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Make the Grade with Family Meals

This is the time of year when parents, as well as children, are full of enthusiasm and hope. We adults cram things into the family calendar, trying to get the most for everyone.

Here's a tip that might sound counter-intuitive. When you're crowding your calendars with activities and commitments, make sure to add one more: block off time for regular, consistent family meals. They will help center adults and children alike so that they can better handle the rest of their busy days. They will strengthen the family so it can better cope with the inevitable ups and downs of the coming year.

What makes us so confident about dispensing this advice?

A recent study of 180 cultures around the world found that, although parenting styles vary greatly, there are actually a couple of consistent factors. Social scientists have found that, for many different kinds of people, effective parenting is about involvement and control over a long period of time. It's important to just be there, day after day; to take an interest in your kids' lives; to establish and maintain reasonable expectations.

Showing up every once in awhile for a special activity or experience is all well and good. But it's the day-to-day routines that shape us over time. They create the bonds of family, and transmit a sense of who we are.

At the end of a busy day, family meals are a natural and enjoyable way to replenish our spirits as we feed our stomachs. They serve as a quick check-in. They help us make sure that none of us strays too far. And, when parents have reasonable, age-appropriate expectations about behavior, they are exercising the kind of control that lets kids know that someone is looking after them.

Being at school all day can be exciting, stimulating, difficult, social, challenging, fun. It can be tough, or wearing, to be with your peers and be expected to learn and perform, to control your behavior.

It can be easier to do all these things if you have the comfort of knowing that, on a regular basis, you will get together with your family in a low-key, pleasant way.

Research links family meals to a host of benefits including less drug use, better academic performance, better mental health. Is this because getting together keeps kids grounded, so they can concentrate on their studies? Is it because families that make the time to get together are more purposeful, more effective? Can we become more effective simply by setting up our calendars to give us time to do the right thing?

It's the beginning of a new school year. It's certainly worth a try.

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