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Tips for Family Dinner Time
According to Dr. Kathleen Mullin Harris, researcher from the University of North Carolina, adolescents who share five to seven dinner meals a week with their parents - regardless of family structure - are less likely to participate in substance abuse or early sexual activity.
Here are some tips for your family meal times, regardless of your child's age:
- Make the mealtime pleasant, something the children look forward to, by sharing funny events and talking about things of interest to the children. Try not to use dinnertime as an opportunity to criticize or put a child on the spot about an uncompleted chore or unfinished homework.
- Be sensitive to your children's feelings and limits. Don't try to make the meal time last too long-especially at first if you haven't been eating together regularly as a family.
- Turn off the television.
- Make the same rule for both kids and parents: No telephone calls during dinner.
- Parents should avoid talking together exclusively about work or other adult-only issues.
- If you haven't been in the habit of sharing multiple family dinners weekly, ease into the new routine. Teens and adolescents may resist if they see it as forced family time that infringes on their personal schedules. Including their friends around the dinner table from time to time might help.
- If your children are young, begin family meal times now to establish the pattern and parent/child connections.
- Be persistent. Between work, school, sports, band, and other activities that both children and parents are involved in it can be a real challenge to carve out family dinnertime at least five times a week. Keep trying and working toward the goal. Two meals are better than one; three are better than two.
- Be creative. If your and your children's schedules simply make it impossible to eat multiple dinner meals together weekly, choose another time that provides similar opportunities for regular, uninterrupted, face-to-face interaction.
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