August 2008 Newsletter

August News...happyhome habit #1: dinner conversations

the first happyhome habit is something you can do everyday, or as often as possible: dinner conversations

Research indicates that clear communication and shared family time are two of the most important protective factors that will positively influence our children’s lives. Eating family meals together combines the power of those two factors. We need to sit down to dinner with our families, and we need to talk — talk about anything and everything. It doesn’t matter if we make a home cooked meal or pick up hamburgers, as long as we eat together and talk.

The dinner table is where it all happens. It’s a perfect place to connect and learn about what’s going on in each other’s lives. It’s where we can give each other support and help solve problems, where we honor and celebrate our victories and accomplishments. It’s where we pass on precious stories and talk about family values and family traditions. Dinner time is our best opportunity to teach our children what we want them to learn about life.

How many, and how often, families in America are having dinner together continues to decline simply because our busy lifestyles leave so little time for connecting. Studies have consistently shown that this lack of connection has a big impact on teenage behavior.

familyfacts

family dinners have decreased by 33% over the past 20 years

teens who do not have frequent family dinners (3 or more a week) are:
4x more likely to use marijuana
2x as likely to use alcohol

59% of teens are eating dinner at home alone

parents claim their teens are resistant or too busy to come to dinner
yet 84% of teens say they prefer eating dinner as a family

We need to insist they come to dinner
The more often families eat together, the less likely their teens are to engage in risky behavior: alcohol, drugs and casual sex. The more often families eat together, the more likely it is that teens do well in school, eat healthy meals, and talk about their problems. Regular family dinners mean less stress and tension in the home because parents and children have time to communicate. Researchers have discovered that family mealtimes positively impact children’s:

• sense of belonging
• 
  
• character development
• 
  
• health and well being
• 
  
• communication skills
• 
  
• positive self-esteem
• 
  
• commitment to learning
• 
  
• resistance to peer pressure

it's a habit we develop
The more we eat dinner together, the more comfortable conversation becomes and the more engaged our children become in this activity. The result is lively, interesting dialogues, and those priceless moments that only come when we connect through conversation. There is nothing you can do for your family that will have a greater impact that sitting down to the dinner table together. We need to be intentional about dinner conversations

because happyhomes don’t just happen.

This is a sneak peak at Lorle's upcoming book, due out this summer - happyhome: a family's guide to finding balance in a dizzybusy world. It gives us a simple plan – the five happyhome habits – as well as five fun and practical tools to make it easy to weave those healthy habits into our family life right away.

Watch for next month’s happyhome news when Lorle tells us about happyhome habit # 2: family fun nights. In our dizzybusy world, we need to be intentional about setting aside time to enjoy each other’s company and to model to our children the importance of putting aside our work and to-do lists to just have fun.