B4FD Reflections: Fitting Family Dinner into Crazy Family Life

This month, Blog for Family Dinner founders will reflect back on some lessons learned from our B4FD guest bloggers over the past year. This week, I share my reflections.

"Really? You have family dinner every night?!" It's a question I get asked quite a bit. I sense people feel I am lying when I say yes. That's one reason I love  Jennifer Grant's Blame it On post for B4FD. Her post speaks to balancing the modern reality of crazy-busy family lives with the ideal of nightly family dinners. Let's just say, reality can be messy.

Blame it on my husband’s travel schedule. 

Blame it on my four children’s soccer, lacrosse, and softball games. 

Blame it on my daughter’s passion for viola or my son’s commitment to cello. 

Blame it on whatever you’d like, but my family isn’t able to sit down and eat dinner together every night of the week. But, most nights, we manage to make it happen. The kids are given heaping bowls of Cheerios or Life cereal before they run off to sports or music lessons, but when we all return home, sweaty, tired, sometimes jangly and out of sorts after too long a day, we sit down to dinner together. 

Read Jennifer Grant's full post, Blame it On... 

Jennifer writes elegantly about what could be the story of my day...juggling the activity and homework schedules of three kids, husband travelling or working late, my own work commitments, random school meetings, illnesses or other minor emergencies that can throw even a well-planned schedule into chaos. Yet, we still manage to find time for family dinner most nights, because it is a touchstone and a center of gravity for all of us. I find when there's been too many nights without family dinner, because of work or other evening commitments, everyone is cranky and out of sorts. It's important to schedule in that little bit of family time to keep us all grounded. 

So, while I laugh when someone mistakenly thinks our family dinner routine is "picture-perfect," I am also grateful that we have found a way to make family dinner consistent in our lives when our schedules are anything but.

As Jennifer counsels, when life is crazy-busy, the answer is not to give up family dinner all together. Instead find the happy medium that works for your family. Find that happy place and forgive yourself for not reaching some "made-up" ideal.  Just remember the "real goals" of family dinner, finding a daily connection among you and your loved ones. Relax and enjoy it, even in the chaos!

Read Jen Grant's Blame it On and her other great B4FD post, Ordinary Pleasures.

Thanks Sheryl Sandberg for Taking Family Dinner "Out of the Closet"

Family dinner has come up again in the news, this time thanks to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, who has come out publicly to declare that "Yes," she makes time for family dinner.  It is interesting that she said she's been doing it for years, both when she was at Google and now at Facebook, but has only recently "come out" for family dinner publicly. What a powerful statement! First, that you would have to "come out" to say that you leave the office at 5:30pm so you can have family dinner (and that it is big news with over 1,000 shares on Huffington Post). And second, that one of the leading business people in America can say that finding regular time for your family is important and priceless, and that it is important for women, and men, to agree to do it.

Sheryl Sandberg: Leaving Work At 5:30pm

I often get distinct reactions when I talk about family dinner. Some people treat my advice to try family dinner as something akin to suggesting they build a spaceship and take it to the moon -- it just seems like an impossible task! Other people whisper to me in hushed tones, "We have family dinner most nights a week, but I never really talk about it. It's great that you are actually talking about it." Their tone suggests that they are slightly embarrassed about making family dinner a priority and actually pulling it off regularly. There is a (genuine) concern that if you are committed to family dinner you must be

• hopelessly old-fashioned, 
• willing to commit career suicide, 
• have live-in help, 
• have a lot of time on your hands. 
• Or maybe all of the above.

I know from talking with dual-income working families across the country that family dinner is a way of life for many and not rocket science. But in certain circles, family dinner is totally "in the closet" and is some kind of mystery that men and women are reluctant to even discuss. I'm glad Sheryl Sandberg's statements are bringing out more discussion on family dinner so we can talk about the hows and whys to make it a reality. (Some of my own tips are here and Blog for Family Dinner is a great resource for stories about how real families are making it work.)

I applaud Sheryl Sandberg for coming out for family dinner. Will you? The first step to making family dinner a reality is the commitment. Talk with your family about what small steps you could take. Can you try for family dinner 2 or more nights a week? Can you build up from wherever you start? What would it take to put that together? Talking to your boss, doing more meal planning, reducing out some after school or evening commitments? Make the commitment and follow through. Just like you do at work everyday.

