Now that my kids have been back in school for a few weeks, we are trying to figure out a schedule and routine that will really work well for our family in the coming months. And one of the things we are really focused on trying to make work is fitting in family dinners.
This is a struggle when we have kids going all different directions. They have homework. They are busy. We are busy. And so trying to find a time that works well for family dinner has been a little bit of a struggle for us in this phase.
But I've read a few books about parenting teenagers lately and in every single book, they mentioned the value and importance of eating meals together as a family. And it inspired me to want to share this message with you and let you know the benefits of family dinners so that you might be a little more motivated like I am to make that work for your family. But also to share some ideas for how to make family mealtimes a little bit easier, even as you are navigating the challenges of having teenagers.
In preparation for recording this podcast episode, I did some research to find the scientific studies that back up the benefits of eating dinner together as a family. There is actually a huge body of scientific research that has been done on family meals and how they impact our kids, our marriages, our teens, all that good stuff.
And I want to share some of the information that I found in a summary of all of that research from the American College of Pediatricians. (https://acpeds.org/position-statements/the-benefits-of-the-family-table)
It said that teenagers who eat dinner with their families four or more times:
Have better academic performance.
Better language and communication skills.
Have lower rates of anxiety and depression.
Less stress in their life overall.
They have higher self esteem.
More sense of belonging: meaning they have stronger family relationships and better relationship skills overall.
They are twice as likely to have better relationships with their siblings.
They have a lower risk of being bullied by others.
They are less likely to participate in risky behaviors like drugs, alcohol, smoking, or sex.
They are less likely to have friends who use drugs or participate in risky behaviors.
Teens who eat dinner with their families make healthier food choices overall, not just at the dinner table, but throughout their day.
Are more likely to try new foods and healthy foods.
They are 35% less likely to develop an eating disorder.
They have lower rates of obesity, not just as a teenager, but even when they checked back in with these people 10 years later, they still had a reduced risk of obesity. How crazy is that?
If you ask me, that is persuasive enough for me to make family meals a priority. All of those benefits for my teens. Yes, please. If we're talking about raising emotionally healthy teens, family dinners seem like a great way to instill so many of those emotional health skills that we are trying to teach our teens.
But even more than that, many of those same benefits are available to parents as well, like better mental health, lower stress, and healthier eating habits.
One of the other statistics that really blew my mind was that even unrelated adults, like firefighters showed enhanced team performance when they cooked and ate meals together. If shared meals help firefighters work better together in stressful situations, imagine what this could do for our families.
One of the reasons why family mealtimes are so effective at reducing anxiety and reducing stress levels and helping us have better mental health overall is because family mealtime involves all of our senses, and activating our senses is actually one of the tools that I use with my clients to get out of cycles of worry and anxiety and shame, and come back into the present moment where they can experience joy and regulate their emotions better.
And if all of that sounds amazing, but you're like, I don't know if we can pull off family dinner. It's so hard to get everyone together. I have the best news for you. Family mealtime doesn't have to be perfect to produce all of these benefits.
We are talking about four or more meals together a week, and those can be Any meal, not just dinner. It could be lunch together. It could be breakfast together. It could be dinner together. It could be a snack together. It doesn't really matter what the meal is. It's just gathering to eat together.
And it also doesn't have to take a long time. In one of the studies, the average meal time to show these benefits was only 16 minutes long. That's all it takes. 16 minutes.
They also found that you can get the same benefits, whether you eat together as a whole family or just two or more members of the family eating together. Ideally, if one of those is a parent, I don't know about you, but this is great news for my family of eight because we are rarely all home together at the same time to eat dinner. But if I can make an effort to be a part of that mealtime. With each of my kids, whenever it is that they are able to eat, they can still get all of these fabulous benefits.
They also found that the same benefits apply whether it is a happy family dinner or not so much. So if you have ever had mealtime drama where someone doesn't like the dinner or someone says something that hurts someone else's feelings or there's someone ignoring you over in the corner and won't say a word during dinner, no worries.
That still comes with a whole lot of benefits. Of course, it's not ideal and I'm going to share some tips to help you avoid that, but at least they are there for family dinner and they are getting the benefits. So with all of that in mind, I want to share a few family dinner success hacks that I think will help you make family dinners more feasible at your house during these crazy teen years.
The first hack is to be flexible.
You may not be able to do dinner at the same time every day. You are going to have to work around sports schedules. So if some people have to eat early and some people have to eat late, that's okay. But remember that the same benefits of family meals apply, whether it's just you and that child or the whole family gathered around the table together.
If you have kids who want to eat certain things, they're eating on a certain diet, or they're trying to make weight, or they just are kind of picky, be open to letting that be part of your dinner plan. I have never been the short order cook kind of mom. I have always made really fabulous, healthy meals, and I expect that my kids will eat them.
