#28 - The Family Dinner Project with Dr. Anne Fishel

@thefamilydinnerproject

thefamilydinnerproject.org

MAKING THE MOST OF DINNER WITH ADOLESCENTS

Beat Dinner Table Tension for Good - The Family Dinner Project

Home for Dinner: Mixing Food, Fun, and Conversation for a Happier Family and Healthier Kids (Harper Collins, 2015) 

Eat, Laugh, Talk: The Family Dinner Playbook (Familius, 2019).

WHY THE FAMILY DINNER PROJECT? 

Research shows most think eating family dinner is a good idea, but fewer than 1/2 of American families do so. 70% of meals are eaten outside of the home and 20% in the car! 

 

The Family Dinner Project is all about the not perfect but “good enough” meal to inspire families to get back to the diner table. 

 

Bottom line: studies show regular family dinners reduce high-risk teenage behaviors such as: substance abuse, smoking, eating disorders, behavioral problems in school. Family dinner is also correlated with lower rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. 

 

Dr. Fishel shares what motivated her in 2010 to create the Family Dinner Project and the evidence based benefits to the BODY (eating at home is healthier: lower rates of childhood obesity), BRAIN (cognitive benefits: school readiness, earlier reading and higher academic performance) & SPIRIT (mental health benefits: family dinner is a more powerful deterrent against high-risk adolescent behaviors than attending church or getting good grades!). 

 

WHY DOES FAMILY DINNER HAVE SUCH AN IMPACT? 

Long ago families had built in connections throughout the day, now we can all be “together” in the same house and be completely disconnected. Who doesn’t sometimes text their kids in their own home? 

 

The real power of family dinner is that it provides a reliable time for parents and kids to connect with one another- face to face!  At its core family dinner is a ritual with scripted and unscripted parts! Assigned seats, same meal rotation but new conversations re: what’s happening in kids’ lives and world events. 

 

Family dinner is an opportunity for :

1. Early detection of problems and conflicts in your child’s life. 
2. Storytelling, which is the main way we all make sense of the world! 

 

HOW DO WE DEFINE FAMILY DINNER ANYWAY?

 

Ideally, NOT “Leave it to Beaver” but hopefully more of a “team sport” with many hands making lighter work.

 

For single parents or other families with a traveling parent, just 2 people have to eat together for it to be considered a family meal. 

 

Take Out OK too! If a meal is eaten with conversation and story telling, that’s a family dinner. 

 

Once a week is better than none, and it doesn’t have to be dinner. Possibilities: 7 breakfasts, 7 dinners, 2 weekend lunches, and even nighttime snacks! Goal is not to achieve a magic number but just to increase connection. 

 

WHAT GETS IN THE WAY AND WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM FAMILIES AND RESEARCHERS? 

Lack of Time 

Hard work of making dinner 

Picky Eaters 

Too much tension and conflict at the table

Teens not wanting to eat with parents 

 

Solutions: Flexible courses, push back on culture of extra time commitments, share the load, make double batches, cook with shortcuts, deconstructed ingredients for picky eaters but no bribes, go easy on criticism and avoid hot button topics. 80% of teens value family meals but it needs to be a bridge to their world, not a place where they feel like they can’t be themselves. 

 

Dr. Fishel shares her own experiences with her mom, Edith’s, “speedy” cooking and her dad, James’s, world class storytelling. 

 

She is forthright re: experience as a working mom getting dinner on the table with 2 sons, sees dinner as an adjunct to family therapy and employs past family dinner experiences as a powerful teaching tool for psychiatry residents studying family dynamics. 

 

BIO 

Anne Fishel, Ph.D. is a family therapist, clinical psychologist, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. She is Director of the Family and Couple Therapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, MA. Dr. Fishel is also the executive director and co-founder of The Family Dinner Project, a non-profit initiative, based at MGH, that helps families on-line and in communities to have better and more frequent family dinners. She is the author of Home for Dinner: Mixing Food, Fun, and Conversation for a Happier Family and Healthier Kids (Harper Collins, 2015) and the co-author of Eat, Laugh, Talk: The Family Dinner Playbook (Familius, 2019).