Life is busy. During the school year, evenings are quickly filled with work and sports schedules, games, homework, friends and ever-present chores. While it can be hard to get the family together at the same time for dinner, the importance of a family meal is consistently demonstrated in research studies. As summarized by Nancy Gibbs from Time Magazine, “studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.” Sounds pretty good.
If you are not already in the habit of sitting down together for at least one meal every day, start now. Be flexible about mealtime – perhaps breakfast works best for your family’s schedule. Pick a quick and easy meal. It helps to plan a week’s menu in advance when grocery shopping to prevent last minute scrambles to get something together and to ensure that all necessary ingredients are on hand. Encourage everyone in the family to help get the meal together so the labor does not fall on just one person. Even young children can help with age-appropriate tasks such as putting silverware on the table. Create conversation at meal time by having everyone share the best and worst part of their day. And most importantly, turn off the television.