“How many can I have?” G asked.
When throwing a successful party for teenaged boys,… more
Posts Tagged ‘dinner’
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Why Reading About Parenting is Bad for You
By Daddy Clay Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Reading parenting columns is a dangerous business. You should go back to playing Fruit Ninja.
In my most recent experience, a quick read of a piece in a major national newspaper nearly resulted in: one car crash, one house fire, and several lacerations.
The column in question was of the kind that makes you feel inadequate. (There are only two kinds. The other kind is usually written by a bumbler about his or her parenting misadventures, inducing the reader to feel smug and superior. Sorry for making you feel so inadequate all these years.) The author opined that she was sick of her kids just doing all the dishes, she wanted them to graduate to preparing entire meals for the family. Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Let Family Dinner Kill You
By Daddy Clay Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
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
