Family Dinner - why, what, and how
It doesn’t have to be every day, not everyone has to be there every time, and they don’t have to be happy about being there, either. But having meals with your children as often as it works for your family is worth being a top priority, no matter their age.
Here is Why
While sitting through a meal may stretch your child's patience in the earlier years, it is an excellent opportunity for them to practice patience while observing and absorbing cultural values and traditions and develop social skills, such as conversation etiquette and listening.
As they get older, mealtime can be when family members catch up and discuss whatever comes up. This is your chance to help your kids practice conversational skills, impart some wisdom, and, most importantly - listen.
Research indicates that adolescents who frequently share meals with their families are less likely to engage in risky behaviors, are likely to have better mental health outcomes, form healthier eating habits, and are more academically successful. It doesn’t mean family meals cause all of this, but the correlation is clearly there. In a NYTimes article, Lisa Damour writes that parents who manage to have regular meals with their adolescents employ an authoritative parenting style. She suggests that is probably the key to adolescents’ well-being. I’ll write about that next week.
What Should We Eat?
What you eat will depend on your preferences, dietary restrictions, priorities, and budget. In our house, most meals are home cooked and everyone takes turns making dinner once a week (yes, that includes the 11yo). There are six of us, so there is at least one evening of ordering in, going out, or eating leftovers. Whoever cooks decides what we eat, ensuring everyone is happy about the meal at least once a week. Also, since the kids were young, there was no alternate food at mealtime. Everyone eats the same meal, and everyone at least tries each of the dishes served. Not hungry? No worries, you may sit with us and join the conversation anyway. And no, you may not go in the kitchen and snack right after the meal. I could write a whole post about eating habits and parenting (maybe I will!).
How to Make It Work
Whatever habits you establish in the earlier years will become the norm. But even if your kids are older, it’s not too late. You are the parent, and you still get to set rules (though with older kids, it’s worth having a family meeting and negotiating terms). Everyone knows there will be a dinner in our house, and they are expected to join if they are home. The TV is off during meals, and phones are put away. Friends who join us are expected to abide by the same rules, and while work emergencies are forgiven, the kids will call us out if we abuse that excuse. Of course, it doesn’t have to be dinner. If breakfast makes more sense for your family, choose that.
Some families plan a weekly menu, do one grocery shopping trip a week, and prep on the weekend. We have never been able to be this organized. What works these days is we usually have a check-in on Sunday, when everyone chooses what day they can cook based on their schedule for the upcoming week and what they plan to make. This way, we make sure to have the ingredients ahead of time, and the dreaded “what should we have for dinner” question is eliminated. Does this work perfectly every week? No. But it helps a lot.
Now that we have three teens who work, two are committed athletes, and even our youngest has activities on some evenings, the w-h-o-l-e family dinner is rarer. No matter who is around the table, we appreciate whoever cooked (or ordered or reheated leftovers), and we laugh, complain, tease, share stories, discuss world events, gossip, and sometimes cry. And oh, yes, we eat, too!
