When was the last time you had an actual sit-down dinner with your whole clan? With dishes full at the table and people seated all around, facing each other?

If you’re like me, this was not something that was too common. I have children with varying ages and as such, our lives -time during the day. Oh, and did I mention he also held three different internships to boot?

Therefore, I’ve in the past excused a bit what had happened to our dinner hour. “Of course we’re no longer having ‘official’ dinner time,” I’d tell myself. “After all, look at our schedules!” And thus, we slipped farther and farther away from face-time during dinner time.

That, or we’d be eating on TV trays because of some project the kids had been working on, or me, that was spread out over the table. Pretty soon we found ourselves in practically what felt like “stranger land.”

It was about this time that I began noticing statistics and studies which showed that teens who ate dinner at least once a week with their families were far less likely to fall prey to peer pressure to smoke or participate in drugs.

Suddenly my interest perked up with this ‘concept’ of dinner-time as a family. It’s almost embarrassing, really. So sad that dinner time as a family could feel like such a novel prospect. Really, could dinner time together around the dinner table influence children that much? That’s when I started realizing all the benefits of such a thing. And then I remembered something I’d read years ago in a sales manual – any time you eat with a client, their heart becomes more bonded to you and therefore they are more likely to respond positively to your sales pitch.

Hmmmm, I mused. Bonding … dinner time … this was starting to make a lot of sense. When we eat together, it is disarming. Even for kids who think they no longer need their parents, simply by eating with their parents kids will feel deeper ties.

Of course, the following goes without saying – dinner time together needs to be one of uplift and support. Just as the kids cannot imagine the difficulty of our days, it is probably unlikely we can imagine what they face today in the world. Schools are no longer what they used to be, when the largest infractions was that of running in the hall or chewing gum!

Thus, let’s start this week by supporting our kids with mealtimes that demonstrate our love and support for them. And if we aren’t able to arrange schedules and make this a daily event, at least once a week let’s have some family face-time at dinner time!