Celebrate Family Dinner with #B4FD Teleseminar

Yesterday my B4FD colleague Kathleen Cuneo hosted a great teleseminar on "all things family dinner" to celebrate and promote the launch of Family Dinner Month (9.26-10.24.11) on the Blog for Family Dinner. It was great to be joined by Billy Mawhiney of Time at the Table, Aviva Goldfarb of The Scramble, Jennifer Schiff from The Family Dinner Book, and John Sarrouf from The Family Dinner Project.

Celebrate Family Dinner with #B4FD Teleseminar, 9.20.11 (audio recording)

We talked about current research in the field, including many studies that show that family dinner and communal eating is not just for kids. Indeed, everyone benefits, including parents, couples without children, seniors, and even college-aged students. We talked about tips and time-savers, like meal planning and getting everyone to chip in, and overall, about how best to make the commitment to family dinner.

A big theme was re-defining family dinner so that it works for you. Don't be intimidated by the rosy, nostalgic idea that family dinner has to be a 3 course meal with homemade apple pie at the end (though that's always nice!) A realistic weeknight meal is more like soup and salad, easy one-pot meals, or quick pasta dishes. What is important, really, is finding time together and making the family table a safe, consistent gathering place. Setting a routine and sticking to it helps, be it 3 days a week or every single day.

The teleseminar will be available for listening (free) on the Blog for Family Dinner website through the month promotion (now until October 24, 2011) and also available to subscribers of Kitchen Table Parents.

If you believe in family dinner, please be sure to add your name to our subscriber list and to follow our blog posts next month. You can also check in with Facebook or Twitter (@blog4famdinner). More ideas to spread the word about #B4FD here. Thank you for your support!

Five Tips for Making Dinner Happen

This week held a lot of discussion on family dinner and how to make it work, inspired in part by Pete Wells' column about the difficulties of pulling it off. I wrote an open letter to Pete, and eatdinner.org was featured twice for my advocacy for family dinner, on The Lunch Tray and on the Love You More blogs. (Thank you!) Through the magic of the Internet (aka links), I found some other great folks that are singing the same tune.

Here's hoping that the family dinner discussion encourages parents not to wave the white flag, but to embrace the kitchen and the merits of family dinner.  Family dinner does take time and commitment, and it isn't always fun, but it's so worth it in the end. Much like parenting, no?

Here's 5 more tips to add to my list. 

Five MORE Tips for Making Family Dinner Happen

1. Plan ahead. If you can plan and shop a week ahead, that's great. But even just making a plan in the morning, at your lunch hour, or via email or text with your spouse, can help.  Having a ready answer a when the kids cry "What's for dinner?" will take the pressure off as you walk in the door and help you feel more in control.

2. Have back-pocket, straight-out of the pantry recipes that you can whip up without thinking. There are many simple pasta sauces that can be made with just a few at-hand ingredients. Memorize a few, and you'll have dinner even on crazy days. Your goal should be 5 to 10 recipes you can make in 20 or 30 minutes. Use the weekends to learn new recipes or to make large batches of favorite meals.

3. Fresh is great, but don't fear the freezer.  In addition to frozen meals and leftovers you make yourself, there are healthy frozen food options out there, but check the ingredients!  Frozen veggies or fruit (for dessert) can be a life-saver to round out a meal nutritionally. Don't forget you can "freeze your own." We often pre-cut a large package of meat (chicken, beef, pork) into stir-fry sized pieces that can be quickly defrosted and put into weeknight meals.

4. Resist ordering take-out or buying drive-thru, if you can. If you can whip up a meal in 30 minutes, it will be on the table way before the pizza guy arrives. Cooking a simple meal at home is way better for you and cheaper too.

5. Use the web for inspiration! There are so many great food blogs out there, many with quick easy recipes for families. Also, Google just came out with a Recipe View that looks promising. Type in a cooking idea, or even a holiday or theme, and get recipe suggestions, complete with ingredient list and cooking times. Very cool!

