Our children spend a lot of time with their academics, social skills, and recreational activities. These are essential for well-rounded growth in today’s children. We also teach our children etiquette, including table manners through Family Style Eating. With Family Style Eating your child takes control of serving and feeding themselves (under our instructive eye!). While we don’t use expensive china, silverware, and candelabras, we do allow our children to serve themselves.

Yes, it gets messy. Certainly, there is waste. Of course there are boo boos. What we focus on is the independence your child develops. Children in daycare and preschool strive for greater autonomy and activities like serving themselves food goes far in that regard. They develop their fine motor skills (you know, the ability to manipulate things skillfully with their little hands and fingers), appreciate the sense of size (in the beginning they take way too much food, later they understand portion control), improve their vocabulary (asking for specific food items by name), develop a sense of fairness (not taking all of the chicken nuggets when the other children didn’t have any), and explore many other skills.

This is how our preschoolers practice twirling their food with forks and aiming the loaded fork to their mouths. It’s messy, but it’s a skill they are developing.

Want to see this in practice? Take a look below!

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