For the context, I’m not talking about meals you have while celebrating your grandma’s 70s birthday or New Year’s Eve, I’m talking about regular everyday meals.
I’ve just remembered how when I and my siblings were kids, we weren’t allowed to talk until we were done with our meals. I can’t remember if my parents and grandparents talked much to each other, but they certainly didn’t remind each other to stop talking like they did with us kids if it wasn’t anything directly related to the meal. And of course there’s a Russian saying that goes * Когда я ем, я глух и нем (When I eat, I am deaf and mute)* that got drilled in every kid.
And then there are those American films where you can see the whole family talking about their day or arguing about something during their Wednesday dinner. And it got me wondering, how common is it actually for families to talk while eating and how common is it for kids to be a part of such conversation in other countries?
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It would be considered super weird here to not let your kids talk during dinner
in Poland it’s closer to the american example – food time is also family time where you talk about stuff, but most of the talking happens during smaller or cold meals (like deserts) or in between courses. With warm ones you will be told to eat before it cools down
The whole purpose of eating a meal together here is to talk to each other and mostly the kids.
What difference does it make if it was my grandma’s 70th birthday?
I was only told two things as a child at the dinner table: don’t talk with food in your mouth and that it’s rude to interrupt others. Aside from that if I had something to say as a kid then no one shushed me.
Although we generally don’t talk much while eating to begin with. Before the meal and between the courses for sure but not much between bites. Also depends on the meal. You don’t talk while eating soup but it’s more common to talk while eating some roasted meat for example.
As a kid you’re asked not to talk with your mouth full of food but otherwise talking is normal and expected. Not saying anything would be considered weird.
Italy here: What else we should do if not talking? It would be weird the contrary.
It’s definetely the place & time where it is talked the most. Like what is on the list for the day and week and how everyone is going. Sometimes we also have radio on low level in background
Nowadays kids are encouraged to talk during family meals, but I’m old enough to remember the Swedish saying “Låt maten tysta mun” (Let the food silence your mouth).
In our family, if we ever get the whole family to sit at the table at the same time it’s a struggle between getting the kid who wolfs down his food in 10 seconds to utter more than two grunts about his day and getting his chatterbox sister to do more than nibble at her food.
Family meals (especially dinner) are considered very important for family bonding, because it is a good moment to talk to the kids about their day. So yes, kids are allowed and encouraged to talk during dinner.
“How was school today?”, “Did you have a good time with your friends?”
One of the roles of meals in Portugal is for the family to be together and interact, so yes, it’s normal to talk. It’s also normal to have the TV on and Portuguese homes often have a TV in the kitchen for this purpose.
Though in the past (60s or so) it might have been like you said. I think it was also common for kids to eat separately from their parents back then.
It would be super wierd not to talk during dinner. I often argue with my teenagers that they have to spend at least 30 min at the table and actually talk to us rather than gobbling the food down and return to whatever they were doing.
Why would you have a meal together if you can’t talk? That would be super weird. The most common rules are _don’t talk with food in your mouth_ and _don’t interrupt anyone else_, whether it’s grandma’s birthday or not.
In Spain we talk a lot. If you do otherwise it is considered rude. Moreover, we have a word that cannot be translated to other languages: sobremesa. It’s a time, after lunch when you continue talking.
That seems weird to me. One of the purposes of having a meal with your family is so you can talk. The other is getting some food inside your body, but for that you don’t need to sit with your whole family.
I am Danish; we always ate together, both breakfast and dinner – my parents, my brother and I. It would be super weird if we didn’t talk. We very often sat at the table for a couple of hours for dinner, talking about our days and everything we could think of. We would have discussions, talk about school, interesting subjects, hobbies and our sports. I cannot imagine not doing that.
Family meals are a time for conversation, it would be weird not to. Kids are actively encouraged to be part of the conversation. I can’t imagine telling a child to not talk at all during a meal.
Allowed, encouraged, forced even. Dinner without talking is unthinkable.
I can’t possibly think of a different reason to eat dinner together other than to talk with the kids.
It used to be like that, you didn’t laugh or talk during the meals and the athmosphere was devout. It’s quite different now
Why eat dinner together, if you’re not talking?
Sure there have been instances where i was scolded for talking to much shit and not letting others speak during dinner as a little child, but that didn’t mean i weren’t allowed to talk at all.
Is this something common in Russian culture, or are you more a unique case?
Yes, I think that’s more common now and started with my parents generation (b.1940s), but I remember that my grandma took some time to me interjecting my thoughts and opinions into discussions at the dinner table.