Check out these blogs or find others that you trust and keep checking for new ideas.  (If you like any of these, send the author some love via the comments sections! Bloggers love that, really!)

Red, Round or Green Lots of great stuff on family meals, meal planning and recipes. Her recent post on how she does it: plan, plan, plan.
Stay at Stove Dad. Great recipes and perspective as a dad who cooks for his family. New book coming out in May!
Friday Fan Club: Great Blogs for Family Dinner Recipes A recent eatdinner.org round-up of recipe sites I like.

Back to School, Back to the Table

Rosh Hashanah Round Challah

Today's our family's first "real" back to school day and our first full week of routines, homework and afterschool classes are ahead. The first official day of school was Wednesday, but that was almost like an orientation day. Several days off for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah seriously challenged the momentum of starting school. Though celebrating the new year, with the required apples, challah, and honey, seemed especially appropriate on Wednesday night, the four-day break from school makes today feels like the first time all over again.

The slight chill in the air also hints that summer is really over. We did eat dinner together over the summer, but things were much more relaxed. The norm was eating late or eating very light meals because the older kids were away at camp or with friends. There were many days when less than the five of us were at the dinner table.

Now it feels like back to business. Dinners every weeknight with the challenge of making enough food for a growing teen and tween who have sports practice 4 out of 5 nights and are seriously hungry. It's like rapid re-entry into the days of balancing work, homework, activities, dinner and getting to bed at a decent time, all with the stress and emotions that school can bring. I'm trying to remember how it is possible to cram all this into the few hours left at the end of the day.

Still, it's an exciting time of new beginnings. On Wednesday night, my kids were all aflutter with stories. They were actually shouting over each other to be heard and to tell their tales. We had to calm it down on several occasions to make sure everyone got their turn. Our youngest speaks very slowly and deliberately to be understood, and the older ones could barely mask their frustration as we let her have the floor. This is really what family dinner is about. The give and take and the chance to share the day: to be proud, to pose questions, to listen to others, to give and get feedback on these new experiences, knowing you have this touchstone at home.

La Shana Tova and Happy New Year! To great school years, to great dinners, to great accomplishments for all! Love, peace and happiness above all!

Video Wednesday: Tips on How To Make Family Meals on a Tight Budget

Here's a very cute Howcast video with great tips to spread your budget and eat healthier.

Some highlights:

• Eat less meat, and marinate cheaper cuts of meat to make tender. I would add learn to stir-fry, so you use less meat and increase the number of veggies at the table.
• Fresh veggies are best (my tips). But frozen veggies can be good too (their tip). Frozen veggies definitely better than no veggies.
• Try real whole grains, including brown rice and oatmeal. Buy dried beans and learn how to rinse and soak overnight.  
• Make homemade desserts rather than store-bought. Can be more nourishing and more delicious. Fresh seasonal fruit is a great dessert. I sometimes let my kids add a tiny bit of whipped cream to make it special.

Eat Dinner May 2010

I started this blog (eatdinner.org) in November 2007 and the posts have waxed and waned a bit over the time, covering all manner of topics related to food and family dinner: family dynamics, local food, organic food, access to food, obesity, health, wellness, fitness, politics (of course!), and everything in between. I never wanted this to be strictly a food blog, outlining what me and my family had for dinner. There are many beautiful, inspiring food blogs out there, but I wanted to explore the idea of family dinner as a topic related to health (in a very broad sense), culture, society, education, and personal and family well-being. Through it all, I realize that the main message I want to convey is that families need to commit to having meals together and that many good things stem from this basic lifestyle commitment to food and family.

Many people "know" that family dinners are a good idea. But many people also chalk it up as "too hard" or demanding in today's busy lives. Worse is the notion that family dinner is a "middle-class" luxury. I want to rededicate this blog to expressly exploring the benefits of family dinner across all kinds of families and the barriers that are in the way of more people adopting family dinner as a way of life.

Stay tuned for more research, support, and advocacy targeted at issues surrounding family dinner.

Join the discussion! I'm now on Facebook and Twitter and you can email me at grace [at] eatdinner [dot] org.