And as such, I have not really had a lot of picky children, but more recently I have a child who has some food aversions and they are tricky to navigate because they change all the time. And so we have made a deal with this child that if he does not like what we are eating as a family, he is welcome to make his own meal, but it has to have protein, it has to have veggies, and he has to have it at the table to eat it together with us as a family.
This has worked really well for our family to make sure that he is getting nutritious food that is good for his body. And he still has the option to eat what he wants, but it minimizes the drama and the negativity at our mealtime table.
The second hack I have for you is to keep it fun.
If family dinner is torture, your teens are going to fight you on it. They are not going to want to come. They're going to want to get the food and go. Do not use family dinner time to lecture, to punish, or to interrogate them about their life. This is not the time.
We have tried lots of different things over the years to stimulate uplifting family conversations and connection at our dinner table. And I'll share a few of them here with you. Everything we try works for a while and then we have to switch it up. So your family might be the same. So here's a couple ideas to try.
You can have your family share funny stories from their day. I love hearing my kids funny stories. It tells me a lot about them, but it also tells me a lot about their life and what is happening.
You can also do sweet and sour. Um, this is something we've tried before where you tell one sweet thing that happened in your day and one sour thing that happened in your day.
Recently, we started sharing our three wins for the day. After I read the book, The Gap and the Gain. Three wins is based on the idea that you're either winning or you're learning.So I like to encourage my kids to think about the things that they have learned that day from the experiences that they've had. So we can take the time to turn any experience into a win. This has been really fun and a good way for us to help them see the good things in their life and to help them see their challenges, maybe from a new perspective.
The next hack is keep it simple.
You do not have to serve five course gourmet meals to have the benefits of family mealtime. You can have leftover night. You can serve cereal. You can even pick up takeout and bring it home and sit around the table and eat it. You can have sandwiches or breakfast for dinner. It doesn't matter what food is sitting in front of you on the table. What matters is that you gather for mealtimes.
While dinnertime can get challenging at different times of the year, depending on our kids sports schedules, one of the things we always do is eat breakfast together. My husband is the breakfast maker at our house, not me, but we needed to find a way to make sure that breakfast was simple. We have different kids who like different kinds of breakfast, so we came up with a breakfast rotation, and this is working really well for us and going strong multiple years in a row. Monday is oatmeal, Tuesday is breakfast sandwiches, Wednesday is yogurt parfaits, Thursday is breakfast burritos. You get the idea.
Every single day there is a set item that we are going to make for breakfast and everyone knows that it's happening and they are welcome to come and join. And even my kids that don't eat breakfast still come and gather with us most mornings. And before you have any visions of perfection, since we're talking about keeping it simple, we are not all sitting around the table all of this time. Usually everyone's coming and going and packing lunches, but we're all together in the kitchen during breakfast time. And I think that's what this is all about. It's about gathering together for meals.
The fourth hack is something we talked about a couple weeks ago on the podcast, and that is to make your mealtimes distraction free.
Like I shared before, we do not allow cell phones at our table. Dinner time is a tech free zone. We also don't watch TV while we're eating meals, and we don't allow our bookworm children to bring their books to the table and read. This sends the message to our kids that mealtime is about connection, it's about togetherness. We want to be there with them and we want them to be there with us. We want everyone to be present so we can all get those benefits of gathering for mealtimes.
And finally, my last hack is to get everyone involved.
You do not have to do all the work. Make mealtimes a collaborative effort. My kids take turns cooking dinners as their scheduled permits throughout the year.
We rotate everyone's favorite meals and allow everyone to have a say in the kind of food we're eating. We also share responsibilities for setting up dinner and cleaning up dinner, and those rotate regularly. As moms, sometimes we hear about all these benefits of family mealtime, and we think it is our responsibility to make it all happen and make sure our kids get access to all of these benefits.
It is your responsibility to initiate it, but you are not responsible for pulling it all off. So make sure you involve your family, get everyone on board. If you want to have them listen to this podcast episode so they understand all of the benefits of having dinner together as a family, do it. I love it.
And if you are a teenager who is listening right now because your parents made you, welcome. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you have learned a lot. I also want you to know that your parents care about you so much. They are fully invested in helping you have the best life you can have. Either way, I hope that you feel inspired to make family mealtimes a regular part of your family culture and your routine.
And I hope that these simple dinner success hacks will help you make it a reality. Remember to be flexible. Keep it fun. Keep it simple. Keep it distraction free. And get everyone involved so you don't have to do all the work yourself. Everything I share and teach is all built around helping you to raise an emotionally healthy teenager who has strong values and to have a really great time in the process.
Family dinners are just one of many ways to do that, and I would love to help you and support you in all the other ways as well. If you are ready for more, join me in the Enjoy community, where you get access to everything you need to enjoy parenting teens. http://client.jenbelltate.com/membership
