Family style

Three nights a week, Kristi and Roger Strode turn the lights low, put on soft music and sit down to eat by candlelight. This is not a romantic dinner. It’s supper with the kids.

The Strodes have three children, two jobs and very little time. Until a few months ago, their family dinners were gang grabs: everyone reaching for their own thing – frozen waffles, a bowl of cereal – and gobbling it down on the fly. But dinner in their Shorewood, Wis., household has been transformed with the introduction of the candles, music and one simple, cooked meal for everyone.

“There’s real conversation now and less bickering,” Kristi Strode says. “It brings the whole energy level down to a good place.”

There is an astonishingly large – and growing – pile of research that suggests the Strobe kids (ages 7, 10 and 12) will be much better for the change. Study after study finds that kids who eat dinner with their families regularly are better students, healthier people and less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs than those who don’t. A University of Michigan study of children ages 3 through 12, for example, found that more meal time with the family was the single strongest predictor of better achievement scores and fewer behavioral problems – even better than time spent studying or in church.

It’s enough to make you sprint to set the table. Indeed, after a precipitous decline since the 1970s, there are signs that family dinners are making a comeback.

Sixty-one percent of youths ages 12 through 17 said they ate dinner with their families at least five nights a week in 2003, up from 47 percent in 1998, according to a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, which has researched the importance of family dinners in preventing teen drug and alcohol use.

What’s more, communities and even some employers are pressing the concept. A few weeks ago, parents in Eden Prairie, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb, launched a community initiative aimed at getting 1,000 families to pledge to eat dinner together at least four times each week. Last week, a similar effort commenced in southwest Minneapolis. Two months ago, 400 communities and 42 states proclaimed Sept. 27 a day to eat dinner with your children. Companies from General Mills to Bristol-Myers Squibb offered employees incentives – in some cases leaving work early – to do so.

At the same time, new products are appearing to ease the stress of preparing family meals. Corner Cooks, a catering and party business in Winnetka, Ill., recently launched a weekly take-out dinner menu with “family-friendly food” aimed at all the “people who come in here on a daily basis in a quandary about family dinners,” says owner Betsy Simson.

A Florida couple with four children has developed a kit to help stimulate family table conversation and keep the youngest kids at the table. So far, they’ve sold 7,000 of them at $39.95 a piece at www.familytabletime.com. It includes, among other things, a tablecloth for kids to write and draw on, a “dineometer” to record the number of days the family has dined together and a guest book for dinner guests to sign.

The best thing to come out of these efforts may be some sense of how to actually make it work. Because, to be frank of course, family dinners are often far from the bonding experiences they’re cracked up to be. For all the visions of enlightened discussions of current events, family values – or even detailed answers to the eternal query, “What did you do in school today?” – actual dialogue often runs more along the lines of this:

“Stop kicking your sister.”

“She’s a poophead.”

Given the time required for preparation, the logistical challenges of getting everyone to the table, and the potential for sniping among siblings and spouses, the dirty secret of many parents is that they dread the family dinner. “I know a lot of mothers who struggle with this,” says Kristi Strode.

Bill Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota who is helping organize the Minneapolis-area initiatives (also a father of two who used to place his kids at opposite ends of the dinner table to avoid squabbling) has some tips to keep parents from becoming too daunted by dinner.

First, he advises, ask yourself: “What am I doing that makes it worse?” The answer in many cases is unnecessary reprimanding. The classic no dessert unless you behave and eat turns dinner into a control struggle which defeats the purpose. If they don’t eat their vegetables, let it go.

Also, don’t turn the conversation into an interrogation session about school or activities. A more off-the-wall conversation starter might get everyone engaged. One of his suggestions: If you could meet someone from history, who would it be?

A little more creativity may be in order to keep smaller kids seated. Try a one-color meal – everything green might even help in the eat-your-vegetables department. Or an alphabet dinner, with every dish beginning with the same letter (pasta with plum tomato sauce, potatoes and pears). Get them excited by picnicking in the living room one night or even eating under the table.

And if dinner is simply too much to handle, try breakfast. Or start with just Sunday night. Most important, Doherty says: “Make it special. Light candles, put a tablecloth out. Distinguish between a routine and a ritual.”