Friday Family Dinner Fan Club

I'm a big fan of Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution. Helping our kids and families eat healthy foods and exercise more is the big picture goal and many smaller efforts can work together to make this picture a reality: healthy school lunches, daily recess and physical activity, healthy food at home, educating parents and kids about healthy choices, and of course, family dinners.

To rebut accusations of "nanny-state" food policing, I agree that parent involvement and responsibility for their own health and their kids' health is critical. But I also think that political policies, the food distribution system, and cultural attitudes have played a huge part in creating a very broken food system with the disastrous results of ever-increasing rates of obesity and food-related illness. There are social, economic, and political forces that stack the deck against parents and kids, and as a nation, we have to recognize that and stand up to it.  If a food celebrity like Jamie Oliver and his celebrity friends can call attention to that and help parents and lawmakers "wake up" to making needed changes, I'm all for it.

If you haven't added your name to the Food Revolution petition, do so today. This is a change for good that needs as many supporters as possible.

Just Cook: Easy Fruit Crumble with Kids

To encourage readers who may be reluctant home cooks, I've decided to periodically post cooking videos that will show easy recipes you can create with or without your kids.  This video from Kids and Cooking channel on YouTube and www.kidsandcooking.co.uk.



I like how she does the set-up before the kids get involved in the cooking. Helps keep it organized and fun for even the youngest children. True, it's more like a class or special activity than everyday cooking. But this recipe is so simple, it's a great way to get started cooking with your kids, especially if you've been reluctant to try it! Also it's very flexible recipe, so you can use seasonal fruits or whatever is on hand.

Ingredients: (amounts can vary based on size of dishes)
Fruit (Apples and Strawberries, or any other)
Flour
Butter
Sugar
Water
Small Tins or Baking Dishes

Lessons from Research: Parenting Style and Family Dinner

Parents who are afraid to put their foot down usually have children who step on their toes. ~Chinese Proverb @AskDrVicki, RT@eatingarainbow

 A newly released study from The University of Minnesota's Project EAT (Eating Among Teens) hones in on an important aspect of successful family dinners: parenting style. Parents who were "authoritative" meaning understanding of their children, but able to set clear rules and expectations were more successful at creating and maintaining family dinner routines among their teens, both initially and 5 years later.

Parents (maternal and paternal) were classified as authoritative, authoritarian, permissive or neglectful based on the teens' answers to a battery of questions about their parents. (I'd like to see this list of questions! :) ) Authoritative parents were "empathic and respectful," but maintain clear expectations and rules in the household. Authoritarian parents were strict disciplinarians that showed little warmth. The permissive style was empathic but with few rules or expectations, and the neglectful style...well, as you can guess, cold, no rules, not showing care or attention. (Sigh, one hopes this was rare, but they are teenage perceptions.)

Using multivariate analysis, parenting style was matched up with how often the teens ate dinner with their families, in addition to other social behaviors. Both boys and girls in the study (over 1600 middle school and 3000 high school students) ate dinner with their families more often if they considered their parents to be authoritative. 

Many parents today strive to be "authoritative," even if they never thought of it that way. We want to listen to our kids and be understanding of their needs, but at the end of the day, rules and routines are important to make family life run more smoothly. When the balance tips more in favor to the child's individual desires and wants, and less toward family rules and standards, the parent heads towards the permissive zone. Parents today have been chided in the media, sometimes unfairly, for excessive permissiveness. The lean toward permissiveness may be a reaction to the authoritarian or neglectful parenting styles of the past, or it could be a result of less family support and structure and more frazzled parents who are working more and have less family time. Most would agreed, though, that there is hell to pay for "giving in" to our kids too often, both on a day-to-day basis and in the long run. As all parents in the trenches know, it can be hard to strike the right balance.

The big lesson of this study for me, and I think parents need to hear it loud and clear: it is OK to have rules and routines. In fact, it is better. You are not necessarily squashing your child's individuality or creativity or self-esteem by setting some household rules to live by. Dinner time, while it can be a struggle in terms of time and commitment, is the perfect way to establish not only an important routine, but a model of rules that your family lives by. These rules might include: we are respectful to each other, we listen and talk together and take turns, we are grateful for the food on the table and the effort it embodies (and we don't ask for something different or demand plain pasta every night). It sounds so simple, but it can be so hard in practice. Never fear mom and dads, if you can get and keep your kids at the table, especially as they age into teens, it is well worth it.

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, July 2010
Project EAT additional Resources
Update: Just found a great blog post by littlestomaks.com breaking down parenting style as it can affect family dinner dynamics

Latest links and news on family dinner

I've been posting a lot of interesting news, research and tips about family dinner on my Facebook fan page (Eat Dinner.org) and Twitter (eatdinner). Here's a few recent links. Happy reading!

New Kids Mag: Chop Chop: Getting Kids in Kitchen always a good idea!

Miriam Weinstein's book "The Surprising Power of Family Meals" is a favorite; now a blog and family meal website

Family dinner pep talk. Great, non-judgmental advice for starting family dinners

Journal of Pediatrics study: Structured family meals help kids eat veggies and have good body weight

10 pitfalls to avoid for picky eaters, no.8 is the best. bring that baby to the table!