9 by Design: the urban spin on mulitples and family dinner

A couple days after my last post, I read about the Novogratz family of "9 by Design" fame in the NYTimes. I had heard of the Bravo show, but was especially intrigued by the author's connection between multiple kids and an "oddly" sane mom. At some point during their discussion, the interviewer observes Novogratz's calm and comes to a surprising conclusion about herself:

"[this] maxed-out working mother suddenly realizes what she has been doing wrong: too few children!" Susan Dominus, NYT

On the surface, the urban, hipster real estate tycoon is a totally different mom from the Midwestern mom Janine Brogan I wrote about last week, but clearly there are similar coping strategies. Provide structure and freedom, relax about things you can't control, know that each kid is different and that the family as a unit is important too. Not sure how the Novogratz's do "family dinner; " there's a hint about take-out which is a distinctly NYC habit. Still, I thought it too good a connection to pass up.

Reality TV's Annoyingly Perfect, "Oddly" Sane Mom, Susan Dominus, NYT, 5.10.10
The Talent, Sixx Designs, by Susanna Salk on 1stdibs.com. A cool profile of the Novogratz's with great pictures.

Family Dinner for 12

Here's a little inspiration for you: Joanie Brogan and her brood has family dinners for 12, nearly every night of the week. I found their story, which was in the March 2010 edition of a local Michigan magazine, through my favorite Google search (um, "family dinner").

The numbers say a lot: 10 kids, ages 3 to 19 (with 9 living at home), 230 meals per week, 6 dozen eggs per week, 3-5 loads of laundry a day. This is a household that must take some serious management to run. When the kids outnumber the adults, you have to depend on the kids themselves, and your partner, to play as a team and "pick up the slack." In Brogan's kitchen, the kids really help with the cooking prep, with the 11 yr old wielding the cleaver and the toddler helping mix the sauce. Helping out is not "optional" or to teach some kind of abstract moral lesson; it is absolutely essential.

As the mom of "only" three kids, I do think that having multiple kids does demand a different level of scheduling and balancing. It becomes almost impossible to keep up with everyone and everything at the same time. What happens, then? Well, all chaos breaks loose, of course. (Not really. OK, sometimes.) What really happens is you let go of your assumptions and prioritize. For me, family dinner is the touchstone in an otherwise hectic life; a chance to remain connected amid competing schedules and busy lives. Whether you have 10 kids or 1 kid, or no kids, it's about making a commitment to what's best for you and your family.

I love Joanie Brogan's statement:

“I really fight for the family dinner. I think it’s a dying tradition,” said Brogan. “Being the youngest child of seven, when I was growing up, [dinner] was one of the only times I had with my older siblings. And with schedules today, we could stop every night and grab something, but we don’t. I really fight for us to sit around the table.”

You go, girl! Just another testament to make the family dinner commitment and sticking to it.

Fighting for the Family Dinner, by Julie Becker, Capital Area Women's Lifestyle Magazine, 2.24.10

Michaell Obama takes on Childhood Obesity

Join the challenge! Click here. Image from www.letsmove.gov.

Michelle Obama, self-proclaimed Mom-in-Chief, is taking on one of the biggest challenges parents, educators, and health professionals face today: how to combat rising obesity in children. The numbers are striking: close to 1/3 of American children can be considered obese and obesity rates have tripled in the past 30 years. Over $150 billion dollars are spent each year on obesity-related conditions overall. It is a huge and important endeavor to encourage parents and kids to choose healthier food and fitness options and to motivate health professionals, government agencies, and foundations to work together to meet this challenge.

Personal change is needed, but so are policy changes and structural supports that can help parents and kids make better choices. School lunch and school recess are perfect examples. Kids need healthy lunches both to learn better and to keep healthy. Active play at recess or gym is important as exercise and a way to release pent-up energy so that the kids can settle in and learn better in the classroom. Every parent and teacher knows this. But sadly, school lunch is too often high-fat fried foods and athletic time is too often cut for budgetary or scheduling concerns. No individual parent has control of a school's schedule or its lunch options, but together parents, educators, and local politicians can support common sense choices that can benefit all.

