Who cares about the food, how are the placemats?

I think restaurants are on to something. Now, being a person with kids means I eat at a lot of restaurants that hand out crayons when you sit down. Sometimes they also give you a puzzle, or a maze, and sometimes the kids' menu is in there somewhere. But the expectation is, there's gonna be drawing during dinner.

Even when we go to the nice restaurants, if they've got paper placemats, those are going to be drawn on. I'll pull out pencils and let the kids go for it.

Well, we've adopted this habit at home, too. We keep a cup of pencils or a package of pens on the table pretty much all the time. I used to think it was because I was really bad at getting the table cleared before dinner - now I realize that I'm doing that on purpose.

Having paper and pencils available is soothing. It accommodates the desire to just sit and make marks. I know many people like there to be a certain decorum at the table, and we do expect people to say "please" and sit on their chairs in between squirming.

But I find this blending of drawing and eating to be really interesting on a lot of levels. I hear from parents of older kids that it's easier to have a conversation with their child when he or she slightly distracted - maybe the TV is on, or you're driving somewhere - anything that is not a full-frontal conversation assault.

Sometimes thoughts flow more smoothly with my younger kids, too, when they have a pencil in their hand. We can talk about their day, or ask questions, and it's a little less stressful. I haven't done clinical studies here, I'm just offering an observation.

Maybe that's why all those old master painters did so many pictures of food.