Family mealtime is a recipe for success
Whether it is breakfast, lunch, or dinner, sharing nourishment and conversation with your family does more than just add calories or snippets of news. It provides your body with good food, your mind with enriching ideas, and your soul with strong familial relationships.
Listening to your spouse and your children share thoughts and experiences is valuable to your spirit. Learning what is important to your loved ones makes it easier to help each other solve problems.
Discussing and working out issues as a family creates and maintains powerful rapports. When the basic family unit is solid, with members who can rely on and trust each other, it can bear virtually any issues that present themselves.
Many families are sadly losing sight of this lesson. According to a 2021 paper by the American College of Physicians (ACPeds), family mealtime and family discussions generally have decreased by over 30 percent over the previous three decades. And what family meals do occur are often impeded by the distractions of televisions and smartphones.
Conversations that range from what is healthy to eat and why to who someone is dating are all important to meal time discussions.
Your funny bone is sure to be tickled by stories of crazy antics from past vacations, or ridiculous situations from your parents’ youth. Getting all the immediate family at the same table is worthwhile. Even though modern schedules are more than hectic, it benefits every member of the family to make it a priority to spend time together sharing a meal and conversations.
I remember listening to my mother-in-law’s tales of spending summers on her uncle’s farm and having delicious ears of corn as the only entrée for their dinner. And hearing my father’s accounts of playing football with only an unlined leather helmet. And my mother recounting her concerns with fashion when she was young and working. Or our son’s story of how (unbeknownst to us until that very dinner) he and his buddy, having become hot and sweaty after cutting our grass, then jumped into the neighbor’s pool when the neighbor wasn’t home! The anecdotes of locker room hijinks or pranks played on coaches, and our daughter’s worries about prom dates: All of these life stories have come out over family meals. Likewise, more serious topics are exchanged like family illnesses, and the importance of wills and trusts and planning for all future events.
The long-term emotional and behavioral benefits of such ongoing family conversation are well-established. The aforementioned ACPeds report notes frequent household mealtime improves teenagers’ disposition, enhances life satisfaction, and reduces harmful consequences of cyberbullying.
Generally, the place to hear and be heard is the family table. It is the best place to share your thoughts, ideas and concerns. If you are lucky enough to have a family to share them with, family meals will cement relationships with loved ones in a way few other experiences can.
Carol Dubas is the author of Tripod: How Two Teenage Boys Inspire An Entire Community. She lives in Lower Southampton Township.
