When You Sit Down

“When you sit at home” – The instructions from Deuteronomy assume times when parents and children sit at home and talk together. For generations that time has been the family meal. In some cultures the family still eats every meal together – breakfast, lunch, dinner. Sometimes even a late afternoon snack. But for most Americans, the model, until recently, was dinner each evening, and a mid-day meal on Sunday.

Does it matter?  The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has been tracking that question for more than a fifteen years now, and the results are consistent, and inescapable:

Over the past decade and a half of surveying thousands of American teens and their parents, we have discovered that one of the most effective ways parents can keep their kids from using substances is by sitting down to dinner with them.

Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five to seven per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (fewer than three per week) are:             

•  twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana; and 
• more than one and a half times likelier to use alcohol.                                                    

Growing up, family dinner was non-negotiable. Be home by 5:30 or else. The conversation was wide-ranging: subjects covered in school, political events of the day, my grandmother’s thoughts on the passage she had read in her morning devotions. Sometimes she handed one of us the Bible to read the passage she had in mind, other times she just noted a verse or two. Or asked a question: “I read this this morning, and I’ve been wondering about it all day. What do you think it means?”

Our own family dinners, with our three children and assorted dinner guests, followed a similar pattern. A highlight for us, at different times along the way, were international friends, either international students we adopted, formally or informally, or colleagues of Whitney’s from other countries, some staying for weeks, some for just the night. We’d toss out a topic, then enjoy hearing it addressed from a very different point of view. Or the guest would raise a question: “Why do families in your church not stay together throughout your time there? Why do the children go somewhere else?” “Why is it good to have so many choices in your food stores? It makes shopping very tiring.”

On Sundays, the passage from the Sunday sermon was, and still is, a topic of conversation. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.” “I wonder how that would look at school tomorrow.” Somewhere along the way, Whitney decided to map out passages he wanted to make sure our kids had read and talked about, and the Essential 100 was born: one hundred passages, from Genesis to Revelation, that give the grand sweep of God’s story. It took years to read our way through his list, since some meals allowed that kind of time, and others were more hurried.

Yes – sports makes family dinners hard. As to musical rehearsals, committee meetings, even youth group. There are other obstacles as well: I’m amazed at how many teens tell me their families eat dinner in front of the tv, or have a tv in the kitchen so they can watch as they eat. And cell phones are another new distraction.

Another quote from the most recent Columbia study: 

The research shows clearly how important it is to get to the dinner table with your kids. And it is also important for parents to give kids their undivided attention--and to get theirs.

Teens who have infrequent dinners are likelier to say people at the table are talking or texting on cell phones or using other devices at the table such as Blackberries, laptops or Game Boys. Teens in households where dinners are infrequent and such distractions are present at the table are: three times likelier to use marijuana and tobacco; and two and a half times likelier to use alcohol.

 The message for parents could not be any clearer: turn off your cell phone (and tell your kids to do the same), and make a regular date with your kids. Let them know how important they are to you. Listen to what they have to say.  (CASA report -ii-)