Parent Time

As I spend half my life in the grocery store checkout line, I rarely take in supermarket scenery. So it’s odd that I noticed a recent newsmagazine by the counter. It must have been the headline: “The Family Meal: Securing Your Child’s Future.” The story inside revealed a study concluding that children who do not regularly eat dinner with their families are 61 percent more likely to use alcohol, tobacco or illegal drugs. By contrast, children who eat dinner with their families every night of the week are less likely to drink, smoke or use illegal drugs. Likewise, teens who eat frequent family dinners are less likely to have sex at a young age, get into fights or get suspended from school, and are at lower risk for thoughts of suicide.

Helping my kids avoid drug use and teenage pregnancy seems like an admirable parenting goal, so in the spirit of doing the right thing, I decided to give this family dinner thing a whirl. Besides, this is one of the few parenting goals I feel I can actually achieve: My family does, in fact, have most dinners together during the week. Still, I’m not sure we’re getting it right. You see, I have four kids between ages four and 14, all of whom have their own outside interests and organized sports. I also have a workaholic husband. So, yes, we eat “dinner” together, but too often it’s inhaled in silence or amid bickering and BlackBerrying. Furthermore, there are the eating idiosyncrasies: Most of my children hate my cooking, and my husband rarely looks up from his BlackBerry to see what it is he’s putting into his mouth (or what the children are pulling out of theirs).

I decided if I really want to better the odds that my kids won’t end up on COPS, it was time to inject a little conversation and conviviality into the supper hour.

Originally published in Today's Parent, May 2007