OT because not Europe related: My thoughts and opinions were NOT welcome at my paternal grandparents in the late 1970s when I was a toddler and as late as the 1990s, my paternal side thought it was strange that I insisted on sitting with the adults, because I wanted to participate in their conversations, where my American side of the family still sat children and teenagers at a table separate from the adults.
Quite the opposite in Portugal, meal time is a time to communicate and talk. As we sit down to eat our parents would ask about the day, if we have homework, about our friends at school, etc.
At normal home meals the radio is always on when eating so people can hear the news and the necrology afterwards, so kids are often told to quiet. But they can of course talk, one learns fast how to sense people trying to listen and also speak in such a way it doesn’t interfere.
Tbh, seems like what strict parents do because they want some peace and quiet. I only heard of parents saying stuff like that but never experienced it myself
It’s not only normal but expected. If we’re having lunch and people aren’t talking I assume something’s wrong
The answers show that Reddit skews pretty young.
Yes, it is a common north-south difference, that has been fading out in the last decade or two. In Sweden and Estonia, there are also similar respective sayings, Swedish being *Låt maten tysta mun* – let the food silence your mouth; Estonian one being the less creative *Söögi ajal ei räägita* – no talking during eating-time.
It stems from the food being respected and the silence being respected, both of which are fading out fast in the current society. If there was the wish to chat, you used to do that *after* the meal was finished, while digesting and maybe having a coffee etc. But we are not super fond of small-talk here. Talking is more often done one-to-one and the chaos of everyone talking at once at the table still makes me uncomfortable.
It is old fashionned. But it used to be a thing yes. Nowadays however I couldn’t imagine having kids not talk at the table.
I’ve been raised in a manner of “Children can talk, but they cannot interrupt adults”.
The no-talking when eating rule also exists, but it’s not really enforced. It’s mostly used as an excuse when you want someone else to shut up.
Maybe my grandpa would say he wasn’t allowed to talk during meals, but nowadays the whole point of eating together is to talk. I always told my parents stories from school when we ate lunch together and in the evening I told them what I did all afternoon even though they were doing it with me mostly.
Hell YES!
That’s the purpose of eating together! :O
It is always said that Italians are obsessed with food, but what they don’t know is that we are obsessed with BEING TOGETHER AT THE TABLE, not with food.
cooking together, sharing food, conversation, joking, wine 😉 brightens and lightens the day, improves it, makes it unique.
What’s the point of being silent at the table is a HORRIBLE thing.
but what a strange question.
For everyone (including various Gods 😀 ) being at the table is an important moment of sharing, of family growth.
At the table, the children talk about their day, the parents understand and interact.
The table is the center of the family, it is where we gather to share the day, it is a VERY IMPORTANT moment of love and relax.
Forbidding a child to speak at the table is pure violence they cannot think of something so gratuitously violent.
For us, the table is one of the centers of the family, where everyone MUST talk and bond with family members.
The only time children are told not to talk is when their mouth is full of food. It is very dangerous and bad manners. 🙂
NEVER shut your children’s mouths. 😉
As a Czech, I was brought up to not talk during meals (this was drilled to us pretty much everywhere from home to school), and eat the meal as quickly as possible. Letting other people wait for me to finish a meal was impolite (and my asshole of a foster father would make a scene out of it).
I am over 40, though, and people giving me these lessons were ancient and very conservative by the average redditor standards.
These days I can be a motor mouth at the table, but I do observe and adapt to the actual group behaviour at the table. Some groups are chatty, some stay silent during eating. And I respect that.
American meals where they only sit on three sides of the table.
In School no, it was maten tystar mun, food silence the mouth.
But at home, we have always talked and when I started a family I introduced this, which was novelty to two of my exs.Ex nr 1 his family didnt talk at dinner because adults needs a moment a day to not hear the kids, this even if the kids hadnt been home all day, it could go days before they talked to their parents as teenagers. Can say neither of my ex or his sibling calls their parents today and parents complain on facebook about never seeing their grandkids.
Another ex grew up with kids ate last and in different room then parents and if it was party, never in the same room as the elderly until you where 18 and then you didn’t speak until spoken too.
My family , we always talked didn’t matter the age of the people around the table, it could anything from laundry to nuclear science. I think more modern families here in Sweden talk to each other.
I will answer specifically about when I was a child: not only was it not forbidden to talk, but my parents expected me and my brother to talk and tell them how our day had gone. What’s more, if we didn’t talk or we didn’t pay attention to the conversation because we were watching TV while eating, they would scold us and give us the speech “in my day when TV had only one channel…”
Yes. My mother and often my grandparents often said “It’s impolite to talk at meal”. Then they would often start talking between each other which is so weird.