When you have children, it seems like you’re always busy.
Juggling work, school, activities and chores can make eating-on-the-go a necessity.
While dining on the run can save time, experts encourage families to get together and sit down for mealtime.
The Purdue Extension Nutrition Education Program indicates cooking, eating and interacting as a family can produce a variety of advantages.
“Eating together helps build a close relationship with your children,” the Purdue Extension Nutrition Education Program states on its website. “It gives everyone in the family a chance to learn more about each other.”
Dr. Joseph Lach, a family practice physician affiliated with Silver Cross Hospital, also encourages families to put their smartphones down and stay away from the TV for their family meals.
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“The things that are the best psychologically are the things that promote discussion, promote conversation,” Lach said. “You can share a meal with your family, but if no one talks to each other, then you really haven’t done anything. There has to be engagement.”
He said if you want to watch a TV show or movie together, you can do that first and then discuss what you watched during a shared meal.
“Then you create ideas and focus and relationship points that promote discussion and interaction,” Lach said. “Engagement is what you’re looking for.”
He said another way to promote more interactions would be through a family game night.
According to the Purdue Extension Nutrition Education Program, there are several other potential benefits to family meals:
Eating at home is not only more economical, but it also provides an opportunity to eat healthier and teach young children about portion sizes.
It also gives children a chance to practice social skills.
“With the advent of the internet and smart devices, we have so much more social indetermination where we don’t have definitive senses of self because we’re so defined by our social media accounts and by our interactions with humanity through a medium such as television or the internet or any such device,” Lach said. “A family gathering, even, can bring you a sense of self or groundedness that allows for a personal interaction that you don’t get at any other time.”
Lach said family meals offer a chance for families to show they support each other because it gives them outlets for frustrations and a time to share their wins.
“It’s just as important as meeting with your team at work,” he said. “If you work as part of a team on a project, you have to have meetings to catch up with each other. Your family is, in a lot of sense, your team for your proper domestic and social life.”
Lach said if families don’t regularly interact, they can become disconnected.
He has treated elderly patients whose children don’t all live nearby and who yearn for more opportunities for their whole family to be together for enjoyable experiences.
“The only time that everyone has been in the same room is when somebody dies, and that becomes a sad reality for individuals who get so preoccupied with other things in life that just aren’t as important,” Lach said.
Because schedules get busy, Lach said, families don’t have to eat together every night.
He suggests trying to eat as a family at least one night a week and keep it the same night.
“If you commit to it as much as you commit to anything else, because it’s as important as anything else, you’re going to hold value to that,” Lach said.