University of Minnesota Study on Parenting Styles and Family Dinner: Authoritative Style (set rules and routine, but also empathetic and listening) did best with family dinner. Picked up by Babble Editors and many others. Official press release here.

Design changes to eatdinner.org

I'll be updating and upgrading this blog over the next few weeks and testing different social networking functions. Just little old me here, so please bear with me through the process. I hope you enjoy the changes and share the site with friends. Feel free to comment, suggest or let me know what you think!

Let's Cook: Cooking as life skill

 Image from Let's Move website

Just heard about "Let's Cook" a new White House video series hosted by Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, which is set to launch today Tuesday 7/13/10 at 10am via webcast. There is a preview here at the Obama Foodorama Blog. Such a great idea. From the start, I've been hoping that the Let's Move campaign would take a broad view of health and combine its message to be about both staying active and eating right. Teaching kids, and adults, how to cook healthy foods and empowering them to actually cook for themselves and their families is an important step.

I read something recently that listed all the things you would expect a 20-something independent adult to do, such as making simple meals, doing laundry, pretty standard stuff.  The punch line was that these are the things we are supposed to be teaching our older kids and teens to do now so that they will, in fact, become the independent 20-somethings that we hope they will be. I have to admit that I haven’t done too well in making my reluctant teenage son do these daily-living household chores. My nagging usually runs towards homework first and then to “please stop playing that video game and/or get off the computer.”

Nonetheless, cooking basic meals is an essential life skill.  I know my experience cooking for my family as a teen (my mom worked in a restaurant on the night shift) was instrumental in giving me life skills in the kitchen and beyond. My son does like to make breakfast and will often make himself or his crew of friends that slept over a big breakfast of eggs and whatever else he can scrounge up. It’s a start.

Cooking doesn't have to be set up as a chore (that goes for parents and kids), even though it's something to "get done." Find some joy in learning a new skill or just getting a dish to the table, be it something new or an old standard.  Bon appetit!

Five Tips to Bring Teens to Family Dinner

One of the most often quoted statistics about family dinner is that it helps keeps teenagers out of trouble. CASA cites that teens that eat dinner together with their families are less likely to do drugs, drink alcohol, and are more likely to do well in school and with social relationships. The thing is it can be hard to start a family dinner tradition when your kids are older. It's not just your work commitments anymore, it's their homework, sports practices, play rehearsals, and of course, social plans, that start to fill up the evening schedule. This is a good reason to start the family dinner habit when they are young. But even if family dinner is new to you, it's well worth it to your kids to start. Here are some things that have worked for us.

1. Make food they like and make enough of it. The way to a teen’s heart is through his or her stomach. Make the foods that he or she likes and your teen will be motivated to be home. This is a bit of contradiction from the advice I usually give to families with toddlers and other picky eaters, but hopefully by the teenage years, they have settled into a normal range of preferences that the whole family can live with. Still cook only one meal for the family; that's what makes it "family dinner."
2. Invite over your teen’s friends and eat together as a group. Though this can’t happen every night, having your teen's friends over for a family meal can also be a great incentive to keep your kid at the table. Our experience has been that the kids really appreciate a home-cooked meal (though it could be take-out) and we make a real connection to the kids that our kid hangs out with. I find that even the most rambunctious teenage boys are pretty polite and agreeable when in the family dinner setting. Again, make enough food.
3. Have a set dinner time and expect your teen to show up, but be flexible. If dinner is at 7pm, then your kid knows when he or she is expected home for dinner. Make it a rule that they have to be there. Then it’s on both of you to make dinner and to be there to eat it. Be flexible though.  If you know ahead of time that sports practice or rehearsals will conflict, set alternate dinnertimes for those nights. If your kid complains that he or she is with friends, invite the friends over! It can be hard to keep to a strict schedule, especially during holidays and the summer, so I’ll let my teen skip out of family dinner occasionally. But I keep mental track to make sure not too many dinners slip by in any given week. Since it is such a solid tradition in our house, I usually just have to say something like, “Hey you’ve missed too many dinners at home.” The phrase, “We are having burgers,” works well too (see Tip #1).
4. Make your teen cook a meal. This can be a tall order, but valuable for both of you. One family I know with two teens, has each of them responsible for the family meal one night a week. It’s a big help to the parents obviously, and the teens get a big sense of accomplishment from it. If you couple this with the favorite foods idea (back to #1), then your kid can learn how to make his or her favorite dishes.

5. The dinner table is a no-nagging zone, and no gadgets either. You want your teen to come to the table and you hope there will be some positive conversation and chatting about his or her life or what’s going on with the family in general. It’s not the time to nag or run down a list of complaints or worries. Even if your kid brings up some hot topic (i.e., "My math teacher is such a jerk."), use the time to listen or talk calmly about the issue, not to nag or criticize. (You might reply, "Really? What's up?" and then just listen, stifling your urge to editorialize.)  You want your kid to see the dinner table as a positive part of the day, not a grilling session. If you want to go back to that hot topic, find another time to do it. Also, TV, cell-phone, computers, the newspaper, whether used by the teen or the adult are counter-productive to conversation and interaction. Family dinner time can be as short as 15-20 minutes, but it's very valuable. Everyone can lay off their gadgets and connect the old-fashioned way..