Stop And Smell The Spices

Stop and Smell the Spices

Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home. Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table.

Psalm 128:3

It’s difficult to exaggerate the value of sharing a slow-paced family meal together. Study after study finds that kids who eat dinner with their families regularly are better students, healthier people, and less likely to smoke, drink, or use drugs than those who don’t. Such benefits are enough to make you get up and set the table.

Three nights a week, Kristi and Roger Strode turn the lights low, put on soft music and sit down to eat by candlelight. This isn’t a romantic dinner. It’s supper with the kids. The Strodes have three children, two jobs and very little time. . . . But dinner in their Shorewood, Wisconsin, household has been transformed with the introduction of the candles, music, and one simple, cooked meal for everyone. “There’s real conversation now and less bickering,” Ms. Strode told Hilary Stout of the Wall Street Journal. “It brings the whole energy level down to a good place.”^a

But be assured, lingering over a meal benefits everyone, not only the kids. A husband and wife are guaranteed to draw their spirits together when they make table time for meals a common practice. Sure, it takes preparation time, and you’re bound to run into logistical challenges involving schedules, but the bonding that results from eating together at the end of a workday is worth the effort—really. If the kids squabble more than share around the table, Dr. Bill Doherty, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, offers the following suggestions:

Ask yourself: “What am I doing that makes it worse?” The answer in many cases is unnecessary reprimanding. The classic no-dessert-unless-you-behave-and-eat turns dinner into a control struggle which defeats the purpose. If they don’t eat their vegetables, he suggests, let it go.

Also, don’t turn the conversation into an interrogation session about school or activities. A more off-the-wall conversation starter might get everyone engaged. One of his suggestions: If you could meet someone from history, who would it be?

A little more creativity may be in order to keep smaller kids seated. Try a one-color meal—everything green might even help in the eat-your-vegetables department. Or an alphabet dinner, with every dish beginning with the same letter (pasta with plums and pears). Get them excited by picnicking in the living room one night or even eating under the table. . . .

And if dinner is simply too much to handle, try breakfast. Or start with just one night a week. Most important, Mr. Doherty says: “Make it special. Light candles, put a tablecloth out.” In other words, make a distinction between a routine meal and a meaningful family ritual.^b

A mealtime ritual is a keystone for finding time together.

—Bill Doherty

^a 145

^b 146