Having dinner as a family is good for your kids… and the menu is only part of the story.
Do you set (and observe) family rules and rituals? Try to set an example that reflects your spiritual values? Eat dinner together most nights?
Yes? Congratulations: you’ve already taken important steps to help prevent substance abuse and other high-risk teen behavior in your teens. And although that sounds like common sense, there’s plenty of research to back it up.
According the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) teens who have dinner with their families at least five nights a week are almost twice as likely to do well in school. Teens who earn A’s and B’s are at half the risk (of substance abuse) as those who receive grades of ‘C’ or lower.
The ‘frequent diners’ polled were also significantly less likely to have tried cigarettes, marijuana or alcohol.
I may have a somewhat biased point of view but doesn’t this structure, spirit and connection sound a bit like the Four Foundations?
Unfortunately, when it comes to preventing any illness, there are no iron-clad guarantees. Addiction (to alcohol and other drugs) is a brain disorder. Good parenting can perhaps swing the odds in your child’s favor, just like proper diet and exercise can improve our odds against obesity, heart disease or diabetes.
Managing risk factors improves the odds. And you get to have dinner with the people you love most, too!
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One of the things I love about my work is the opportunity to collaborate with some wonderful people. In a phone call last week one of them commented on some significant changes she had noticed in my work. “The gloves are off” is how she described the change. “How did you do that?”
The short answer? I stopped caring. While parents, kids and families matter more now than ever, I quit bothering myself about things that other people tell me I should care about. Instead of obsessing about “traffic” and “reach” and “influence” and “metrics,” I’m back to being me: sharing good content as often as I can, trusting that it will reach someone who will benefit from it… when they need to connect with it.
It’s not that I don’t need or want feedback. I like to learn… but it was getting in the way.
So how did I learn to stop caring? The way I learn best: the hard way.
I worried and fretted. I checked and measured… and drove myself half insane. Then, as it sometimes does, life added some stresses of its own. For the privacy of those involved I will say only that some people I care deeply about faced some very difficult circumstances. To make matters worse, there was nothing I could do to help.
What’s that got to do with parenting? Or the Four Foundations? Quite a lot, actually.
Tough times can make us bitter or make us better. If we pay attention, illness, injury and error can reconnect us to what matters most. It’s similar to what happens when we realize we can’t smooth all the bumps in the road our kids will travel: we decide to teach them to navigate the bumps. And with that learning comes a level of fearlessness that frees us to give our best efforts and “let go” of the results.
When we share this attitude with our kids they often become too busy “taking care of business” to hear the warnings from the people who want to tell them they’re doomed to fail!
