"Hey Kids! Supper's on the Table"

How often do you sit down and eat with your children? Many women have become too busy to take the time to sit down. Instead, they may be talking on the phone, serving the food and cleaning up or checking their email. Fathers, too. We've become too anxious about our outside connections to focus on the connections we need to maintain inside our homes.

Yet time and time again the research tells us that eating family meals together (that means sitting down at the table!) protects our children from mental and physical health problems.

When we engage in relaxing conversation while eating we communicate the message that we enjoy our family's company; moreover, that our family is the #1 priority in our lives. The telephone, the computer, the day's mail can all wait. That's a powerful antidote to feelings of worthlessness that many teens suffer from today.

Indeed, researchers found teenage girls who ate five or more family meals per week were less likely to resort to extreme dieting measures like using diet pills or laxatives, binge eating, and vomiting to control their weight (WebMD: January issue of Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine).

So the next time you think of having someone else give the kids their supper - or prepare it and tell them to take it themselves - say, "No! I'm going to be there with them!"