Eating family meals together provides many benefits that strengthen families. Katie shares her expertise in this area through both research and personal experience to bring us a fun, informative episode!
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Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents Place, a podcast put out by the Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills. We can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host. Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode.
Hi and welcome to the Parents Place podcast, I'm Jen Daly, your host.
Sara: And I'm Sara Hendricks Here co-host.
Jen: Today, we are excited to bring you the topic of the importance of eating dinner with your family. And we have an amazing guest with us here. Her name is Katie, and I'm going to let her introduce herself.
Katie: Hi, I'm Katie Griffiths. I work at the Family Place as the program coordinator for the Better Together program. This is a program that is a parenting class for families. We do family dinners together and fun activities to promote resiliency, especially for families that have experienced trauma. I have worked in the field off and on for over 20 years as I've raised my own family. I married and have four kids. They range in age from eight to almost 17 years old.
Sara: Well, welcome Katie. We're so excited to have you, and I feel excited about this topic of family dinners together and to learn from you and your experiences. So, can you help our listeners understand why we're even having this conversation? What is it about family dinner that we need to know about?
Katie: That's a great question. I think that through the past maybe 20 or 30 years, research has really indicated a strong relationship between families having dinner together and positive outcomes for children especially, but also for parents as well. There's benefits for all family members when they take the time to eat together. And one thing I want to point out just from the outset is we kind of the research and the way we talk about it is generally family dinners, but really, it's any meal and food shared together if it can be anything. So just keep that in mind as we're talking.
Sara: Yeah, I think that's a good clarification because my brain does think dinnertime, not all meals.
Jen: I've known a lot of families that do breakfast together. They get up early to do breakfast together. I think nowadays, with kids so busy and all of their activities, dinnertime might be a harder time. So maybe it is, you know, a treat after everyone gets home, sitting down together and having that as a family. I know for me it was dinner time when growing up it was you were here for dinner time. We were in lots of things, so it was possible.
Katie: Yeah. And I think that's, that's true for a lot of people. There was more time for family dinner, and that's why it's kind of an emerging thing that as times have changed, we have to place more emphasis on this because it's not a natural thing that everybody's just doing every evening together that we have to kind of carve out and be cognizant of ways that we can get those positive components, a family dinner in our lives.
Jen: It's one thing I do miss, though I because we in my home now, it's rare that we ever sit at the table. My husband did not grow up that way. He grew up with his dad. He was the youngest, so all of the other siblings were out of the house and he and his dad. I mean, these are his greatest memories of thinking of him and his dad watching old cop shows as they ate their dinner on their TV trays. So, when we got married and he's like, “We need to put TV trays on our wedding registry”, I never in 43, 44 years, I never had a TV tray. But I have them now. So, it was a big adjustment for me to go from eating at the table because even living with my sister up until I got married, we would have dinner at the table. That was a normal thing. And so, it's been a big adjustment. But I like what you said. It's being there together, eating food, being able to communicate with each other. It's still that time together, but it has changed a lot over the years.
Sara: Yeah, in my home, growing up, that was the same week my parents sat in their spots in front of the TV and the kids were at the like the kitchen bar, you know? And I've actually like, as you were talking, I was wondering what my siblings do, and I feel like all of us have gone a different direction that we want that emphasis on eating meals together. And so, we do more formal, sit at the table as a family and eat a meal together. The TV is turned off during that time, so it's just kind of interesting how we were raised can influence what we're doing.
Jen: I try when, like our whole family gets together, like with my husband's kids and asked to eat at the dinner table and if the oldest one is there, it works, her and her husband. But if it's my youngest stepdaughter, if it's just the three of us does not work, can't get them all at the table. So, with this, and maybe this can really help me. How can families? Make this a priority of just eating together and eating together without outside distractions.
