By Janet Peterson
Families, no matter their size or make-up, must be fed daily. Because dinner comes around every twenty-four hours, it provides a wonderful opportunity to strengthen families in the privacy of their own homes.
Going out to dinner together on occasion can also provide pleasurable and bonding experiences for families, but does not successfully replace what can take place in the family kitchen or dining room. Art Smith, author of Back to the Table: The Reunion of Food and Family, recalled, “As a child growing up in rural Florida, I learned the importance of the family table. It was there that I felt love matched only by my family’s appreciation for fresh, wholesome food, a love of good cooking, and a fellowship just not possible at a restaurant table or the drive-in window of a fast-food outlet.” [1]
Yet sitting down to a home-cooked dinner as a family around its own table is an often overlooked and underused tool for providing emotional nurturing, developing a sense of belonging, and strengthening relationships. Indeed, the cumulative effects are compelling reasons to make dinner a family event.
“Families who chow together bond better than those who eat at separate times and spaces,” wrote Charlotte Latvala in Parenting magazine. “Sitting around the table — or even just grating carrots in the kitchen — encourages kids and parents to relax and share what’s on their mind.” [2]
Today’s fast-paced and over-programmed lives can exact a high toll on any family’s happiness, security, and closeness. With so many distractions and obligations outside the home as well as mounting social challenges, a wise family will understand the purpose and benefits of eating together. Sharing dinner together regularly provides more than good nutrition; it enables family members to share their days with each other, relax, laugh, discuss issues, socialize, express love, and fortify family relationships.
“If we abandon our consistent family mealtime, we lose a forum in which family members can express their crazy ideas, their dreams, their frustrations, their fears, and their pleasures,” wrote Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg in their cookbook Table Talk: Activities and Recipes for Bringing the Family Together . “We lose a sounding board for opinions… We lose the base from which most family traditions are built, and our children lose a chance to grow in self-esteem and life skills and to learn good manners in a nonthreatening setting.” [3]. . .
Ronni Lundi wrote how her family’s gathering around their kitchen table fostered her sense of identity:
It was around that table that I learned the lessons of my life, the stories that told me who I was and where I came from, the stories that led me to imagine where I might go… I took those stories in greedily, hungrily, and was nourished on them like they were a glass of cold sweet milk and a wedge of my mother’s golden steaming fresh cornbread. [6]
To read entire article: http://www.ldsmag.com/aroundthetable/061109whycook.html
Sat, Nov 11, 2006
Parenting