Mom, I'm not eating fish. I want fried chicken!
The voice of little boy Minh Khoi (12 years old, Hanoi City) echoed as soon as his mother had just set up the meal. On the table were a plate of braised fish, a bowl of vegetable soup and a bowl of steamed eggs - dishes that Ms. Hoai prepared after a day of work.
Khoi just looked over and shook his head, still holding his phone to watch the video of the hamburger he just saw online.
Ms. Nguyen Ha Hoai said that almost every dinner starts with a "negotiation". My child likes pizza, fried chicken, french fries, and my husband and I just hope the whole family will have a hot meal together.
What makes me sad is not because my child likes fast food, but because the meal is increasingly lacking laughter," she confided.
The story of Ms. Hoai's family is no longer rare. When parents grow up with simple meals but full of gathering, children today have countless attractive choices from food delivery applications and social networks.
The distance in taste inadvertently becomes the distance between generations.
In fact, what parents want is not simply for their child to finish a bowl of rice or a plate of fish. What they want to keep is the time the whole family sits down together, asking each other how a day has passed.
If each person eats a dish at a different time, the meal will gradually lose its inherent cohesive meaning.
Instead of turning the dining table into a "battlefield", experts encourage parents to be more flexible in the menu.
On weekends, you can make hamburgers and pizzas with your children at home with lots of green vegetables, and on other days, you can still maintain traditional dishes but change the way they are prepared to be more attractive. The most important thing is to create a cheerful atmosphere, without forcing or scolding.
Family meals are never just a story of dishes. Whether it's braised fish or fried chicken on the table, the most precious thing is still the presence of loved ones.
Because later, what children remember most is probably not the taste of the dish, but the feeling of always having a tray of rice and a family waiting for them to return.