A call to action is needed to make sure these issues are on the table as viewed as critically important. Here, here to Michelle for leading the call. Her newest effort has two parts. The Let's Move campaign is aimed at parents, teachers, and kids providing both practical advice and information on policy advocacy for school lunch and affordable access to healthy food. The Partnership for a Healthier America is a collaboration of the biggest foundations in the health field (W.K.Kellogg, Robert Wood Johnson, etc), many of whom are already sponsoring evaluations on how to improve fitness and food choices among youth. It is so exciting that these ideas are getting a national spotlight with leadership from the First Lady.

Childhood Obesity Battle is Taken up by First Lady, NYT, 2.09.10
Let's Move campaign
Partnership for a Healthier America

Sports and family dinner

Now that my son is highly involved in track, I'm getting an insight into how playing sports can help keep kids off of drugs. Apart from the sports philosophy "train your body, keep it clean," my son's practice schedule (3-4 afternoon a week, 3-6pm) makes it difficult to do much hanging out. After he gets home and collapses on the couch for a while, there's homework, dinner, and that's it. He's pretty much given up TV, which is an added side benefit. My daughter is a dancer/acrobat, and, though the training is a little less intense (only 3 days a week for 1-2 hours), she's also younger and has less homework to deal with.

It's true that a sports schedule can hamper family togetherness at the dinner table, but that's where flexibility comes in. Change dinner times and allow snacks to give them fuel when they need it. Your hungry athlete will need more food, and thus will actually enjoy dinner. He or she will probably enjoy large helpings of whatever you dish up, a far cry from the picky days of toddlerhood. Some families take to eating dinner together in the car, which I can't advocate for, though I understand the occasional need. If you must do takeout, try to bring it home and eat around a table together. It's better, really!

NHSDA Report on Team Sports and Sunstance Abuse among Teens. SAMHSA.gov

Family Dinner: Caught between a Teen, a Tween and a Toddler

Last week, the family calendar was bursting. My oldest is applying to public high school in New York City (a daunting process to the uninitiated), my youngest at 3 is starting to get birthday party invitations, and my middle one is balancing the usual 4th grade homework expectations, plus dance, acrobatics, sleepovers and social plans (HSM3!). It was a hectic and anxiety-provoking week, and our family dinners took a bit of a hit. There was food on the table every night, and at least one parent was in attendance, but it wasn't the whole crew sitting down at once the way it usually is. We all felt a little disconnected. I'm pretty sure the lack of a dinner routine just added to the stress.

Last night, I opted out of an evening meeting so that we would all be home, and it felt like the right decision. Everything was pretty calm, everyone went to bed on time. This week, there will be at least 3 normal weeknight dinners, which is probably the bare minimum we should schedule as our lives get increasingly busy. It's hard with the competing needs of a toddler, a tween, and a teen: more activities, more juggling, less time. But it's also increasingly necessary.

There is an old saying: Little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems. This adage used to annoy me, because when your baby's not sleeping through the night, it's a big problem. Yet, when you hear that a kid in your 13-year old's class had her stomach pumped because she took pills at a party, that seems like a pretty big problem. For my tween girl, you realize that as strong and smart girls can be, girls are sometimes the "risk-takers" at younger ages, can be more influenced by peer pressure, and tend to be better at deception. All of a sudden, staying connected with your kid is not a given, a luxury or a little problem.

I firmly believe that family dinners help keep parents and kids connected. Family dinners (or the connectedness it brings) can help protect kids from using drugs and alcohol. The most recent surveys indicate that most kids do not use drugs and alcohol, though they can get them if they want to, and at surprisingly young ages. Parent attitudes, expectations, and behaviors make a huge difference. CASA surveys indicate that five or more dinners a week are the most effective. To me, that number is to set a goal, not to set an impossible standard for families. Every dinner helps, and the routine and the expectation that you sit down together on a regular basis may be the most important of all.

Are parents passive pushers? CNN.com (10.24.08) reports on recent CASA survey (August 2008).
Increase Risk for Alcohol Problems in Adulthood when Consumption Starts Before Age 15. Medical News Today, 09.30.08

Drug Use Prevention Sites for Parents and Teens
www.theantidrug.com/
www.drugfree.org/Parent/Home/
http://decoder.drugfree.org

For teens:
www.freevibe.com
www.abovetheinfluence.com