When it comes to parenting, there are no shortcuts, but there are certain time-honored, traditional practices – such as spending quality time around the family dinner table – that can help children, teens, and young adults in a variety of important ways.
In fact, a regular family dinner routine has so many benefits for kids of all ages that it might be one of the only real parenting hacks we know about it.
To clarify, a life hack is defined as follows:
“A strategy or technique that helps manage time and daily activities in a more efficient way.”
Therefore, viewed through that lens, we’ll define a parenting hack this way:
“Any strategy or technique that helps you raise your kids in a more efficient way.”
To further clarify, we’re interested in what’s best for kids, as opposed to what’s easiest for parents. Which means that when we say parenting hack, what we’re getting at is any parenting practice that benefits kids on multiple levels at once, and contributes to their overall health, wellness, happiness, and future potential in a positive way.
What Are the Benefits of Family Dinner for Kids and Teens?
We’re not the only people who think family dinner is an effective parenting strategy. In fact, Harvard University launched a non-profit initiative in 2010 called The Family Dinner Project (FDP) to promote the concept of family dinner, advocate for families to make regular family dinner part of their routine, and help people get started having family dinners if they’re not sure how.
The FDP team at Harvard lists the following benefits – for kids and teens – of eating family dinner together 3-5 times per week:
- Improved academic achievement
- Improved self-esteem
- Increased psychological resilience
- Decreased risk of early drug/alcohol use
- Decreased likelihood of risky sexual behavior
- Lower depression risk
- Lower eating disorder risk
- Decreased tobacco use
- Decreased obesity risk
- Improved heart health in teens
- Enhanced/expanded vocabulary in young children
Kids and teens aren’t the only ones who benefit from family dinners. Here’s how family dinners can help parents, young adults, and adults:
- Improved overall eating habits for young adults
- Better overall nutrition
- Increased fresh fruit and vegetable consumption
- Fewer fast-food meals
- Decreased rates of dieting
- Improved self-esteem
- Decreased depression risk
Despite these benefits, research shows that only 30-40 percent of families in the U.S. eat dinner together more than once or twice a week.
To learn more about the evidence behind the benefits of family dinner – and read the most important studies firsthand – please scroll to the end of this article for a full list of references from peer-reviewed journal publications, academic articles, surveys, and other reputable sources. To learn how you can implement family dinner in your home, read on.
How to do Family Dinners: Addressing Stumbling Blocks, Help Getting Going
We understand that as a parent, your must-do list is already long, and the list of must-dos for parents and parents gets long very quickly:
You must teach your kids [insert unsolicited advice] or they’ll never reach their full potential.
You must practice [self-care, yoga, mindfulness, etc.] or you’ll never reach your full potential as a parent.
Your kids must take violin lessons.
Your kids must take Chinese classes before first grade.
They must exercise daily.
They must participate in extracurricular activities.
And they must go to college.
But you must consider the value of trade school, too.
First, there’s not a single set of must-dos for any family, because every family is different and has its own unique family culture and traditions. If you already have family dinner, that’s great. This article explains why you should keep it up. And if you don’t do family dinner, this article explains why you should consider giving it a try, and offers helpful tips for getting started.
We’ll start with the basics.
How often should family dinner happen?
The data above identifies benefits of having family dinner three to five times a week. But the Executive Director of FDP, Anne Fishel, advises families not to let perfect stand in the way of good. Here’s her advice for families starting out:
“The idea that has to be [a specific number] can become an obstacle. It can [become] a tyranny of perfection. I think we really want to get away from that in all regards. It doesn’t have to be a perfect number, it doesn’t have to be perfectly cooked, doesn’t have to be perfect manners, the secret sauce of dinner is really not about the food at all.”
The secret sauce is the fact you and your kids spend quality time together on a regular basis. It’s about connection and communication, rather than creating gourmet haute cuisine every meal, knowing which fork to use, or keeping your elbows off the table (but kids please keep your elbows off the table).
What if I’m a single parent, or I’m a young adult and not a parent?
The people at the FDP suggest creating family where you find it. They encourage people to expand the concept of family dinner to prioritize what matters most about it – the secret sauce, i.e. the connection on the communication – rather than get stuck in the idea that it has to happen at exactly 6:30 pm M-F and 5:00 on Sunday.
According to the FDP, single parents can get a friend group together and call it a family dinner. Similarly, a group of college students in a dorm can have their version of a family dinner. Likewise for young adult friend-groups: getting together and sharing a meal counts as a family dinner.
What if no one is ever around at dinner time?
No problem. Remember: the idea is connection and communication. That can happen over breakfast, a late lazy Sunday brunch, a midnight snack at the kitchen table, or Saturday morning stovetop s’mores.
What if I think my kids will never get on board?
