maleficent

I was watching Little House on the Prarie tonite, and caught a Public Service Announcement for "Family Day" -- a little googling brought up a bunch of websites dedicated to the subject.

http://www.tvland.com/familytable/ft_home.jhtml

http://www.casafamilyday.org/

Apparantly, kids who have dinner with their families are less likely to do drugs, drink, or smoke or get into trouble... Interesting concept and thought I'd throw it out here to see if it's actually true...

Do you/Did you regularly have dinner with your family and did it keep you out of trouble... With your own families, do you have regular family dinners?

I know back when i was kid, my father always worked late... we rarely had dinner as a family, and I never did drugs or drank when I was in high school..

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StanT

With my parents, we ate together 5-6 days a week and well, I never smoked ... err, tobaco, that is.

Between my wife's schedule and my own, we rarely ate together. Dinner was the first adult home cooks for the most part. It appears that my daughter have stayed out of trouble ... for the most part ... or so they tell me.

Slavakion

We ate dinner together all the time, and I don't drink, smoke or do drugs. *shrug*

Ustwo

Yep we did the family dinner thing too, and we are all ok and drug free etc.

Mmmm the power of cheese (with family)!

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Gilda

We ate dinner together religiously--and that's not used entirely figuratively here. I didn't do drugs or smoke, and graduated from school in the top 10% of my class, but drinking and getting into trouble? I was the daughter from hell. I, however, had other issues that may have contributed to my behavior. My siblings in general are well-behaved and there are no smokers or drinkers that I know of, though I am out of the loop a bit.

Sissy and my oldest brother both graduated at or near the top of their classes, and neither one drinks or smokes that I know of.

This is probably indicative of a correlation in which two effects share a common cause. Eating dinner together probably indicates parents who are involved in their children's lives, and such parents are less likely to have children who drink, smoke, do drugs, or produce teen pregnancies. Two results from the same cause.

Gilda

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Chingal0

We occasionally had a 'family dinner' but I don't think that eating dinner everyday with my family would have stopped me from drinking/drugs in highschool.

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Sweetpea

We ate dinner together some 4-5 nights a week.

I didn't drink or get stonned or really much of anything... mostly because my parents were always talking to me about everything and i'm close with them and always have been. I think allot of kids choose to rebel due to some lack of communication or acceptance.... then again, what the fuck do i know? There were some people i knew who had amazing parents and still had big drug issues. My own experience and observations of my friends was, for the most part, the parents who were involved in their children's/teenagers lives were less likely, in general, to have children who drank and got stonned.


Sweetpea

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Johnny Pyro

We ate dinner together all the time. A good seven nights. Always. My father would make all of us pray before we ate.

It would always go wrong. Very dysfuctional family. I'd always get into arguements with my father, (Mostly about religion). My mother nervously trying to get us off the subject of whatever we were talking about. "The Cleaver family." Ya right. One of my brothers would make me laugh (and there is no laughing at the dinner table!) and I'd end up getting slapped. It was horrible. No family bonding at all. Just structure and disipline.

EDIT- Oh ya, did lots of drugs! Mostly pot and booze.

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analog

We had a mandatory "family eats together" policy. As far as "using drugs", "drinking", "smoking", etc., the thing they're looking for is better, more productive members of society, who aren't criminals. My brother drinks, but it's at parties only. He's an extremely smart, very dedicated student in college (to be a veterinarian), and a great person in general.

As for me, I have smoked pot socially and still drink socially. I occasionally smoke a cigarette (literally one or two in a whole evening) if i'm drinking. I am not a criminal (unless you're an asshole and REALLY want to count my occasional pot smoking, which is in the past) and am also going back to college to continue/finish my degree (I started taking classes and then dropped that major... now i'm doing something else instead).

I think what they're going for are good kids that grow up into good young people, and good adults. The items of the list probably aren't as important as just being responsible, decent people.

I think it's good that they set aside a day to recognize the importance of the family. A better family life pretty much always makes the rigors of growing up that much easier, because you have a support structure.

Of course, I'd be interested to see if their family day commericals/examples are nothing but hetero couples with children, to see if that's the only thing they consider a family. I looked on their website and so far all i can see of their pictures are kids with a woman. No second adult, and no adult men at all. So are they just trying to avoid pissing people off by getting rid of any potential SO, or are they only showing women because a man and some children isn't a family? It's just curious the way it's put together.

