Family meals provide much more than just nourishment

Family meals provide much more than the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients children need to grow up healthy.

Research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. Family meals are the perfect time to talk to kids and to listen to what's on their mind. It's not just the act of eating together that's important, but what it symbolizes. Parents who eat dinner with their children regularly tend to know what's going on in their children's lives and what problems and tough decisions their kids are facing. These children also tend to talk their problems over with parents.

Family Day is a national movement launched in 2001 by CASA and implemented in Kansas by Kansas Family Partnership, Inc. It's celebrated each year on the fourth Monday in September -- the 22nd this year -- as a day to emphasize the importance of families sitting down to meals together.

Research finds that children who eat dinner often with their families are more likely to:

* Do well in school.

* Be emotionally content.

* Have positive peer relationships.

* Have lower levels of stress and are bored less often.

* Be at lower risk for thoughts of suicide.

* Not engage in substance abusing behavior.

CASA's 2007 survey of teens and parents found that, compared to teens who have five to seven family dinners a week, those who dine with their families fewer than three nights a week are:

* Three and a half times more likely to have abused prescription drugs.

* Three times more likely to have tried marijuana.

* More than two and a half times more likely to have tried cigarettes.

* One and a half times more likely to have tried alcohol.

Research shows that teens are at greater risk of substance abuse as they move from middle school to high school. Dinner is one way for parents to stay involved in their children's lives during this time. Research also shows that a child who gets through age 21 without smoking, abusing alcohol or using illegal drugs is virtually certain never to do so.

Very young children who share family meals show improved literacy skills when compared with children who did not have family meal opportunities. Children and adolescents who share meals with their parents have improved food habits -- they tend to eat more fruits, vegetables and dairy foods, and less fried food and soft drinks at meals eaten with families.

It's never too early to start the tradition of regular family dinners. Make dinnertime special by turning off the TV and not answering the phone during mealtime. If dinner doesn't work for your family schedule, perhaps family breakfast will.

Clear the table of clutter -- the bills, homework and mail --and focus on each other and the food. Decide on a reasonable length of time for dinner. While 45 minutes would be nice, 20 minutes might be more realistic. Avoid making too many rules for mealtime. Instead, try to model the actions and behavior you would like children to exhibit. Keep the conversation positive. If kids think of the table as a place for conflict and discipline, they won't want to be there.

For more information on what families and communities can do to raise healthy children, visit the CASA web site at www.casafamilyday.org.

Editor's Note: Ann Ludlum is a K-State Research and Extension family and consumer sciences and 4-H extension agent assigned to Bourbon County. She may be reached at (620) 223-3720 or aludlum@ksu.edu.