The Dinner Dilemma

Family dinners can easily fall by the wayside as your kids head into the preteen years. They're busy. You're busy. And given the grumbling that occurs when you insist that they take a timeout from their social lives long enough to show their face at the dinner table, you may find yourself wondering if it's actually worth the effort to lobby for regular family mealtimes.

The short answer to that question is yes: it is worth it. Researchers at Columbia University found that teens who eat dinner with their family less frequently (two times per week or less as opposed to five times per week) were three times more likely to try marijuana, two and a half times more likely to smoke cigarettes, and one and a half times more likely to drink alcohol. And researchers at the University of Michigan found that children ages 9 to 14 who regularly ate dinner with their families ate more fruits and vegetables, consumed less saturated and less trans fat, ate fewer fried foods, drank fewer carbonated beverages, and had a diet that was richer in vitamins and micronutrients than kids who didn't.

Take Back Your Time (a major U.S./Canadian initiative to encourage families to challenge "the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment") recently launched Reclaimdinnertime.com, a website that offers some terrific (and realistic) tips on making time for family dinners. Here are a few ideas from the site.

- Schedule regular family dinner nights at dates and times that work for everyone.

- Have family members submit meal suggestions for those nights. Take turns dining choosing the menu or, if your budget will allow for the occasional splurge, ordering takeout.

- Share the work of meal preparation, everything from cooking to setting the table to cleanup.

- Unplug from the outside world, literally. That includes cellphones, iPods, and Blackberries.