Katie: All right. Well, a pretty basic rule for that would be no phones at the table. I think that's probably the biggest distraction families face. I know when I was a child, my grandma delivered newspapers and she would. She had an afternoon newspaper delivery room and we were her last stop and she would always stop by and bring in the newspaper. And our family dinners were pretty informal, but she would set up with us. And I loved the newspaper and would slide the newspaper away from her and distract myself with the newspaper. That's probably not a huge problem for families nowadays, but I assume that for a lot of families, keeping everybody off their phone and not checking it is a problem. And it's just a pretty basic rule. No phones. And we focus on each other and really, dinner is probably 20 minutes. We can take a 20-minute break from our phone and be together.
Sara: I think that also goes not just phones, but anything that is your family's distraction, whether it's the television reading books at the table or if your kids are little toys or coloring or whatever it is that's pulling their attention to something else. You can set those boundaries or rules for what you want your family meals to look like.
Katie: I think an important thing is to recognize your own family's strengths and start where you are. I think it's overwhelming for a lot of families. They've probably heard you should have dinner together, and it's overwhelming to go from zero to like, the recommended is five to seven times per week. And if you're if you're not doing any, you're just setting yourself up to fail to say, OK, we have to have dinner together five times a week. Let's do it. You're not going to get there. You need to start where you're at and set reasonable small goals for yourself. So, if you have if you're currently not sharing any meals with your family, your goal could be one once a week. We are going to have dinner together, whether that's Taco Tuesday or Pizza Night on Friday or Sunday dinner, whatever it is that you guys that your family can incorporate as a tradition, start there. If you're already doing three or four nights a week, great, just maybe add one more or add some better conversation or some better activities to your dinner. Have your kids start helping more with it. Build from where you're already at. If your family can't have dinner together, recognize that and try for breakfast or whatever, you can make work. Just recognize what your family does well and start there. If you look at it and see all the ways in which you're failing, you're just going to keep failing. So, look at what you are good at. Go with that. Build up those strengths. And hopefully you'll experience enough success that you'll keep going with it.
Jen: See, I'm the one that everyone else can relate to, who feels like they're like, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing it either. So why time would be good if we could get that in my family? So don't fret, we're doing the best that we can with what we have.
Sara: Yeah, for sure. Jane also asked about how to make it a priority. Is that did you touch on that?
Katie: I don't think I did. I think making it a priority to be able to do that. You also have to recognize that there's different times and seasons of life. For me, when my kids were little, this was an easy thing. We had dinner together six or seven times a week, breakfast and lunch. Not so often, but we always ate dinner together as a family. Everybody was there. Mom, dad, all the kids. We schedule our activities around it. But now my kids are. I have a couple of teenagers and all four of my children are involved in things. Today we have four sports practices, two games and a piano lesson. We are not going to have dinner together tonight. Last night we did. Last night we grilled together. We had fresh corn on the cob and fresh fruit. It was great. We had family dinner. We had a nice conversation as a family. It's not going to happen tonight, so you need to make it a priority, but also recognize that you need to be flexible with yourself. If the season of your life means you get to have dinner together two or three times, roll with that and make it happen.
Sara: I totally agree to that because I do feel like as your lives grow and change and your kids get more involved with things, it makes it a lot harder to make that a priority. Something with my family, so, my husband has for a long time worked a swing shift, and so he would go in late in the afternoon and get home away late in the evening. So, it was through dinner time. But then my kids are gone during lunchtime. They're at school and breakfast for our family, just would not work to do breakfast together because he's worked late, so he usually sleeps in while they're getting ready for school. And so, we made it a priority for dinner time, even though he only got a 30-minute break for dinner. He would come home and he would only be at the dinner table with us for 10 minutes before he had to leave to go back to work. But we just felt like that was important for our family, that we sat down every meal together that we could. Granted, there were things that interrupt that throughout the week of meetings or something random that's happening, that we're not home for dinner. All of us together. But he's made it a priority to be there even for ten minutes. It just makes a difference to have that time together as a family.
Jen: Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity just to. I remember that was the time my family talked about my parents finding out what we were doing in school, how things were going with friends, things like that. And so, I think I mean, even if you can do it for that 10 minutes, that's 10 minutes of information you didn't have before. And it's a home cooked meal, most of the time.
