Thinking with MESS
Our children have different boundaries when it comes to messiness, and we need to carefully consider how it is defined. When thinking about messiness, I tried to explore during children’s mealtime.
Mealtime is an everyday routine in all our lives, and in the Maple Seeds room, we do not often question or think about how it is lived in messiness.
Mealtime is where mess happens often; however, children enjoy this time regardless of how messy it gets. As we use “messy” to describe the children’s eating moments, I became curious about the word “mess”.
Here are some interesting findings about mess:
After looking into the roots of mess, it was surprising to see it had a direct relation to mealtime. And this made me realize that today’s 'mess' is socially constructed – it is shaped by people to describe mess as dirty, disorganized, even implying mistakes or trouble.
These negative connotations of today’s mess do not align with our image of children.
Seeing mess in this deficit and negative lens affects how we see children. The child is seen to need the supervision of an adult, in need of “cleaning up”, etc.
Therefore, we would like to have different idea about messiness through exploring and investigating the mess during mealtime.
What is happening during the meal time?
This is what children said and did while we were making a mess:
Everyone: “All done!”/ “Pack up”/ “eumm…(enjoying the food)”
Teo: “Uh oh..” (dropped his pasta on the floor)
“I have pasta”
“Mario strawberries!” (pointing Mario’s strawberries)
Liva: Spitting the peach peels
Penny: “Oh no.”(Dropped her lunch box and foods came out)
Jude: “Help please” (needed help with opening upthe yogurt drink)
Isla: (Showing pasta to Shinhee) “Pasta”
Mario: (Showing)“Big one, cu-cucumber”
Toraya: Offering her yogurt
Chloe: looking close to what Liva’s having / observing Liva eating
Food can mean something for the children.
While we were exploring the mealtime on the mess, we noticed food does and can mean something for the children.
When Theo, Oscar, and Chloe arrive in the Maple Seed in the morning, they open up their lunch box. This can shows the child is hungry, but gives us another idea that the children needs comfort. When some children start to eat, more children come over to the table and join eating.
We are noticing that food can create a sense of connection.
What kind of connections does food form for us? Can food be an invitation to something?
These moments ask us to think about what does food do for the children and what does making a mess on the table mean to children?
What is happening?
After Chloe and Toraya take a nap, they go to the cart where they put their lunch boxes and water bottles. Toraya pull out her lunch box and water bottle and says, “Eat, eat”.
Chloe follows Toraya and says, “Eat, eat”.
Shinhee helps Toraya and Chloe to sit on the chairs and opens the lunch boxes. “Would you like to eat?” Shinhee says. They say, “Yeah”.
There is aorange in Chloe's lunch box and it is little bit big for her mouth. Shinhee asks Chloe, “Do you want to split the orange? Is it too big?”. Chloe answers, “Yeah”. Shinhee starts to split the orange into little pieces and Chloe observes Shinhee’s fingers.
When Shinhee finishes splitting the oranges, she passes one piece to Chloe’s hand. Chloe looks closer to the orange and slowly took out the orange pith out.
While Shinhee and Chloe talk to each other, Toraya sits down on the chair next to Shinhee and opens her lunch box. Toraya scans her foods and picks oranges.
Chole starts to observe what Toraya eats. Her eye movement stops at Toraya’s orange in her hand.
Shinhee notices Chloe and Toraya holds their orangesand it matches from each other. She says out loud “Oh! Both of you guys have oranges! It matches!”
As soon as Shinhee says that they have oranges, they look to each other.
They slowly move their eyes and observe their looks.
Chloe gazes at Toraya’s oranges in Toraya’s hand and Toraya watches Chloe’s observation. Chloe moves her eyes to Toraya’s face and observes Toraya put the oranges into her mouth.
Chloe puts her oranges into her mouth too. Toraya put her whole piece of orange into her mouth. Chloe has small bite of orange.
Toraya turn her gaze from Chloe to Shinhee and makes sound of “uh, uh”. She gives one piece of orange to Shinhee.
Shinhee says, “I am okay, Toraya. You can have it.”
Toraya put her orange in her mouth and looked at Chloe again. Chloe also looked at Toraya eating while she chews her orange and holds her other orange.
Toraya stands up gently and says “All done!”.
Shinhee replies to Toraya “Are you all done?” and Toraya answers “Yeah”.
Shinhee answers back to Toraya, “Okay!”
Togetherness? Learning about and from each other? Sharing collective space? What is the meaning of eating together? Or by ourselves? What is the meaning of checking on each other? What does caring, togetherness and collective space look like? What is being together and what does it look like? What is the meaning of having space, getting personal space or being by oneself?