Laurie David - The family dinner : great ways to connect with your kids, one meal at a time

DEDICATED TO MY GRANDMA MINNIE,
who never made a family dinner where she didnt forget a
side dish in the oven. And to my daughters, who helped teach
me the importance of sitting down to dinner.

L. D.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO YOU.
Please take the seeds of love planted by the women
of my family and with light and warmth let them grow into
dinners that are fearless, funny, and fantastical.

K. U.

Life sure has changed over the past thirty years! Increasingly, our fast-paced, no-frills society has pushed us toward an assembly-line view of life. Too often, work is now just a place to make widgets, school just a place to cram facts, and Christmas just a day to get presents.

Decades of this mind-set have turned many of our rich family traditions, like dining together, into increasingly rare and stripped-down events. Here are the facts:

Only half of modern families eat together more than three to five times per week.

Most meals last twenty minutes or less.

Families often watch TV while they eat.

Yikes! Can you imagine a young George Washington forking down his food, eyes glued to the boob tube? We may never have won our independence!

Americas children are suffering from alarming increases in obesity and diabetes. And these problems frequently spawn other devastating diseases, like depression, arthritis, cancer, and heart disease. That is why pediatricians are taught to discuss good eating habits and nutrition at every checkup. I often ask kids, If you had a great car would you fill it with good gas or junky gas? When they chirp, Good gas! I enthusiastically agree and point out thats exactly why its crazy to fill our stomachs with junky food.

Its so important for us to start seeing mealtime as more than just a pit stop to pack in the protein. Its a hugely beneficial time for us to serve our kids generous doses of vitamin Ssatisfying social interaction.

I encourage you to think of family dinner as your childs nightly dress rehearsal for adulthood, a protected space for him or her to master patience, conversation, and cooperation one meal at a time. Children today desperately need all these dress rehearsals because overcrowded classes, unsafe parks, TV, texting, and surfing the Web drastically reduce their daily opportunities to practice key social skills, like expressing their opinions and listening to others.

As a doctor, I find the research on the power of family meals to boost our childrens mental and physical health very compelling. Columbia University scientists reported that teens who regularly dine with their family were less likely to smoke cigarettes, use marijuana, or abuse alcohol. And other studies have shown that eating meals together helps reduce obesity, increase healthy eating (like fruits and veggies), and immunize kids against some behavior problems. Researchers from Harvard and other centers have even noted that family meals encourage a childs language skills and improve school grades!

These scientific studies only confirm what most of us already know to be true deep in our hearts: Eating dinner as a family enriches our lives and our childrens lives on many different levels.

In my own life, there are many (many!) things Ive forgotten about growing up in New York, fifty years ago, but I have countless sweet memories of eating meals with my family.

My parents cooked almost every night, and my sisters and I set the table and handled the cleanup. Even today, a warm little grin fills my heart when I remember the scent of chocolate pudding bubbling on the stove or the savory perfume of my dads garlic-roasted chicken. I remember getting into fights with my sisters over who would get the crispy wings. As you might imagine, with three kids and only two wings, these fights always ended with one of us getting a refresher in the art of taking turns.

When my wife and I raised our family, dinners together gave our daughter a chance to share her daily ups and downs to feel heard and respected. We tried to encourage her confidence in her own ability to problem-solve by not rushing in to rescue her with our opinions and ideas. These meals gave us an opportunity to see the world from her point of view; for us to learn the music she liked, the friends she trusted, and all about iPods and Facebook. Family dinners gave us a chance to recount our experiences growing up to give her insight into why we hold the beliefs that we do.

Having a regular dinner routine also helps build family unity. Joint meals wont end all domestic squabbles, but sitting togethereven the night after a fightgives kids practice talking through disagreements, forgiving and forgetting, and seeing the world as a bit more complex than right and wrong.

For all these reasons, I was really intrigued when Laurie told me about her new book, but I was also a little surprised. Lauries huge success raising global awareness about global warming made the topic of family dinner seem well a bit ordinary. I joked that if her climate change slogan was Think globally, act locally, her new motto should be Avoid calamity, eat like a family!

However, the more we spoke, the more clear and powerful the connection between the two issues became. I realized that it was much more than a coincidence that planetary warming was paralleling a cooling trend in family closeness. A healthy climate depends on the actions of concerned and engaged citizens, and that type of civic consciousness grows directly out of solid family values nurtured around the family table.

I know it can be tough for busy families to organize dinners together. And having our kids peel the potatoes and snap beans can really slow us down. But becoming a strong, healthy family is not automatic. It takes intention and attention and thousands of intimate moments that you share together. I promise you, though, that however much time you invest in meals together, youll be rewarded with huge returns. Your kids will grow up to be better communicators with greater confidence and humility. And you will be filled with delight as you watch your children lovingly raise families of their own.

The Family Dinner is like a Declaration of Dependence, poised to lead a mealtime revolution! By leading us away from faster food and meals alone, the ancient custom it is reviving will help you create some of your familys most precious memories!

So jump in and have fun! Let The Family Dinner lead you along a wonderful path toward happy family meals that you and your children will cherish forever.