Sara: Right. And even though he's only there for 10 minutes, the kids and I are still there longer. So, we're still getting that family time. Just he's not always there the whole time. And then we try to make up the difference on the weekend because it's not working.
Katie: And I think that brings up an important point that you can't approach it with an all or nothing mentality like we can't all be there, we can't do it. If somebody is gone, occasionally, somebody can't be there, still do it with whoever's there. If it can only be a few minutes, still do it. Even if you can't, you know, like you said, your family, it could only be half an hour while he was on his break. That's better than nothing. Just do what you can. Something will be better than giving up and not doing anything.
Sara: Yeah, I totally agree. So then can you help us understand why something so simple as eating a meal together as a family can really help strengthen the family?
Katie: Sure. Family dinner time constraints strengthen your family in so many different ways, and I think part of its power is it incorporates lots of different aspects of your life and strengthens them. For example, nutritionally, the meals you're eating at home are generally better. There's more vegetables, less soda and sugar and additives than if you're grabbing something in the car or going out to eat, so it's healthier for your body to eat at home. It's really good time for conversation. Kids who eat at home do a lot better in school. They have larger vocabularies. It's a great opportunity for them to learn new words and to give and take of conversation those social skills that they'll need. It's also the routine a family dinner time is really important for kids. They crave that structure, even though a lot of times they'll fight against it. That really helps their development and helps them develop a strong self-esteem by having that routine and predictability in their life. It's a great opportunity to check in with each other. See how people are doing. Find out if there's a problem. Find out what's going on in people's lives. That's a benefit for them. It's a great experience for kids to learn how to work together and learn social skills. Usually when you're eating at the home, there's more opportunities for helping if you just show up at the restaurant and somebody brings you your food. Kids don't get to help choose what it is. They don't get to help prepare it. They don't have to help clean up. All those are important experiences for kids that will help them become hopefully successful contributing members of society, and you're going to have to eat anyway. Everybody needs food to survive. And so, by doing it in a way that incorporates all these life lessons and helps them have healthy development, it's really setting the children up for success in life.
Jen: I really like the part we're talking about helping just having responsibilities, jobs, helping cook or clean up or whatnot. We did that as I was a kid. And, you know, there is always those nights. I didn't want to do my part and I would go into the bathroom like I needed to go.
Katie: Hopefully they won't notice that I’m gone
Jen: I thought I'd sit there for a half an hour and that was before phone. So, what I did, I don't know. But I would sit in there hoping that my job had been done if I was picking up food or dishes or whatnot. And nope, it was all still waiting for me when I got out.
Katie: It takes a lot of practice for kids to, you know, to us, it seems pretty simple, clean up dinner, but it takes a lot of practice for kids to get good at that and families negotiate that in a lot of different ways in our own family. Each of our kids has a certain night of the week that they're in charge and responsible for all the cleanup and mom and dad still pitch in and help. Even with the teenagers, but other families like you were talking Jen and your family, you negotiated it. Every kid had a different job every night. There's a lot of different ways, but I suspect that in most families, it's a pretty natural time to dole out those jobs and have people cooperate and work together.
Jen: Yeah, and that's a great way to remember to say please and thank you. Please pass whatever. And then when you get thank you, I mean, lots of manners come from having a meal together as well.
Sara: Yeah. Well, that's what I was thinking as you, Katie were listing off all of the benefits for eating a meal together, I thought. It's also such a great opportunity to reinforce some of those family rules, like manners,
Katie: Family rules and family values. I will admit that in my family, our table manners are lacking. It's not something that we emphasize to a great extent, but we do really emphasize conversation. We learn a lot about different topics, things going on around us in the world. That's something that we really value as a family. So, whatever your family values are, whatever messages you want to transmit to your children, dinnertime is a really natural opportunity for you to do that. And for children, it doesn't come across as preachy, preachy as you know, sit down and let's learn manners, or let's learn these other things. It's a more natural learning environment for them.
