should be cross posted with food
 

Many years ago my sister was having dinner in a restaurant sitting near a table seating a family of four. At one point in their dinner the father raises his voice to a shouting level at his son who was about four:
"How many times have I told you to STOP TALKING TO YOUR FOOD?"

That pretty much halted all other conversation for a while. One of my first quesions was, what is so bad about talking to your food? Then, what would seek solace from by entering into discourse with his meal?

I find that listening to inch3 when he is chatting with his familiars is the best way to divine his emotional state. Call me an eavesdropper.

Your thoughts/opinions on this matter?

I could easily imagine solace in talking to my tater tots when the other table talk is like Dad's. I've heard under-breath comments by SonofV that could be read by a third party as a conversation with food. A four year old talks all the time--why *not* talk to food?! The only problem I see here from your short story is Dad's. He needs to take a pill.
These kinds of stories frost me. :rar:

re: your editing.
Touche'

It was abuse.

There's something wrong with talking to your food?

Oops.

Control freak? Worried about what someone else may be thinking about his kid talking to his food? when in reality, the parent is probably the only one that noticed. I'd hate to see what happened if the kid had an imaginary friend.
I think it's sad/scary how easily parents can fuck their kids heads up. There's a lot to be read into the story though...there could be lots of reasons why his dad keeps telling him not to talk to his food...unless the child is trying to put spells on people using his food I would think that talking to your food is harmless. I don't have kids but I assume that kind of "talking" to any object esp around certain ages is normal...

Just to play Devil's Advocate here, it does matter a tiny bit what the kid was saying. It could be a passive-aggressive disobedience thing, like if he was muttering, "I hate the way you taste and you make me want to vomit and I'm NOT going to eat you even if Daddy tells me to," or perhaps, "You know what, lettuce? My sister is really stupid and ugly." A four-year-old is more than capable of that sort of defiance.

YES exactly! What was the kid saying? Even if he was saying things like 'my sister's a fat dumbass' The dad was warning him off talking to his food (in general) as opposed to (specific, e.g.) Stop telling your food your sister is stupid or stop back talking to your food.

In either case, what the kid was saying is what I really wonder about. It is pretty amazing to listen to the sotto voce mutterings of the inchling.

SWMBO and I often will look at each other in amazement at things he'll talk about, like things that he heard ONCE, THREE months ago.

A kid talking to his food giving us food for thought .....