Being a good parent is widely considered one of the most difficult challenges in most people’s lives. There is so much information, much of it contradictory.
Should we be limiting screen time, or downloading educational apps? How do we give our kids a head start in school? Is my teenage daughter depressed, or just moody?
One thing that everyone agrees on is that as a parent, you never stop worrying about what is best for your kids. For that reason, I decided to try and figure out the best activity I could do with my kids. One that will have the largest impact on them – both on their grades, their mental health, and their overall well-being.
What I discovered is that the single best thing you can do for your kids is to eat dinner together with them. That’s right – eating together, especially dinner, has so many benefits it’s astounding.
For example, many people believe that reading to your child is extremely important (and I’m not saying it isn’t). But eating dinner together has been shown to improve the vocabulary of young children much more than reading to them does. Young children were exposed to more than 1,000 rare words at meal time, compared to only 143 from parents reading books out loud to them. Discussions during dinner usually include topics such as current events, world knowledge, and abstract discussions and theories. Additionally, meal time talks provide an opportunity for everyday issues to be addressed, usually by sharing interesting stories.
Eating meals together frequently has also been correlated with higher test scores and more A’s than families that don’t eat together very often.
Another study demonstrated that regular family meals are linked to less depression and fewer suicidal thoughts (for the purpose of this blog post, we’re talking about 5-7 weekly meals for the high performers, and 2 or less meals for the infrequent mealtime category).
One of the most important benefits is the reduction in high risk activities: smoking, doing drugs, binge drinking, being sexually active, and incidents of violence at school.
One of the main reasons families don’t eat together more frequently is that no one has time. It’s not just time to eat together, but everything involved: shopping for fresh foods, preparing a meal, cleaning up all the dishes used to prepare the meal, then sitting down and eating, and then cleaning up the mess after dinner. It’s understandable, but there is a solution.
What we’ve started to do on a weekly basis is to shop or order catered meals for our family. The food lasts for 2-3 meals, and reduces the food prep and cleanup time to a negligible amount. For example, Costco party platters are low-cost, very well made, and fairly healthy (a little known fact is that Costco sells more organic food than any other company in the country). Another healthy and inexpensive option can be found by checking out the On The Border menu.
I realize this isn’t ideal, and that it’s probably cheaper and healthier to prepare the meal yourself at home. However, if preparing everything at home means you only eat dinner together twice a week, and using catering means you eat together five times a week, then I think the benefits clearly outweigh the disadvantages, and that looking at the bigger picture, your kids are much better off spending more time together at dinner.
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