April 6 2002

As I work with families, I am amazed to find how little families sit down together at home for a meal. We moderns eat out a lot - fast food for the most part. And when we do eat at home, we eat in shifts or on TV trays watching our favorite program. There are very few families that sit down together at least once a day to have a meal.

Is the fact that few families have sit-down meals together akin to the fact that few families travel together by horse and buggy? What I am asking myself is, "Am I wishing wistfully back to a simpler day as do the Amish?" Or are we in danger of losing something valuable to family well-being by there not being a time for eating together?

It seems to me that one major difference between my dog Domino and me is in our approach to eating. For Domino, eating serves one function - the satisfying of the hunger urge. When I put out his food, he doesn't want to linger long with any "hello pats," he just wants to gobble down the food, lest some other dog get some of his Purina Dog Chow. He is the only dog in the yard, so this fear of loss of food must be a gene matter, deeply imprinted by his ancestry.

For me, eating serves more than a biological need. Eating is a time of social interaction as well. I hate to eat alone. Conversation and connecting with another human being is a part of the eating ritual for me.

What I suspect is that with the loss of family meals together there has also been a loss of family connecting and conversation. It is a terrible reflection on our times when the only time some families talk with each other is at times of conflict. Then the talking is not so much "with" the other as "to" to other.

I want to invite you to do an experiment with me. Use your meal times together as a time for family connecting. Commit yourselves to taking at least 30 minutes to eat and enjoy each other's company. Talk about the events of the day, but do not let the conversation become an argument. If you need some "conversation starters," take a look at my "Dinner Topics."   online. 

If you are not presently having regular sit-down meals together, commit yourselves to having three meals together during the week and do the above experiment. After you have had a week of meal-time conversations, I would love to hear from you. Was the experiment helpful? Not helpful? or maybe irrelevant? On the first page of my web site there is an opportunity to contact me. Please do and let me know what you think.

My suspicions are that we are losing something upon which family well-being depends when we no longer have times when the family talks with each other - when the family connects with each other. If regular times of connecting are not experienced at meal times, when do they?