February 15, 2006
FAMILY MEALS FOCUS #9
Interpreting the news and research about feeding and eating

ANSWERING PARENTS, AND PROFESSIONALS QUESTIONS ABOUT MEALS:

If you have children, you've got to feed them. Children are a captive audience who absolutely depend on us to keep them safe. They feel afraid when adults are casual about feeding them or don't let them have enough to eat. The day-in, day-out of structured, sit-down family meals and snacks reassures children that they are loved and will be provided for. Meals provide the backbone for family life by giving a reliable context for the work of the family: nurturing children, helping individual growth, easing relationships with the outside world.

Family Meals Focus #4 shared the research indicating that children who have family meals do better in all ways: Nutritionally, socially and emotionally. Family Meals Focus #5 gave food-management strategies for helping families get back to the table.

What is a meal? In The Surprising Power of Family Meals, Mariam Weinstein asked architect Witold Rybczynski to apply his principles of sense of place to where to eat.¹ ''We eat facing each other,'' he stated. ''It's the facing each other that is important.'' Such a fine answer can define the meal itself: A meal is when we sit down and eat facing each other. To that, add a feeding-dynamics principle: A meal is everybody's sharing the same food.

What needs to happen at a meal? Good times, connecting, checking in, talking and listening. Children are entitled to part of the attention, but not all of it. Children learn to converse when parents ask specific questions such as ''Who did you see today?'' ''What word did you study today?'' and then ask for more detail. Children learn to listen when grownups talk with each other. Children love hearing family stories and learn to tell their own stories. The more children know about their families, the better their psychological functioning and resilience.²

How many family meals a week are enough to get the benefit? asked the belligerent young father at a parent presentation. His glowering wife clued me in to a struggle for his time. It's a matter of attitude, I responded. Making family meals a priority is identical with making your family a priority. If they truly come first for you, children will know that and meals and other activities will fall into place. She smiled; he didn't.

How do I deal with negative mealtime behavior? The toddler and preschooler chapters in Child of Mine give strategies. Make the table a pleasant place to be, cultivate the attitude that it is a privilege to be there, expect children to contribute to the pleasure of it all, and excuse them if they don't. Of course, maintain a division of responsibility in feeding.

1. The Surprising Power of Family Meals. Weinstein M. Where We Eat--and Where Not to. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press; 2005:86-96.

2. Duke MP, Fivush R, Lazarus A, Bohanek J. Of Ketchup and Kin: Dinnertime Conversations As a Major Source of Family Knowledge, Family Adjustment and Family Resilience. Working paper # 26 ed. Emory Center for Myth and ritual in American Life; 2003.

Next month's Family Meal Focus Answering parents, and professionals questions about meals: Food acceptance.

For more help with managing family meals, see Ellyn Satter's Secrets of Feeding a Health Family . Also see chapter 4, ''Make Family Meals a Priority'' in Your Child's Weight: Helping Without Harming.

Family Meals Focus by Ellyn Satter, MS, RD, LCSW, BCD. discusses trends, research and clinical issues in eating and feeding and interprets other research from a feeding-dynamics, eating-competence perspective. For past issues of Family Meals Focus, click here.

Please recommend Family Meals Focus to your family and friends.

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