Dinner Time, Shminner Time, as Long as You Connect With Your Children

A recent NY Times Op-Ed pointed out that the benefits of family dinners aren’t as strong or as lasting as previous studies suggest. Authors Meier and Musick, who published their research in the well-respected Journal of Marriage and the Family, thankfully stopped short of claiming that family dinners don’t affect family well-being at all. The benefits might not be as strong as previously thought…..but there are still benefits! It’s our old friend “causality” that wrecks the party. Everyone’s having a grand old time until a researcher comes along and tries to PROVE that something CAUSES something else. That’s when the lifeguard blows the whistle and yells, everyone out of the pool (can you tell this is a summer-time Blog Post?). You can read the Op-Ed (click here) and judge for yourself or just rely on my Cliff Notes below, since it’s dinner time soon and I recommend that you turn off all electronic items and go enjoy dinner together with your family. KEY: “Given that eating is universal and routine, family meals offer a natural opportunity for parental influence: there are few other contexts in family life that provide a regular window of focused time together.” “If you aren’t able to make the family meal happen on a regular basis, don’t beat yourself up: just find another way to connect with your kids.”

Today is Family Day - A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children

The Power of Parenting

Whether you’re cooking a gourmet meal, ordering food from your favorite take-out place or eating on the go, rest assured that what your children really want during dinnertime is YOU! Family meals are the perfect time to talk to your children and to listen to what’s on their mind. The more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs.

Please click here to learn more about dinner tonight.

Close Families Raise...More? Less? (Pick One) Independent Adults

New research at the University of Haifa found that, contrary to common belief, young adults who maintain a close or moderate relationship with their parents exhibit greater independence in their personal lives than those who have a distant relationship.

In her research, Dr. Irit Yanir evaluated how a parent-child relationship is connected to one's ability to fulfill society's expectations in terms of settling down and establishing an intimate relationship. According Dr. Yanir, a close relationship with parents is one in which children talk with their parents often and regularly spend time together (eating meals together, for example), and one in which a child feels comfortable sharing his thoughts and experiences with his parents.

"An independent young adult is one who exhibits independence not only in his day-to-day life but also in the emotional sphere, and who makes his way in life with emotional and intellectual autonomy," she explained.

While a close relationship is often viewed as a sign of dependence, the research results show that those with close relationships with their parents were more financially self-sufficient, more independent in their day-to-day lives, professionally stable, felt more mature and were more likely to be involved in a stable intimate relationship. Those who maintained a distant relationship with their parents and tended to make choices out of a need to rebel against their parents' expectations were less independent into their late 20s.

So what answer did you pick for the title question? This research is a bit counter intuitive, but fascinating nevertheless. Do you think this helps make the case for the importance of eating dinner together?

Rx for Healthy Families: Eat Dinner Together by Dr. Alan Singer

Dinner with your Family, what's the big deal? It's actually quite a big deal and is very beneficial to your children and your entire family. Here's my column that the Home News published on 09/18/07. Please make a special effort to have dinner with your family on September 24th.

It's hard to believe that something that is so easy to do can be so good for you and your children: eating dinner together. A 2004 study of 4,746 children 11 to 18 years old, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that frequent family meals were associated with lower risk of smoking, drinking and use of controlled substances such as marijuana. The same study found that teens who ate meals with their family had a lower incidence of depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, "Teens who have frequent family dinners are likelier to get better grades in school, and higher academic performance is associated with lower substance abuse risk."

Rising rates of childhood obesity are a well-known concern of many parents. In 2000, a research team at Harvard studied 16,000 children of nurses and found that children who eat with their parents tend to have healthier eating habits than those who rarely do. The study, published in the Archives of Family Medicine, found that children who had family meals were 1.5 times as likely to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day as those who seldom ate with parents. The authors of the study also noted that these children had healthier diets throughout the day.

Why is the family dinner such a positive experience? It is an established daily gathering where family members can talk, bond, benefit from stress-free time together, and enjoy each other's company. To maximize the positive experience, phones should not be answered and the television should be turned off.

More than a decade's worth of research by CASA (http://www.casacolumbia.org/) has led to several important findings. "Compared to teens that have five or more family dinners per week, those who have two or fewer are: more than twice as likely to have tried cigarettes, 1.5 times likelier to have tried alcohol, and twice as likely to have tried marijuana."

CASA's literature also states with regard to parental engagement: "Parents who have infrequent family dinners are: five times likelier to say they have a fair or poor relationship with their teen, 1.5 times likelier to say they know the parents of their teen's friends — not very well or not at all, and more than twice as likely to say they do not know the names of their teen's teachers."
Important CASA data shows that 58 percent of teens report having dinner with their families at least five times a week, which is up from 47 percent in 1998.

One specific project of CASA is "Family Day," which deserves our support (for our own good). You don"t need to pledge money, write letters to legislators, or attend a rally — just show up at your own dinner table next Monday (Sept. 24). Read more at http://www.casafamilyday.org/ and remember to keep the television off and let phone calls go to voice mail.

I wanted a New Jersey perspective on these national statistics, so I turned to my friend Bill and his e-mail address book of friends for a quick survey. Bill knows lots of people; he is what Malcolm Gladwell, in the book "Tipping Point", refers to as a "connector." Bill e-mailed his friends asking, "How many nights per week do you eat dinner with your family?" When I tallied the responses, and saw the average was 2.4, I called Bill for his comments.

"My reaction is bittersweet," Bill said, "since I'm glad to know that my own two dinners with my family each week is within the norm of my peer group. But the survey reflects the difficulty of young suburban professionals and business executives who struggle with balancing work and family."

When I asked Bill (who has three children under the age of 7) whether he sees his two dinners-per-week lifestyle changing, he replied: "I definitely do aspire to being at home for dinner more often. Where the rubber hits the road is when my kids become more independent and subject to out-of-home influences and I will surely be there more often." Lauding the importance of family dinners, Bill emphasized, "The home has got to be the hub for family life and communication — the dinner table is the center of the home." So, please put down this paper and write Monday, Sept. 24, on your calendar.

"Be Counted" columnist Dr. Alan Singer is a marriage therapist in Highland Park. Respond to this column at Dr. Singer's blog http://www.familythinking.com/ or e-mail DrAlanSinger@aol.com