HOW EATING HABITS IMPACT TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS
The relationship between specific eating habits and strong time management skills might not be immediately apparent, but eating habits can function as a strong foundation for the right time management skills.
Say a child is raised in a family where breakfast, lunch, and dinner are always served at about the same time. Food is served in a specific order; the dessert is eaten last, not first. During the meal there is little talking, the focus is on eating the food. Eating is not combined with other social activities such as watching TV or playing games. Importance is being placed on eating, tasting the food. The parents do the same, serving as an example; children do not do what parents say but repeat what they do. The meal is finished within a certain time frame; it is not an open-ended affair, where the child can leave the table and come back to it whenever she wants.
Eating is a very natural urge; if a child learns how to manage that inner urge, and satisfy it at certain times, he naturally learns how to shape this inner urge in a specific framework: this can in the future be applied to other areas of life. The foundation for habits and discipline is established typically when we are between 0 and 6 years old, so eating habit and discipline are very natural elements of this foundation.
When parents bring their child to the table during breakfast, lunch and dinner time, and explain what is served, why it is good for her, and do not allow the attention to be placed elsewhere, the child learns that she cannot manipulate the situation (and manipulation is part of the natural instinct to survive); this will help her understand that in the future she cannot manipulate people – or time.
If the child is taught to eat foods in a certain order (and not start with dessert, for example), he learns that in life there is a natural sequence of tasks or priorities and that subjective preferences cannot be applied to that. Of course, that doesn’t mean there cannot be snack or fun times, but there is a time for everything; when the family sits down for dinner, it’s just dinner time, almost like an item of an agenda. This teaches the child the importance of specific patterns, and their ability to create their own.