"The Family Dinner"

Here's a sad sight:

Mom eating dinner alone. Well, maybe not quite alone. Can you see Coco hiding under the table? Where I go, she goes. I call her my little white shadow.

On this night everyone was off in different directions. I hate when that happens.

As busy as we are, we try to eat together as often as we can.

We do it because we enjoy it. Any dinner conversation involving my son is bound to be hilarious.

The guy just cracks us up.

But it turns out these family dinners may have something to do with my kids being the kinds of kids they are.

The University of Minnesota actually studied the benefits of families coming together for dinner and found that it's one of the most effective ways parents can help their kids do better in school and in life. That's big stuff.

Gather 'round the table at least five nights a week (I know seems impossible sometimes) and your kids will do better in at least six super important ways:

1. They eat more of the good stuff...fruits, veggies, grains, calcium-rich foods...and less of the bad stuff...junk food and soda pop. The result: less obesity.

2. They develop strong relationships with their parents. A survey of 1, 000 teens by Columbia University's National Center for Addiction and Drug Abuse found that nearly half those kids thought dinnertime was the best time to talk to their parents about important stuff. And 80 percent said they're rather eat with their parents than eat alone.

3. They build larger vocabularies. Makes sense. The Home-School study of Language and Literacy Development found that dinner table talk is crucial to speech development. We make a point to talk about current events.

4. They get better grades in school. In fact they're 40 percent more likely to get A's and B's than teens whose families ate separately.

5. They have fewer eating disorders. A positive environment at dinner reduces the risk of bulimia and anorexia. One study found that 3-4 meals together a week reduced those behaviors by half. 5-6 a week reduced eating disorders by 66 percent.

6. They take fewer risks. The University of Minnesota found that these teens who have dinner with their folks at least 5 times a week are 42 percent less likely to drink, 59 percent less likely to smoke cigarettes and 66 percent less likely to try marijuana.

Even dinner a few nights a week can make a difference so don't panic if five nights a week seems impossible what with sports and music and dance. My kids certainly have gotten busy. But we held on to the family dinner routine for as long as we could while they were young.

And we still do it as often as we can. If one of us is missing, the other three sit down together.

We still emphasize the importance of that time.

As you spend more time on my blog you'll notice that the recipes in my "Someone's in the Kitchen" tab will nearly all be meals that can be made ahead and popped in the oven at the end of a busy day or prepared in a short period of time. That's because that's how we eat around here. We do that to increase the odds that we can all sit down together and share time with the people we love most.

I hope you are able to do the same.