Jen: Yeah, and there's great books out there. I think there's one called Dinner Talk that if that's a struggle, like you're like, I'm trying to pull teeth or things like that to talk to my kids during a meal that one book has, you know, hundreds of different topics that you can talk about with your kids. And some of them are fun and silly topics, and some are like, you know, “What would you do in this situation?”
Katie: There are so many great lists and topics available online as well? If you just Google dinner conversations in our Better Together program, one of the things we do each week is provide families with dinner conversation prompts, and they're kind of all over the place. You know, it will be questions like what was your favorite vacation as a child? What was something your grandparents taught you? If you could be an animal, what would it be? There are so many good conversation starters for kids of all ages that will get them engaged and talking. And in our family, something we have to watch is that we have a couple of kids who are bigger talkers than a couple of our other kids. And so, we have to kind of push opportunities on some kids and quiet the other ones for a minute. So, everybody has an opportunity to contribute to the conversation.
Sara: Yeah. So, I was thinking with these like conversation starters that I'm sure there are families who maybe are listening and thinking, oh man, we have not been doing this and my kids are older and I know I'm going to receive a lot of pushback that they're not going to want to do this. And so, the conversation starters could be a really good way to sort of introduce this new like, we're eating dinner together as a family and this like, let's do this little game or you know, well,
Katie: I know your children's interests. Like last night, our conversation was about the Chinese government implementing a no video games for children during the week policy where they like, shut off. You can't access them online during the week in China any longer. And I knew my teenagers especially would have pretty strong opinions about that. They were pretty willing to contribute to that conversation. When you bring up something that they're interested in, so you, you're your child's expert, you know what will get them talking? It might take a little bit of thought on your part to think that through and come up with stuff. But there's something out there that will capture their attention.
Jen: And you can do it in a creative way, especially if you have like questions that you want to ask your kids that are kind of hard, maybe about drugs or sex or suicide or whatever those harder topics are. I would not suggest that every night that should be an occasional conversation, but you can do it in a creative way to kind of put those harder topics to see how they feel about it if they're having any of those kinds of issues. So was popping into my mind is there were times where we didn't have dinner, but we would eat watermelon out in our front yard and we just all had to stay in the front yard and we were eating watermelon together. And that also brought up a lot of great times for conversation.
Katie: Yeah, there's no rules about when the meal has to be. If your family tonight, my family won't all be home until nine o'clock at night, so we'll probably we have a whole lot of fresh peaches at home. We'll probably all have peaches and cream together as a little nighttime snack, and that will be the best we can do today. And hopefully it'll be a happy time.
Jen: Yeah, we talked a little bit about the challenge of schedules and when they don't all. Kind of meshed together to have a meal together. What other kind of challenges can families face in regards to eating together?
Katie: A couple of challenges that come to mind are kind of sibling fighting and tension at the dinner table. Maybe I know in my own family we've had times in our life when that was still was very prevalent. And even still, there are moments when you know, kids just don't get along. For example, when my kids were younger, one of the chairs at our dinner table had a drop of wood glue on it from when it had been repaired. And somehow the oldest two decided that was the premiere chair. And every night we had a fight over who got the glue dropped chair, so we had to implement a lot of rules about, you know, whose turn it was for the glue dropped chair and kids can find almost anything to fight about, so fights at the dinner table tension between siblings can be a real challenge. And it's just something you're going to have to work through. I don't have a lot of great ideas for how to get rid of that. I will say my daughter was talking just the other day. She's 14 now, and she was talking about the glue dropped chair and how much she misses the chair and reminiscing in a really positive manner. When in my mind, that was a bad thing, that chair caused all kinds of fights, but to her it was something happy. So, a lot of times they'll work through those and you can implement rules. You might have to implement rules like assigned seating at the dinner table, assigned different jobs. You might have to assign rules about whose turn it is for conversation or different things that can be a problem and that can be a challenge. And that's a real thing that families face.
