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I went online and looked for family style dining videos,

a few.

I could find a few for early childhood environments.

But they weren't just like ours because the children bring in their own lunches.

How do you do family style if you have your own lunch? So, we said well we are

going to take everything out. Put our lunch box under our chair

and let the child see everything that's there and choose what he or she

will eat first. And put that food on a plate.

You can visualize your portions better. You can talk about half should be fruits and vegetables.

Before the children were just eating out of little baggies and containers.

So that's how we made it more family style.

We started passing napkins and utensils during lunch time.

Pass the napkins, use your manners, self-control. Be a part of the meal.

And a big move was having the staff sit down, the

teachers sit with the children. They weren't sitting with them. And the teachers said we can't

sit with them. We have too much to do. It takes too long. So it's a process,

you need to allow more time at the beginning and now the teachers love sitting

with them. It's a great time to hear the conversation, you know

what the kids have to say. At that time, they talk about what they brought in to eat.

Teacher: Anybody eat any vegetables like broccoli?

You ate broccoli? What's in your

hand? You're hiding food from me? Family style eating,

teaching the kids, learning myself how to support the kids

in that. How each step of that process

is important. Taking the napkin by themselves and

serving themselves the food and pouring their own drink.

That whole process is so much smoother now that I've learned how to do it.

Each teacher has a different way that they do

it with different age children.

I'm just finding that my kids are so much more capable

than I thought, even in terms of that.

In terms of coming up and being able to

pour themselves a drink. It's amazing what they're able to

do once you learn how to teach them how to do it.

I was concerned about which way to go. Should I,

you know should I put everything on the table and just let them go.

Should we pass it all in a circle? Once I

realized that it actually doesn't matter as long as I pick

a way and do it and stick to

the routine. We can grow from there. Chris

has supported us in that in getting us the right size bowls and the right size tongs,

the right size water pitcher. That's been really helpful

in making that happen.

Family style dining, we do that

in our classes for snack.

The children pass around bowls of food and they serve

themselves. We teach that to parents, that children are more likely to

eat healthy foods and a variety of foods and try new foods if

they're serving themselves. So that's something that we talk about all the time. them take

Put a bowl of broccoli on the table and let them take it.

Introduce new foods and let their

children know when we do this in class as well.

Smell it, touch it, because that's a part of tasting too, what it smells like, and feels like.

What it looks like. Even if they take a lick,

then that's considered tasting and that's a first step. Maybe next time

they'll take a tiny bite and that is what happens and we see that. So we do that in school,

but we also teach that to parents so they can try it at home. Because

right away they will tell us that you know my child won't eat that. But if

they try some of these strategies, we find that it really works. We

talk about family style dining and how it's important that the children are serving themselves

or passing napkins or getting plates. And what we see often, which I

understand is, it takes a long time for children to

pass and to serve themselves. So as adults,

we tend to want to rush. So what I see is, if a child is struggling,

or not even struggling, but just taking a while or they're picking up pairs

of tongs and they miss. And they are doing it again and they're missing. So teachers

might take it and say here I'll do it for you. Because they want to rush it along

because that's what we're used to, rushing, rushing. And I can't tell you

how many children have said to me, or I've heard, not necessarily to me,

but sometimes to me, especially my son, "You're rushing me." Because that's what we

tend to do. Children do not rush. They don't have a

sense of time the way we do. They're not in a hurry. And so that's

something that we're continuing to teach and

hopefully model to other teachers that it's ok, this is all part of

the process. And that if it takes 5 minutes to pass napkins around,

let them take the time. Don't do it for them. Because that's what we see, we see

teachers tend to grab and just kind of do it for them. In our,

when we teach classes we have half an hour. So sometimes we have to make choices.

So we may pass around the napkins, but then let them serve themselves the food.

So you do have to make choices. But that I think is probably one of the biggest struggles

for teachers, just standing back and not doing it for them.

Because that's what as adults we are used to doing everything for children. And here

we're saying, let them do it. Because then they're more likely to eat

different foods, try different things. If we're teaching the children

about maybe it's about passing, the bowl of food.

That's what we'll explain to parents that your,

every one of the children, they put this, they

squeeze the hummus on their plate and they dip the broccoli in

and they all tasted it. So these are the same parents that might say they will not eat that.

But they did. They ate it for us. So why are they eating it for us?

Of course, they have other children around, so that's encouraging them. But

what's the difference? The difference is they're serving themselves. The difference

is there is no pressure and we tell this to parents.

Each classroom receives

serving utensils with the appropriate serving amounts on them,

so they know which utensil to use.

Different serving pitchers, serving bowls, the

children receive forks, spoons.

And I go down and I monitor

three times a year, the preschool age children, to ensure

that they are following the family style dining rules

and procedures. You know, make sure

the teachers are modeling the food components. And the children

are serving themselves. You know, friendly positive

atmosphere. With the family style dining,

the times that I have monitored, I have seen the children

and they each sit in groups at maybe three or four

tables in the classrooms, all with appropriate adult supervision

at each table. The children engage in conversation

amongst the group sitting there.

They serve themselves which allows them to

feel a little more independent, I think. And to kind of judge

what an appropriate portion is with the proper serving utensil

they've been given. Well, we are like a family

here in CentroNia. So that's the way we treat all children.

So we start with them, greeting them in the morning when we come

into the classroom. Doing a little dance, that's a good morning

with them. Later, we go wash our hands and then we walk to the table. We have

a job chart where they all have a job in our classroom.

Some of them clean the table, other ones are the one

who puts the plates, the other ones are the ones who pass the food.

Then we sit down together to eat all as a family. There at the table we talk

about things that happened at home or things that we're going to do in school.

Sometimes children's parents work

and they're not at home. So they don't have the opportunity to

share the communication, the talking

part. So, sometimes they just eat on the sofa or they

just eat at the table or they eat by themselves.

They are very happy to share

their experience, sharing what's going on even in the classroom.

They share things that happen at home. That's a

way as a teacher to know what's going on and how

we can help them.

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It's just a beautiful process.

It's basically, that's another thing, educating the adults.

I think the main thing is to give

the food the importance it has in life,

you have to take time to eat. Not to eat very quick to

go to take a nap. Then that is the, you have to

take more time to eat with the children. Then it

basically goes through the same thing. Children will do whatever you think that is fun.

If you say, oh this is much more fun to do it this way. Children will do

it. It's to educate the adults. Like I say, you have to compromise the

teachers to do this. You have to sell the

idea to them. At first it was like we don't have enough

bowls, put the food there. It has been a process

and I have seen the improvement, immensely.

And it's such a lovely thing to see how much the children were serving, how

much they learn how what are they wanting to eat.

And also gives them empowerment to eat, "This is what I want to eat,"

you put a little bit, but I want more of this. Then it's a very

important process for children. And I

think teachers are aware of that now and are practicing.

And it's just taking more time and making it a little more fun to eat.

Which we have lost here somehow. We think we don't

have time to eat. And I'm like what? What do you mean you don't have time to eat?

You have to eat in front of a computer. How does that work? I mean it's like...

It's because culturally in this country we lost that. We are very

busy people who...

don't take the time to eat and that makes it completely... but then I think

that if we make changes when they are young, that is going to be

an impact on their entire life.

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