The Power of Family Dinners

[rkoloms]

- from Leanne Ely, flylady:

• CASA's 1998 Teen Survey found that teens that eat dinner with their parents twice a week or less were four times more likely to smoke cigarettes, three times more likely to smoke marijuana and nearly twice as likely to drink as those who ate dinner with their parents six or seven times a week.
• CASA's 1999 Teen Survey found that teens from families that almost never eat dinner together were 72 percent likelier than the average teen to use illegal drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, while those from families that almost always eat dinner together were 31 percent less likely than the average teen to engage in these activities.
• Research by other organizations has shown that teens who frequently eat family dinners with their parents are less likely than other teens to have sex at young ages, get into fights or be suspended from school, and are at lower risk for thoughts of suicide. Frequent family dining is also correlated with doing well in school and developing healthy eating habits. This pattern holds true regardless of a teen's sex, family structure, and family socioeconomic level.

CASA is the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. CASA is primarily a think tank dedicated to finding out how to prevent drug and alcohol abuse among children. Their findings prompted family day and the above mentioned statistics. They offer way more information on their website than I have given. Check out this link: http://www.casafamilyday.org/

I invite you to take this information to heart. Not to make you feel guilty. Not to promote my book or website. But to give you some important food for thought to help you understand that underneath everything that you do, someone is watching you, emulating you and wanting more than ever, to connect with you. Your family dinner table is the starting place for making this happen. Don't underestimate the power of dinner.

[hholllyy426]

It is important, my son and I eat dinner together every night. Sadly DH can't join us because he's at work.