Jen: Sibling rivalry is always going to happen, and it's normal so that fighting at the dinner table is normal. I mean, I've heard parents that have had talking sticks or talking something, so this person's turn to talk.
Sara: Well, we know that sibling rivalry is normal and so us as parents, how we respond can make a big difference. If we're playing a comparison game, why can't you be more like your sister who's sitting here so quietly that's just going to cause more tension at the table?
Katie: I think to keeping in mind that it should be a fun time. And so maybe even planning ahead so you have conversation topics or even little games that you can play at the table might distract kids from that and help you manage that a little bit more reasonably. Another challenge for families might be picky eaters. There's a lot of children that are picky eaters. My oldest child was a great eater, and I got a little bit smug about that. Like, Well, see, look, if you just feed the vegetables from the start, they'll be they'll like the vegetables. And then my other three kids came and they are not such great eaters. My second child, she just quietly doesn't eat what she doesn't like. But numbers three and four make a big show and a big to-do about this food is terrible. Why are you eating that to me? I liked it last week, but now I hate it. And so that can be a real challenge, and I really enjoy cooking. But I would not say that I actually enjoy making dinner all that much because it can be very frustrating to make food, prepare it for your family and have maybe one person eat the food. So, my best advice for that and keep in mind, I am not a nutritionist at all, but my best advice is to lower your expectations and to know that that's part of their development. Children are picky eaters. They have to try things a lot of times before they get familiar with it, especially certain personalities. My third child, he's 11 now and he has always been our fussy eater. And he said to me just the other day, I think I'm really starting to like other foods now. I don't eat a whole lot of sugar. And I was so excited and proud of him. And then he followed that up with. In fact, one thing I really like is those fried mozzarella sticks. And I kind of face palm like that. That's not better, but he's trying things. We have never had fried mozzarella sticks. I don't know where he tried those, but the fact that he tried them is huge. So, lower your expectations. Sneak in as much healthy food as you can. They might only have a nibble of it, and it's going to be a long process.
Jen: I was and still am one of those picky eaters. There were lots of things I didn't want and like, and it really bothered me during those times. I mean, I still remember my dad saying, Just try it. You tried. You tried it last week, but maybe this week you'll like it. And just having him push that on me really caused me a lot of anxiety because it's like, I know I don't like this. Why do I have to like the same thing you like? I don't understand that. And so, my husband does it to me now because he loves spicy stuff. He's like, just. Try it, and I'm like, I already know. I don't like sriracha sauce, so I don't need to try it again. Will your taste buds change? Fine. Then let me do that on my own terms instead of being told or forced, because you can cause a lot of food issues by forcing or making kids eat things that they don't like.
Katie: The research has shown that one of the benefits of family dinner is a lower tendency towards eating disorders because it's kind of a positive atmosphere and helps kids develop a healthy approach to eating. So, you don't want to make it a battlefield, you don't want to make dinnertime a battle of wills, and you have to try three bites of this. That rarely is a successful technique. It hasn't been for me in my own life. I haven't had a lot of success with that. Sometimes making it into a game will work for my family where it's we've even we get out the dice. And if you roll a certain number, then you have to take a bite of whatever the food is. And so, we turn it into a game somehow. And sometimes that's helpful. Sometimes not so much, but it's an idea, something that you could try.
Jen: Yeah. You think this time eating together is meant to be a positive time and making sure that's not when you're picking those battles to prove a point?
Sara: And I feel like if picky eating is a challenge that your family is facing, there are other ways around that as well to lower your expectations, as Katie said. But also try with every meal that you provide something you know your child is going to eat, that there might be something new and unusual for them to try. But there's also this on the side that you know they're going to eat, and then you just allow that to be what they eat for the night, right?
Katie: And maybe it's cold cereal. Maybe it's, you know, applesauce every day for a month straight. Little kids are amazingly resilient that way and that they don't need a ton. They just need a little bit of nutrition sneaked in here and there. And it's not worth ruining all the benefits of family dinner to try and get them to eat their broccoli.
