Have you taken the Family Dinner Challenge?

I have been promoting family dinner in this space for several years. I've thought about the hows and the whys, the benefits and the excuses, and the ups, downs, sideways and backwards of family dinner. I've wondered about the best ways to encourage people to give regular family dinners a try: I've quoted statistics and presented independent research. I've linked to recipes and other resources so that people would feel like there was support and help at their fingertips.

After all these posts, I can honestly say that I think it comes down to commitment. Simply making a commitment to family dinner, whether it is 3 times a week or every single night. Family dinner is really about setting goals for your family life and following through. Once you can do that, the proof is in the pudding. I find that families who start with the family dinner routine very quickly feel that it is worth the effort. Most families that "do family dinner" just wouldn't have it another way--it's that good.

That's why I love Aviva Goldfarb of The Scramble's new Family Dinner Challenge. In September she is encouraging families to sign up and make the commitment to family dinner 3 times a week for 4 weeks. She is hoping to get 10,000 families strong to join in committing to family dinner. It is easy, fast, free and with no commitment, other than the promise you make to yourself!

If you already have family dinner 3x a week or more, sign up and join the family dinner community. If you want help and resources to make the commitment for the first time, all the more reason to sign up! There are even some amazing prizes that you could win, but the real winner will be you and your family.

In addition to The Scramble, there is an amazing online community that has tips and recipes to help make family dinner a reality. Many of them have signed up as partners to the Family Dinner Challenge: The Family Dinner Book, Bri of Red, Round and Green, Time at the Table, Kia of Today I Ate a Rainbow, Gina of Feeding Our Families, Bettina of The Lunch Tray, Sally of Real Mom Nutrition, and the Kids Cook Monday. Some other favorite resources of mine are listed here.

Give family dinner a try; take the Family Dinner Challenge and join thousands of families making the commitment to family dinner this September!

You can also show your support for Family Dinner in a ThunderClap online event. Sign up with Twitter or Facebook, or Tumblr and you'll send out a message of support at the same time as thousands of others. It's a great way to call attention to the important of family dinner and the legions of families that are in support of family dinner and each other.

Family Dinner: A Stable Force in Times of Change

School's ending, summer's coming: this time of year is a season of change and is often full of transitions. Honestly, this year for me is so full of transitions that my head is spinning. My son turns 18 in a couple of weeks and will graduate from high school. He will attend college over 1,000 miles away, making his journey away from home very real. My middle daughter is graduating middle school, preparing to enter high school. The distance she will travel is also significant. Instead of a short walk to school on a relatively quiet Brooklyn street, her commute to high school will be via subway to that "big city" in Manhattan. And my mother, who is recently widowed, is planning a reverse-retiree move from Florida to Brooklyn this summer, so as to be closer to her only family, me.

All these journeys to and from home, all these big changes, are exciting, but nonetheless a bit scary and unsettling. Change can be hard, especially when the family structure you've been used to for... I don't know, for-EVER, is changing. Add these emotions to the usual end-of-the-year chaos of school picnics, special ceremonies and extra performances, and you've got A LOT GOING ON.

Family dinner is the one thing that gets us through these upside-down times. We still try to have dinner together 4 or more nights a week, no matter how busy we get. It really grounds us all and gives us a center. Weeknights are the best times for us to eat together as a family, though mealtimes get shortened because the older kids need to do homework and the youngest must fit in bath and bedtime by a decent hour. We rarely get our 17 year old to the table on Friday or Saturday night anymore because he has usually has plans with friends.

This holiday weekend, though, many of his friends were away and it was all five of us at the table with no time pressures or places to run off to. We laughed together, shared a huge bunch of fresh lychee nuts,* and had longer after-dinner conversations than we've enjoyed in a while. Though he would never admit it, I can sense my son is already a bit nostalgic for these family times together. I certainly am.

Really delicious fresh lychee nuts

Knowing how much family dinner has meant to me and my children as I approach my 18th year (!) as a parent, I fully support Aviva of The Six O'Clock Scramble in the Family Dinner Challenge. Many of my readers already have regular family dinners, so it's a great way to show the numbers of people who live this lifestyle. For anyone who is interested in making the commitment to family dinner, but need help getting started (or help keeping your efforts going), The Six O'Clock Scramble is offering great resources including a checklist and recipes.

Sign up here to join in! 

The Family Dinner Challenge

Have dinner together at least 3 times a week for 4 weeks by September 2013!

* The funny story behind the overwhelming amount of lychee nuts in our house: This holiday weekend we went to Chinatown to have dim sum as a family; it had been ages since our schedules aligned so we could go together. We got separated from my husband at one point because he left something at the restaurant and had to go back. As the kids and I maneuvered through the crowded streets, every vendor seemed to have fresh lychee nuts. The kids begged to get them, and I hesitated because they are quite expensive, but eventually I said, "Sure." Soon after we caught up with my husband; of course he had bought a big bunch of lychee nuts too! We all laughed about it as my middle daughter observed, "I feel like this would only happen in my family!" Anyone have any recipes?

The Family Dinner Conference, April 18, 2013: Join the Conversation!

Family dinner can be a surprisingly hot topic of conversation. NPR is currently doing a series about family dinner that is generating a lot of buzz. Many of the profiled families fit a mold that suggests that family dinner nowadays is an impossible dream. Yet listeners and commenters have chimed in and overwhelming gave witness to how family dinner was indeed alive and well at their house. Despite juggling work schedules, kid's commitments and the just "too few hours in a day" issues we all face, many families are finding a way to make family dinner a priority.

So, clearly there's a lot to talk about. This spring, on April 18, 2013 the first ever Family Dinner Conference will be held at New York University's Kimmel Center, organized by my friend Billy Mawhiney from Time at the Table. It will be an excellent place to get the conversation about family dinner going. For parents and educators, this conference is a chance to learn about practical solutions and to forward new ideas. It will be a place to find kindred spirits in our belief in family dinner, while sharing evidence and telling stories about how it's done by busy, modern families across the country.

Starting with the keynote by Jenny Rosenstrach best-selling author of Dinner A Love Story, there will be an all-star line up of authors, bloggers, and nutrition experts, including Aviva Goldfarb of the The Six O'Clock Scramble and Pam Koch of Kids Cook Monday. (See the full schedule here.) The Blog for Family Dinner Team, including Kathleen Cuneo of Dinner Together, Billy, and me, will host a luncheon panel discussion. We will all be presenting and discussing real strategies to make family dinner work. It promises to be a great and inspirational day!

Participants will hear from the entire panel of speakers and will enjoy close-up conversations during the Q&As, lunch and afternoon networking sessions. In the admission price is included a light breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon smoothie bar. Sponsorship opportunities are also available.

Join us at the first Family Dinner Conference in NYC!

The Family Dinner Conference

Thursday April 18,

9:30am-4:30pm

New York University, Kimmel Center

60 Washington Square South

New York, NY 10012

www.familydinnerconference.com

info@timeatthetable.org

347-450-TATT (8288)