Supple Cow

I never got even close to any kind of trouble as a kid/teenager because I was always expected home by dinner time - 7 days a week - even if it was just for us all to eat together in front of the tv. While that wasn't the most quality way to have family dinners, it kept me from having too much unstructured time on my hands. The only time was allowed to dine with people other than my family, it was with my best friends' families. At the time, I resented that my good behavior was rewarded with limited privileges. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't spend all my evenings loitering in town with all the other kids my age. I don't think I would have accomplished very much and I managed to find plenty of time to socialize with my good friends anyway. I think there's something to this family dinner business, but I don't think it has as much to do with a nuclear family or sitting around a table as much as it has to do with having a daily routine and the expectation that family meal time is safe time.

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Lead543

We ate together as a family and I'd come home for dinner stoned. It's only been a week but I already miss the family dinners.

Grasshopper Green

We ate together nearly every night until I got into high school, when school activities (studying, basketball, etc) would interefere. Even then, we usually ate together 3-4 times a week. My brother had behavioral problems in high school, and my sister ran away and shoplifted. I don't honestly know if either did drugs or drank, because we didn't talk about that stuff. Both became drug users and drinkers as soon as they moved out of the house. I don't think eating together really did anything for my family.

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gremlinx8

We ate together as a family most nights and I've never smoked, drank or done any drugs.

tspikes51

I ate together with my family until right before I graduated high school and I don't smoke or do drugs. I never drank until I got into college.

I think that there are social functions that a traditional family serves that is missing from today's America. It is extremely important that the family be the "base of operations" for everybody. It provides stability in life.

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feelgood

Man, if the fact that kids that don't eat family dinners are more likely to be doing drugs then I'm a shiny example of that

I guess I only eat dinner once a week with the family and every other day, I don't eat dinner. So, I smoke pot once in awhile but haven't done that shit for a while now...

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texxasco

My family ate dinner together 7 nights a week as far back as I can remember, and that continued up until high school. Once my younger brother and I got into high school we frequently had school activities (band, football, etc) that would get us out of dinner. Also the paper route I had grew, but even then I would head out right after dinner and collect subscription payments until about 8:30, but this was only for about 10 days a month.

My brother closest to me in age had a serious problem with drugs for years, and it almost killed him. I started smoking at 15, hid it for many years, and only in the last couple years have I ever smoked in my parents presence. I drank all through HS, but in social settings, and not everyday. My brother also smoked for years. My youngest brother and sister never smoked, drank, or did ANYTHING wrong that I ever knew of.

My Dad retired form the military when I was in 9th grade, and became a cop after that (he was also a reserve cop for years prior). I was a hell raiser in school, and did basically the opposite of what I was told most of the time. I thought noting of it at the time, but looking back it's funny that one of my partners in crime was a preacher's son. They used to say that some of the kids most likely to get into trouble were cops and preacher’s kids, male usually.

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zVp

Do you/Did you regularly have dinner with your family and did it keep you out of trouble... With your own families, do you have regular family dinners?

I usually have dinner 5-6 days a week with my family. Although, most of the time my parents work late so I usually have to make dinner for my siblings. I don't think it kept me out of trouble because I have my own "rules" with drinking and drugs. I haven't tried any drugs, and probably won't. Drinking on the other hand, I'll drink with friends, but I avoid it.

Gilda

As to the second part, we don't have any children yet, but we do have a regular family dinner with the three of us, and did so when Sissy was a minor in my care, and she's become a delightful young woman.

Gilda

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pig

As aluded to by some posters above, I think it depends on what "family dinner" is like. We had dinner most nights as a family, with similar exceptions as above for extracurricular activities, but our family was sort of fucked up. That said, I think me and my sister both were pretty clean through highschool, but I spent a few years playing around with drugs in college. I may not have been a big partier in high school, but I think a fair amount of my teachers would say that despite the fact that the loved me to death, they also found me to be one of the biggest pains in the asses they ever taught.

Coincidentally, my drug use escalated, of course, shortly after I stopped with the family dinners thing. So there you go.

I agree with others that this correlation is most likely an indirect correlation, in that family dinners and reduced drug and alcohol use are both likely associated with strong family ties and communication. Just not always.

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