By Matt Kennedy
Research & Grants Specialist

Savoring the last bite of grandma’s stuffing. Sharing stories with family and friends around the dinner table. For many, family meals are an annual tradition, occurring during Thanksgiving or Christmas. For others, family meals are nightly activities that actively improve the health of teens.

In fact, teens who have five to seven family dinners per week are almost four times as likely to not use tobacco, more than twice as likely to abstain from drinking alcohol and two-and-a-half times as likely to not use marijuana compared to teens that have fewer than three family meals per week, according to The Importance of Family Dinners VII, a recently released report, by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The secret to improving the health and well-being of teens is not in grandma’s stuffing, but in the conversations that take place around it. Of teens who reported having dinner with their family at least once a week, 75 percent reported interaction and being together to be the best part of family dinners.

The benefits of effective communication are well known to paxUnited®, our programs focus on teaching students communication skills and providing opportunities for youth to resolve conflicts and solve problems at school through mediation and mentoring programs. The communication techniques paxUnited uses at schools also work with families at home. However, a necessary component of effective communication is creating an established environment where communication can take place. At schools, established communication environments are designated mediation classrooms or natural mentoring areas of the school like the cafeteria or the locker-room. With families, the most effective communication area is the dinner table.

Sadly, many dinner tables remain empty, as 42 percent of American families don’t partake in regular family meals according to the study. “McMeal” times in the car and meals in front of the TV occur all too often in place of family meals. Excuses such as time constraints and busy schedules have morphed into a culture that has widely accepted the practice of abandoning the dinner table.

A popular, currently-running television advertisement identifies the solution to family conflict as giving each family member the ability to watch and record up to four TV shows at once so that each family member could watch their favorite program in four separate rooms of the house. Widespread acceptance of this commercial suggests a shift in family priorities. The clearly defined benefits of having regular family meals in The Importance of Family Dinners VII report should be incentive enough to move away from the TV and to the dinner table as a way to improve family relationships and the outlook of teens.

Strong family relationships are vitally important to the well-being of teens and relationships must be nurtured. According to the study, teens that have frequent family dinners are almost twice as likely to report having an “excellent” relationship with their parents. Three times as many teens surveyed in the report said they would like to spend more time with their parents than teens that said they would like to spend less time with their parents. 

If parents are unable to have regular family dinners, it is important that they make time to communicate with their child on a regular basis in some other way. Family meals are an ideal time to routinely talk about what is going on in teen’s lives, but if family meals are not possible, routine conversations while driving teens to school or some other time prove valuable.

As you talk with your family members around the dinner table this Thanksgiving, paxUnited hopes you cherish the time you have with loved ones and remember how truly important relationships with your family and friends are.