Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner
posted: Sep. 15, 2019.
With the YMCA youth soccer season kicking off this week, we know that life is about get even more hectic for many of our families. Between school, sports, after-school activities and all the fun fall activities that are soon to get underway, who has time to cook, much less eat together?
Not so fast! Before you ditch the family dinners for the rest of the fall- or year- Anderson Pediatric Dentistry wants to remind you that sitting down to eat with your family is about more than just food. In fact, study after study have linked eating family meals as one of the most important things you can do for your child! Life is busy. We get it. But sitting down to eat as a family can have a tremendous impact on everyone.
According to Anne Fishel, co-founder of The Family Dinner Project, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of "Home for Dinner", family dinners are one of the best things you can do as a parent! Years of research are now claiming that these benefits can come from regular family dinners!
· Dinnertime conversation boosts vocabulary even more than being read aloud to. Children with large vocabularies learn to read earlier.
· Adolescents who ate family meals five to seven times a week were twice as likely to get A’s in school as those who ate dinner with their families fewer than two times a week.
· Several of the studies link regular family dinners with lowering a host of high risk teenage behaviors parents fear: smoking, binge drinking, marijuana use, violence, school problems, eating disorders and sexual activity.
· In a very recent study, kids who had recently been victims of cyberbullying bounced back more readily if they had regular family dinners.
· In a New Zealand study, regular family meals was strongly associated with positive moods in adolescents. And we ask, who doesn’t need teenagers with more positive moods?!?
Don’t just take the word of your Anderson pediatric dentist. Take the advice of family therapists, researchers and stacks of studies. Eating regular family dinners is important. Whether it’s hotdogs, lasagna or sandwiches, it’s not about the quality of the food. It’s about the quality of the time spent together with your family. Don’t let life’s chaos ruin your family dinners. This week Anderson Pediatric Dentistry will be providing easy meal ideas and recipes to help you get back to your family dinners!
As always, Anderson Pediatric Dentistry strives to be more than just your kid’s dentist, or more than just the best pediatric dentist that offers cleanings, sealants, fluoride and x-rays. We want to be your go-to resource for your child’s dental health, as well as their overall health and well-being. We believe it takes a village to raise great kids and we want all our patients to succeed in all aspects of life.
If you have dental concerns or are looking for dental home for your child, Anderson Pediatric Dentistry would love to welcome you into our family. Call us today at 864-760-1440, or visit the website to learn more at www.andersonpediatricdentistry.com. Let us give you and your child Something to Smile About!