Family Meal Experiment

 
Happy New Year!  Amazing that we have reached 2010, isn't it?  I'm feeling quite nostalgic about leaving the past decade behind.  Olivia was born in 2000, and for us it was the decade of pregnancy, infants, and preschool.  Now they're all in elementary school and those early years are a blur.  By the end of the next decade, we'll have a high school graduate, a senior, and a sophmore.  This decade will surely be different.

Today, instead of a recipe, I want to share a resolution of sorts.  Such a weighty word, that "resolution."  This is more of a goal, a test or an experiement.

A while back, the New York Times ran an article about family dinners, and it got me thinking.  The article was about the benefits that recent studies have found to children in families that eat dinner together regularly.  Research has shown that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, struggle with asthma, get depressed, and have eating disorders.  Wow.  Sign me up.

But I have to wonder if the family dinner really is the solution to all of our children's ills.  This National Public Radio story breaks it down a bit and suggests that more research is needed to know whether it is the family dinner itself that is a benefit, or whether familes that are eating together have other attributes that yield such super children.

I think this is a thorny issue for parents of our time.  Many of us live in homes where both parents work and in those two-parent households where only one parent works, often that parent is not able to be home for dinner every night.  Single parents have even more of a challenge because they shoulder the entire burden of parenting alone.  The pressure to have dinner as a family every night could cause more stress on parents, which clearly can't be a good thing for a family.  In my view, there are lots of ways to spend time together as a family, and it doesn't have to be over dinner.

And yet.  There is something quite appealing about the idea of sitting down together at the end of the day to share a meal and some time as a family.  I have always valued our dinner time, and as a family we have tried to make it a priority.  Part of our motivation, of course, is that Gabe and I love to cook and eat.  For us, the family dinner is a way to spend time together doing something that we love.

But since I read that article, I've been wondering how hard it would be to have a meal together every day.  With work and school schedules, after-school activities, meetings, and other obligations, could we really make it happen?  It would make an interesting experiment.

Gabe and I have decided to give it a try.  For the month of January, our goal is to have one meal a day as a family.  If it goes well, maybe we'll push our experiment beyond January.  I'm hoping that if we make these meals part of our family rhythm, we'll sail through those teenage years.  Well, survive them anyway. 

Here are my rules:

1.  We will still engage in our normal activities.  Kids still get to go to slumber parties, sports practices, etc.; parents still work, attend meetings, and all that.  We're not going to put our lives on hold for this experiment.  Our goal is to see if we can make it work under normal living conditions.

2.  Any meal or snack counts.  Some days it may be afternoon tea, but so long as we gather together around the table (or more recently, in front of the fire!) and have time to check in together, I'll consider that we succeeded for the day.

3.  It doesn't matter whether we eat at home or out, with friends at home or at their place, if we're together, it's a family meal.

4.  I'll keep you posted on our daily efforts on Twitter, which seems to be the perfect forum for this kind of thing.  If you're interested, come follow me there (the account name is hidethecheese).  I want to leave this space as it is for sharing family recipes, so I'll keep my more frequent updates on this experiment on Twitter. 

Anyone want to join us?  I'd love to have your company. 

Comments

[Carey]

I'm wondering if we don't do this already-- with exceptions of my being gone on a business trip, I think we do. It is the rule. Even if they are refusing to eat or something, they have to sit with us. But if you are thinking of the need to make up for those rare evenings when they are left with a sitter-- that would be harder.

We did manage it with a teenager too, most of the time. Not Friday or Sat. When he is home from school now he is required to have dinner with the family on Sundays.

I do like your "chicken or egg" question-- hadn't ever thought about it that way....

[Margy]

Fabulous that you're already doing this, Carey. We try, but once I started thinking about it, I realized that someone was often mising at dinner -- at a meeting, home late from work, or at a friend's house. I'm thinking that on nights that we get a sitter we'll either have breakfast or lunch together or sit with the kids while they eat.

[Mary]

We have been fortunate to eat as a family this past decade as our house was also filled with infants and preschoolers- however this new decade is already proving a challenge with both kids now old enough to be active in elementary afterschool activities, sports, scouts, music etc- Glad you brought this idea up- so we can work on preventing what could easily be a quick erosion of family meals together. It sort of sneaks up on you if you are not paying due diligence-thanks for the tips!!

[Leticia]

I grew up always having breakfast and dinner as a family even as a teenager when me and my brother were really involved in high school sports we still managed to eat our meals together. It is a tradition that we still continue today. Despite changing work schedules and my husband getting home later than he used to, we've managed to adjust our family schedule accordingly to sit down to a family dinner which allows us to talk about our day. I also love having breakfast together since somehow it just seems to start the day off right. Good luck and I look forward to hearing how everything goes via Twitter!

[Maggie McGary]

We do this and I can honestly say that it makes a huge impact on my kids. I am divorced from their dad and re-married, and have 50/50 custody but they are with us most days for dinner. I can absolutely say that our having dinner--and breakfast and lunch, when possible--has helped restore a sense of normalcy to my kids' lives. Especially in our situation, where chaos is, to some extent, a given, anything we can do to make the kids feel a sense of calm and normalcy is a great thing, and mealtime is one of our best times as a family. I honestly feel that family meals have helped heal my kids--both when I was still a single mom and still now that I'm remarried. It's also helped foster a good relationship between my new husband and the kids. Life is far from perfect, but for us, sharing meals and the rituals that go with them, is one of the brightest parts of each day.

[phyllis]

such a great goal. we're trying to do this more and more. but it's very hard with an active 2.5-year old. after the plate tumbles to the floor, the milk is dumped on my daughter's dinner and i've heard the word "yucky" 12 times it's hard to continue. but we do. in the end it will pay off. deep breaths in and out. what's funny is i'm finding cooking with my kids so much easier than actually eating with them. happy new year. phyllis

[Margy]

Mary, I agree that now is the time to get this habit in place!

Leticia, it is inspiring to hear that you preserved your family dinners through your teenage years. That gives me hope. I love the idea of breakfast together, too, but we only manage on weekends because I leave for the office before the kids are up.

Maggie, Thanks you so much for sharing your experience with us. I now have this image of the family meal as the safe harbor, no matter what storms around outside of us.

Phyllis, I can relate. I ask the kids to sit down so many times during a meal that even I get tired of hearing it. I love your insight that cooking together is easier than eating together.

[Jan (Mixing Bowl Kids)]

I love this post! We do have a family dinner together almost every single night and began when our eldest was about four (he, too, is a 2000 baby). My husband ate this way as a child and can't imagine it any other way. I'm the child of a divorce, so dinner was never something we made a family priority, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it now. We're not strict about it though, and sometimes even feed the kids early so we can enjoy an adult-only-date-night-dinner later, together. The kids enjoy their fun dinner together and I like showing them that Daddy and I have a relationship separate from them, and we need to nourish that as well.

Looking forward to reading about your experiment via twitter. I'll need to add you now!

[Sarah]

Love it. This is definitely a priority for us as well, although I can certainly relate to the up and down, spilled milk, yucky, please sit down etc. that makes it all a bit nuts. Still, it is a time to be together every day, and I think you are right that it sets a pattern that helps everyone stay connected, especially in the teenage years. Good luck!!