Jen: Ours was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you don't like what I've made, you can have a sandwich. That's what the go to is.
Sara: Yeah. Now that my kids are more independent, our rule is always, you have to try everything on your plate like a little taste of each different thing provided. If you don't like what is served, then you can make yourself something else. But I'm only making one meal.
Katie: Our kids are old enough. We can do that same sort of thing. You try it. You don't like it. That's fine, but you're in charge of making your own meal and it can't be ice cream. We have some pretty...You can make yourself something else, but there's some pretty. We're not huge on rules, but we do have a couple standards that we stick to.
Sara: It's funny the things kids will try to get away with
Katie: And for a child number three, the fussy eater, it is cold cereal. A lot. like kind of fine, “I'll get myself a bowl of cereal” and we let that slide.
Sara: Yeah, yeah. Well, we had Dr. Schram on before, and he talked about how you kind of pick your battles and is this thing that I need to correct behavior or whatever it is with our children? Or can I pass? And in your family, you've chosen what family dinner that you're going to pass. You're allowing them to choose what they want to eat instead of making a big deal out of it.
Katie: And if you have a child who's not thriving physically or and you meet with their pediatrician and there are some real concerns that they're picky, eating is affecting their development, then you're going to need to approach that and you're going to need to seek out advice and try a couple of things. But I don't think family dinner time is the right time to do that. I think that you have family dinner, let that child be there and benefit from the conversation and the good bonding time. And you work on the picky eating as a separate issue away from dinner time so that they're still able to get the benefits.
Sara: Yeah, I totally agree. Can you talk to us about the overall goal of family dinner time?
Katie: I think the overall goal of family meal time, whether that's dinner time, snack, time, breakfast time, lunchtime, picnic time, whatever your family, eating time, whatever works for your family. I think you want to have healthy food. You want to have positive conversation connections between family members and hopefully a little bit of fun. That combination of family fun and food is really powerful, so that's why family dinner time predicts so many healthy outcomes. It's a powerful combination that brings that together in a natural way for families.
Sara: I love that. Well, Katie, I feel like you shared so much valuable information about. Eating meals together as a family and what I love the most is how relatable you were by sharing that although this is the goal, our family isn't necessarily there, you know, in different areas. And I just love that because for our listeners, we want you to know that although the goal is to share meals together, it's OK. When there's hiccups along the way and our kids are throwing tantrums and it's just not working this day, there's a quote that I love and I'm sure I've shared it before with it. Courage is the little voice inside our heads that says, I'll try again tomorrow, and that's what I think. If it doesn't go perfectly the way you want today, we'll try again tomorrow, or we'll try again next week when we have time for it again. And it's just taking those baby steps and really working on it because Katie shared so many amazing benefits. So, eating meals together as a family, and so that is something that we want to work on and incorporate in our own families to just help strengthen us overall.
Katie: I recently read something from a family therapist that said that they often feel like they should send families home from their hour-long therapy session just to have dinner together as a family, and that that would do more good for their families than an hour spent talking with the therapist just because family dinner time is so powerful. And I think that's a really good recommendation for us. We may not all need to go to therapy together as a family. We may not be able to do that, but we can start to have a little bit more family time together as we eat together.
Sara: I love that. Who knew that caring conversations with your family around the dinner table could replace therapy, essentially
Jen: Save you some money
Sara: Well, Katie, thank you so much for being on the podcast with us today and talking about family dinner time. We really appreciate the time that you took to talk to us about it. If our listeners have any questions or need to reach out to you again or myself, you can email us at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can find us on Facebook. Sara Hendricks - The Family Place
Jen: Or Jen Daly - The Family Place
Sara: And we have a Facebook group called “The Parents Place” on Facebook as well. Your challenge this week is to try to carve out some time, even if it's just one meal that you eat together as a family. We challenge you to try to do that. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll catch you again next week on the Parents place.
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