Whatever happened to family meals around the dinner table? Did they go out with the 1950’s, along with bobby socks, soda jerks, and black-and-white television?
I remember dinner time when I was a child. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, as most were in those days. We had dinner as a family every night after Dad came home from working at Nelson Electric. It was a ritual shared by everyone on our block when we lived in town and when we moved to the country. We knew no other way to have the evening meal; in fact, I am not even sure we owned TV trays in those days.
I know families are busy today, but so were we! When I went to the sixth grade, we moved to the farm. (It was only 10 acres, but it surely was much larger than our lot in Tulsa.) We had cows to milk, eggs to collect and chickens to feed; we had hogs to slop and rabbits to feed and water; we had dogs; and we had to carry our water in from outside! Of course in the summer, we had additional chores, like caring for our “two acre” garden – it seemed that big when we were hoeing it!
Yes, we were involved in sports also at school and town leagues. I played all that were offered, even football although I was the skinniest boy at school. I know kids are busy today, but much of their busyness is centered around video games and texting.
When I married and had children of my own, we adopted the practice of sitting down together every evening. It was very important to us to gather the children in one place at the same time, no matter how difficult it was. The dinner table was sometimes the only time we had to spend together all day. Catching up on the news and keeping track of activities were done in less than an hour, thanks to sharing a meal together. Kids quickly get their own agendas, but we persevered!
Creating a strong family life requires time spent together. The demands of sports, school activities, after-school jobs and even church activities can cut into the dinner hour. Communicating proper principles to our children is difficult when they are not around!
The hustle and bustle that fills our lives today is carving away at time spent with our children. It takes commitment and agreement by the whole family to devote at least five nights a week to family dinners, but it is a compromise well worth the sacrifices.
Fast food is a tempting replacement for a healthy meal when the “busyness” of life consumes us. The home-cooked meal is just another family tradition in danger of extinction. There are many benefits to gathering around the table that many may not have considered.
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has done a study on the issue of family dinners. They found that family dinners get better with practice; the less often a family eats together, the worse the experience is likely to be, the less healthy the food, and the more meager the talk. Among those who eat together three or fewer times a week, 45 percent say the TV is on during meals (as opposed to 37 percent of all households), and nearly one-third say there is not much conversation. Such kids are also more than twice as likely as those who have frequent family meals to say there is a great deal of tension among family members, and they are much less likely to think their parents are proud of them.
Other studies show that when families make a point of eating together, the kids are less likely to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders, and consider suicide. Similarly, they are more likely to do well in school, delay sexual activity, eat nutritious food, and even practice better manners.
Parental influence is diminished when there is little or no time spent with children. It will seem like a daunting task to renew the tradition of family dinner time, but avoiding statistics like those mentioned above is a great motivator.
It is never too late to carve family time into our busy lives. We know God designed families, and desire those families to be strong; therefore, we can expect God to guide and support our decision to make a way for us to spend more time together. This world is desperately in need of model families who will march to different “drum beats” than those of our fallen society, but such may just happen if we will gather at the dinner table!
