For me, dinner time at the table with my family was one of eating my meal fast and being quiet. I often didn’t feel like I had a voice or that I could speak about anything, let alone anything deep.
I often had lots of questions in my head that I wanted to ask, but it didn’t seem like I would be listened to if I spoke up. I longed for a time of laughter and deep conversation with good food. Now, as a dad with my own family, I really want things to be different for them. For us.
How could it be different?
I started asking some questions:
- Could the table be more than just where we eat food?
- Could the table be the place where we invite people into conversation, where we can be real and honest?
- Could we go beyond the noise or break through the silence that often inhabits table moments?
- Could it be safe to share what is going on inside of us? What would they think?
- Would we be ignored, laughed at, humiliated, or dismissed?
- Would we be accepted, listened to, and heard?
As I wrestled with these questions, I found the Family Dinner Project and their extensive research.
Benefits of Children Having Dinner With Their Families
Physical Benefits
- Greater consumption of vital nutrients from fruits and vegetables
- Less soft drink consumption
- Lower rates of obesity
- Lower caloric intake associated with home cooking compared to takeaway foods
- Better cardiovascular health in teenagers
- Reduction of asthma symptoms
- Greater likelihood of eating healthier diets when on their own as young adults
- Greater likelihood of not being obese as young adults
Social-Emotional Benefits
- Higher self-esteem, resilience and a more positive outlook on the future
- Lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, behavioural problems in school, and depression
- Better ability to bounce back from cyber-bullying
- Better body image
- Having 5 or more family meals per week lowered girls’ risk of developing an eating disorder by 30%
- A survey of almost 5,000 ethnically diverse adolescents found that teens who had regular family dinner had less disordered eating, particularly related to dieting and binge-eating
Academic Benefits
- Better grades – the Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) study found that adolescents who ate dinner with their families (3 to 5 times per week) were twice as likely to get A’s in school compared to classmates who rarely ate dinner with family
- Ability to have complex conversations
Conversation at table is a greater vocabulary enhancer in preschoolers than reading aloud to them - Higher reading scores in school-aged children
