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Benefits of Family Dinner

podcast Sep 05, 2023

This is Going to Be FUN: the Podcast

Episode 63: The Magic of Family Dinner

 

Episode Summary:

Benefits of Family Dinner

Learn the science-backed benefits of family dinner and why gathering around the dinner table is crucial, especially for teens.

From better academic performance and higher self-esteem to lower rates of anxiety and obesity, the benefits make a compelling case to prioritize family dinner.

And guess what? You don't need to have the perfect setting or five-course meals to reap these advantages. Sometimes, even a 16-minute quick meal is enough!

My 5 Family Dinner Success Hacks will help you make family meals a reality…even amidst the homework, sports schedules and your teen’s full social calendar.

Sometimes, love is best served at the dinner table. 🥘❤️

If you are ready for more, join me in the Enjoy community, where you get access to everything you need to enjoy parenting teens.

 

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Finding Time for Family Dinner is Hard When You Have Teenagers

With homework, friends, sports schedules and activities, trying to find a time that works well for family dinner can be a struggle. I know it is for my family. 

But I’ve read a few books lately that have stressed the importance of eating meals together as a family. It inspired me to do a little research and once I did I knew I had to share this information with you. There are so many benefits of family dinner – especially for your teenager. I hope it inspires you as much as it inspired me to make family dinners a priority. And I also want to share a few ideas for how to make family mealtimes a little bit easier despite the challenges that come along with raising teens. 

There is a huge body of scientific research that has been done on family meals and how they impact our children, teens, marriages and families. An article from the American College of Pediatricians summarized that research beautifully. (You can check out the whole article here if you are a data nerd like me.) 

The benefits of family dinner for teens

It said that teenagers who eat dinner with their families:

  • get better grades and have better academic performance
  • have better language and communication skills
  • experience lower rates of anxiety and depression
  • have less stress in their life overall
  • have higher self-esteem
  • experience more sense of belonging: meaning they have stronger family relationships and better relationship skills overall
  • are twice as likely to have better relationships with their siblings (and what parent doesn’t want that!)
  • are less likely to be bullied
  • are less likely to participate in risky behaviors like drugs, alcohol, smoking, or sex
  • are less likely to have friends who use drugs or participate in risky behaviors
  • make healthier food choices (not just at the dinner table, but throughout their day) 
  • are more likely to try new foods and healthier foods
  • are 35% less likely to develop an eating disorder. 
  • have lower rates of obesity: not just as a teenager, but even 10 years later 

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. 

Family dinner is a big part of raising an emotionally healthy teen

If you want to raise an emotionally healthy teen, family dinners build so many of the emotional health skills necessary for our teens – no nagging or lectures required. 

Family meals don’t just benefit teens – they benefit the whole family

Even better, many of those same benefits of family dinner are available to parents as well: better mental health, lower stress, and healthier eating habits. 

On study showed that 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?!

Stress-relief and Connection are Served

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 5 senses. Activating your senses is a tool I use with my coaching clients all the time to help them get out of cycles of worry, anxiety and shame. It brings them back into the moment so they can be present, experience joy and regulate their emotions better. 

Maybe all of that sounds amazing, but you are struggling to get your whole family under the same roof at the same time, much less around the same table? I have the best news for you. 

Family mealtime doesn’t have to be perfect to produce all of these benefits. 

Eat at least 4 meals together a week

Just four meals together a week can be enough to produce these benefits for your teen and your whole family. Plus, it 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. 

Quick meals count too

Strapped for time and trying to fit meals in between all the things? No problem. In one of the studies, the average meal time to show these benefits was just 16 minutes.

It only takes two to have a family meal

If you can’t get everyone together at once, your teen gets the same benefits from eating together with one family member (ideally a parent). This is great news for my family of eight because we are rarely all home together at the same time to eat dinner. But knowing that I can sit with my kids whenever they get home and they will still get all the benefits? What a relief! 

Bad attitudes welcome

They also found that the same benefits apply whether it is a happy family dinner or not-so-much. If you have ever had mealtime drama where someone doesn’t like the dinner or says something rude or ignores you and won’t say a word, no worries. They are still getting the benefits. 

Of course, it’s not ideal and I’m going to share some tips to help you avoid that. 

5 Family Dinner Success Hacks for Families with Teens

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.

 
 

When it comes to family meals, be flexible!

You may not be able to do dinner at the same time every day. You will have to work around sports schedules and rehearsals and football tailgate parties. It is ok for some people to eat early and some people to eat late (thank goodness for crock pots and air fryers!) 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 are eating a special diet, bulking up for football season, trying to make weight, or happen to be picky, be flexible with your menu. I have never been the short order cook kind of mom. But recently one of my kids started to experience some food aversions that are constantly changing.

We decided together that if he doesn’t like what we are eating that day, he is welcome to make his own meal as long as it includes both protein and veggies, and he eats it with the rest of us at the table.

This has worked really well for our family to make sure that he is getting nutritious food that is good for his body. He still has the option to eat what he wants, but it minimizes the drama and the negativity at our mealtime table. 

Make mealtime 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. 

We have tried lots of different things over the years to stimulate uplifting family conversations and connection at our dinner table. Everything we try works for a while and then we have to switch it up. So your family might be the same. 

Here’s a couple ideas to try:

  • Have your family share funny stories from their day.
  • Have each family member share a sweet and sour: one good thing about their day and one not so good thing. 
  • Have each family member share their 3 wins for the day. We recently stole this from the book The Gap and the Gain by Benjamin Hardy. The idea is that you are either winning or learning so it has been fun to help them see how their “failures” can actually be turned into wins. This has been 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.

Keep mealtime 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 mealtime.

While dinnertime can get challenging at different times of the year, depending on our kids sports schedules, we can be a lot more consistent about breakfast. 

My husband is the breakfast maker at our house and years ago we decided we needed to simplify the breakfast menu. We came up with a breakfast rotation: 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 what is on the menu. Even my kids that aren’t big breakfast eaters still come and gather with us most mornings. And before you have any visions of perfection, speaking of keeping it simple, we are not all sitting around the table singing kumbaya. 

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. 

Make mealtimes Distraction-Free!

Our dinner table is a tech-free zone:

  • No cell phones
  • No headphones
  • No TV in the background
  • No books at the table (for my little bookworm kids)

Our kids know that mealtime is about connection and 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. 

Get everyone involved in making family meals happen!

You do not have to do all the work to make family meals happen. 

There are so many ways you can 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 feel like it is all on us to make it all happen so our kids get all the benefits of family dinner.

Sure, you can initiate it, but you are not responsible for pulling it all off. Make sure you involve your family and get everyone on board.

Teach your teens everything I shared above about all the benefits they can get from having family meals. Better grades, less anxiety, higher self-esteem and a lower risk of obesity and bullying are pretty appealing benefits for teens. 

Family meals are just one of many ways to improve your teen’s emotional health

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. The benefits of family dinner are worth the effort. 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. 

 

 

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