There aren’t many sacred cows around DadLabs (other than Daddy Brad, anyway), but one of the few pieces of advice we have always felt completely comfortable doling out: do what it takes to eat meals together. The studies have always been compelling, just a few family meals a week correlates to lower occurrences of all that seems to ail teenagers — drug use, pregnancy, eating disorders — you name it, frequent family diners have less of it.

I’ve always thought that dinner was the best part of the day, not because I’m a lockstep slow parenting drone, but because I’m a foodie.  My embrace of family dinner as a parenting virtue is easy because it’s completely selfish: my wife is an amazing cook and we regularly share good wine at dinner.  If it’s good for the kids, woot!

So for most of my parenting career, I’ve been a huge advocate of family dinner.

But several factors have recently emerged to make me question my faith in dinner almighty.  The fist is that having meals has gotten much harder. With three kids now involved in extra-curricular sports, our available nights and weekends have been severely whittled down.  Is family dinner important enough to keep kids out of team sports?  The research on the benefit of team sports for girls can stand toe to toe with family meals, so which one wins?

The research on the benefits of sleep-over parties is a little thin, but you try to tell Ri-ri she has to s