Getting Closer to Your Kids One Meal at a Time

“Basically, everything a parent worries about can be improved by the simple act of sitting down and sharing a meal.”                               – Laurie David, producer and author

There are several up-to-date resources for parents wanting to know more about both the why’s and the how to’s of the family dinner. Laurie David, environmentalist and co-producer of the award-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, and Kirstin Uhrenholdt, co-authored The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time. Laurie’s personal experience as a mother of two teens in the aftermath of divorce led her to make this issue a public crusade to help strengthen families. The book includes ideas from experts, family-approved recipes, dinner conversation starters, ways to express gratitude, and ways to encourage parents to begin this ritual, one meal at a time. For those of you who will never have the time to read a whole book on this subject, take the full eleven minutes to get inspired by Laurie David’s Ted Talk called “Dinner Make a Difference”. She pulls together how this simple act can make a difference not only in the quality of our family sharing but in walking more gently on the planet.

Another good book that encapsulates almost everything we know about the importance of shared meals to building strong families is The Surprising Power of Family Meals by Dr. Miriam Weinstein, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto and a staff pediatric physician at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). The book includes all of the research that had come out by the time the book was published in 2005. Since that time, ongoing research continues to verify the enormous physical, behavioral, and emotional benefits of regular shared suppers with our children. The book includes stories, studies, and arguments from the fields of psychology, education, nutrition, family therapy, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and religion.

Weinstein doesn’t just explain, however, why family meals are important, she also includes practical tips for parents who want to revive the practice of eating together. She provides helpful strategies for taking what is best from the past and finding more workable solution for the current stresses confronting American families–both parents working, the increased demands of homework and extracurricular activities of children, and the competing influence of TV, cell phones and computers. There are wonderful tips and tools available at a website devoted solely to this topic, the power of family meals.