable cause there's bunches on the table. Dutch food:
Oh lol a war criminal from former Yugoslavija called our national dishes inhumane torture.

 

Dr.Colosso said:
My ex is Indonesian. His mother was insane abusive. Beat him up with fishing gear. But with food? Dutch food is bland and tasteless, so they had to force their kids to eat that stuff. We have an old book/ tv program of a boy who said he refused to pray for brown beans. We got that every day. Brown beans. No seasoning. But they got rice meals. Don't want these fabulous beans with fantastic tasty sauce? No problem. Take another vegetable cause there's bunches on the table. Dutch food:
Oh lol a war criminal from former Yugoslavija called our national dishes inhumane torture.

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'Dutch food is bland and tasteless..' 😁 That certainly brings back childhood memories! Not even counting my mother was a bad cook in general, but everything tasted like wet cardboard!! 🤢
 
I suppose that I was fortunate not to have many rules.

We were encouraged to try new things before forming an opinion.

Take and finish a small portion to make sure that there was enough for everyone before going back for seconds.

I remember my grandmother getting a bit crazy if someone dared to set a beer bottle on her dining room table, no screaming but you could definitely feel the mood change towards the culprit. The men did most of their holiday drinking in a large machinery barn a safe distance from the kitchen door. 😉🤭😂
 
Jazzy1 said:
1. Don’t talk with food in your mouth
2. No elbows on the table
3. Wait to start eating until everyone is served their meal
4. Must eat everything on the plate
5. Ask permission to leave the table when you're done eating
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We always did all those things at my parents house. We would go to big holiday meals and my ex-husband would sit down at the table, fill his plate and start wolfing it down while the rest of us sat with our hands in our laps waiting for my mother to bring in the hot rolls, sit down and begin the meal by starting a dish around the table. he would be done before any of us had taken the first bite get up and go watch football.

His mother, who thought she was so much more sophisticated than my West Virginia family, had raised him that way, always telling everyone to go ahead while she was still cooking, and laughing at me for sitting up so straight and not putting my napkin in my lap fast enough to suit her.
 
Jules said:
It was the same meal for everybody.

A few of the grandchildren were treated like royalty - whatever they wanted was served just to them. I’ll bite my tongue here, just like I did back then.
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My kids got nuggets and cucumber at their own small table when they didn't want cauliflower with cheese. My dad did not agree. He was the one who wanted everyone to eat healthy. My sis would leave her kid there often and once he force fed him carrots, which came out. My sis is 10 years older. I always joined and by the time I got kids my parents were way older and dad was way milder, but still he did not agree. He was always the boss. We were all afraid of him. But now my mom would just tell him off. Oh come on and then he'd just let it be lol.
 
Jules said:
It was the same meal for everybody.

A few of the grandchildren were treated like royalty - whatever they wanted was served just to them. I’ll bite my tongue here, just like I did back then.
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Your last statement- me, too.. like years ago when I was told their child wouldn't eat anything but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.. my thought was 'How did it get to that extreme?' but I didn't say anything..

However, these 'new' approaches go back quite a ways.. both during the 1990s:
One example was an ad I saw on t.v. with each member of the family in the ad wanting something different for breakfast..
And also a magazine interview with Lily Tomlin, she said after her mother made huge holiday dinners, she and her brother would say 'we don't want any of that, we're gonna make bologna sandwiches...'

For us, when all of us were still living at home, with the exception of a weekly casserole, dinners included meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc., and if there was anything we really didn't like we could just take a little more of one of the other items.. but certainly didn't have the option of leaving the table and fixing something different.
 
First, wait until Mom sits at the table. Then, beginning with the meat, Dad starts the take something and pass it around bit. Everyone was expected to "clean your plate"; eat what you put on it.
Dad was the designated conversation starter, but it wasn't mandatory to wait. Sometimes he didn't feel like talking, so Mom would kick things off.
You were expected to at least try everything. No deciding you didn't like it based on its appearance or because you knew there was onions in it or whatever.
When we finished eating, we said "Please may I be excused from the table?" then carried our plate, drinking glass, and utensils to the kitchen, scraped the plate into the trash, rinsed everything under running water, and stacked it all in the sink.

Those were the rules after we moved from Gramps's farm into our own house. While we lived on the farm, my parents and grandparents sat at the grown-ups table, where Gramps was the passer arounder and conversation starter, and me and my siblings sat at the kids table nearby, where my oldest brother was the "head of the table."

Dinner was always enjoyable. Mom and Gramma were fantastic cooks. When it was hot, Gramps and Dad cooked outdoors quite a bit, and they were really good at it. Meat cooked over an open fire and seasoned vegetables roasted in foil wraps or steamed in a Dutch oven. Great stuff, man!
 
Babs2u said:
We were a polite bunch at dinner time. Please pass the potatoes and may I be excused?
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we were also very polite.. please may I/you .. all the time, please can you pass the salt..please may I leave the table...

..then we cleared the table ( us kids)... and did the washing up ...while the parents sat down to watch TV...
 

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