The thing is, they probably will – especially if allowing them to talk and share about things that are important to them part of the process. A survey conducted by the FDP indicates teens “rank family dinner high on their list of things they like to do” and shows that 80 percent of teens say family dinner is “the time they’re most likely to talk to their parents.” The same survey also showed that when asked whether they’d prefer to eat with their family, with their friends, or alone with a screen device, 80 percent said they’d prefer eating with their family.
As you can see, family dinner is what you make it, and family can be chosen family rather than biological family. There’s only one catch. Family dinner needs to happen at home – or wherever/whatever home is in that period of life – and it needs to happen face to face, where people can see, hear, and talk to one another freely and easily.
How to Do Family Dinner: Our Top Tips
We’ve covered the basics and addressed the barriers many people bring up when considering whether or not family dinner is feasible. Now we’ll get to some specific ideas that can help you make family dinner happen.
Starting Family Dinners: The Core Components
Minimize distractions, including:
- Phones
- Television
- Tablets
- Computers
Establish routines, including:
- Consistent days
- Consistent times
- Check-ins
- Normalize participation and interaction
- Lead by example
Make it About Talking and Listening:
- Share stories about yourself
- Encourage your kids to talk
- When they talk, listen without offering commentary, correction, or opinion until they finish talking
- Explore this easy-to-read article and this peer-reviewed journal article on active listening
That’s how you get the ball rolling. Once that happens, you may need to come up with creative ways to stay focused on what matters most, which is, as we mention above, connection and communication. Here are our ideas for keeping the conversation going during mealtime.
Conversation Starters for Dinnertime
Ask your kids about their day:
- To get past one-word answers like “fine,” consider questions like these:
“What was the high point of you day?”
“What was the low point of your day?”
“What’s one out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened today?”
“What’s the funniest thing one of your friends said today?
“If today was a song, what would it be?”
- For more conversation starters, read this FDP article: 100 Ways to Ask About the Day
Question Game: Ask me anything about my life (except that!):
- Kids, teens, and young adults are curious about your life, which means you can establish a dinner conversation convention where they can ask you any questions they want.
- You can avoid/not answer questions about your personal experience and history with things like drugs, sex, skipping school, and any illegal behavior, if any of that is in your past. Why? You want to avoid glorifying things you don’t want them to do. If they persist, try handling it like this: tell them, “If you’re still interested when you turn 18, ask me then.”
Question Game: Ask me anything about the world:
- Kids and teens are curious about the world and what’s happening in it. Establish a convention where kids and teens can ask you questions about everything and anything they’re curious about, including:
- How stuff works
- Culture: arts and ideas
- History
- Pop culture: music, movies, etc.
- If you don’t know the answer(s) to their question(s), that’s an opportunity to show you’re willing to learn:
- Tell them you’ll read up on the topic and report back at the next family dinner
- Encourage them to read up on the topic and report what they found
- Comparing notes can be fun and instructive, and encourages both inquisitiveness and the free and open exchange of ideas
The language we use in those two lists skews towards traditional family structures, i.e. families with parents and kids at home. However, if you’re in a non-traditional situation – friend groups, chosen family, college roommates – you can still follow all the advice above. All you need to do is adapt the questions to the people at your version of family dinner.
Ask your friends about their day. Ask them about their lives – but be ready to reciprocate and answer back when they ask you.
We think you get the idea, here. Family dinner is about creating a repeatable situation where everyone in the family – especially the kids – feels seen, heard, understood, and valued for who they are. Most importantly, though, family dinner is about reinforcing bonds of unconditional love and support between parents and kids – or between you and the people you identify as your family.
Resources: The Value of Family Dinner
We’ll close with a list of references that support all the assertions we make about family dinner above. It may be hard to believe that simply sitting down for a meal 3-5 times a week can benefit kids, teens, and families across almost all life domains, and have a positive impact on psychological, emotional, interpersonal, social, academic, and vocational success and wellbeing – but it’s true.
Here’s the evidence:
- Protective factor, substance use: Family Meals and Substance Use: Is There a Long-Term Protective Association?
- Impact on social/psychological health: Correlations Between Family Meals and Psychosocial Well-being Among Adolescents
- Effect on eating habits: Family Meals during Adolescence Are Associated with Higher Diet Quality and Healthful Meal Patterns during Young Adulthood
- Protective factor, eating disorders: Family Meals and Disordered Eating in Adolescents
- Longitudinal Findings From Project EAT
- Improved literacy, young kids: Beginning Literacy With Language: Young Children Learning at Home and School
- Impact on education and risky behavior: Family Meals and Child Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
- Interview, Director of Family Dinner Project, Harvard University: The Benefit of Family Mealtime
- Impact on protective family relationships: The Importance of Family Dinners VIII: A CASA Columbia White Paper
- Impact on overall health and wellbeing: Reclaiming the Family Table: Mealtimes and Child Health And Wellbeing
We hope you decide to make family dinner happen, in a way that works for you, your family, and your life. It’s a simple step that’s worth taking, and it’s never too late to start.
