{"id":35226,"date":"2017-05-10T08:15:16","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T06:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.targetpoint.it\/?p=6105\/"},"modified":"2024-04-10T12:05:25","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T10:05:25","slug":"teenager-behaviors-at-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/teenager-behaviors-at-the-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenager behaviors at the table"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last 20 years, dozens of studies have confirmed what parents have known intuitively for a long time: sitting down for a nightly dinner is good for the spirit, the brain and the body. Research shows that shared meals are tied to many teenage behaviors that parents pray for: reduced rates of substance abuse, eating disorders and depression; and higher grade point averages and self-esteem. For young children, conversation at the table is a bigger vocabulary booster than reading aloud to them. The icing on the cake is that kids who eat regular family dinners grow up to be young adults who eat healthier and have lower rates of obesity.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It doesn\u2019t have to be daily. You don\u2019t have to have dinner every night to reap the benefits. It could be breakfast, a weekend brunch, a take-a-break-snack at night or a combination of these. And there\u2019s no magic number. The point is to make a commitment to a family meal where everyone sits down to share food, have fun and talk about things that matter.<\/li>\n<li>Play with your food. With so much of our play now conducted online, adults and children have lost the opportunity to play with real objects that can be touched, smelled and transformed. So play together. Cooking is an activity that still involves our senses and our hands, and it is something we still can do together. You can set out salad fixings and have everyone choose vegetables to create faces, trees and cars. Play with taste by slipping in a new flavor or spice and asking everyone to guess the ingredients.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s doable. Despite parent\u2019s hectic work schedules and kids\u2019 busy extracurricular activities, it\u2019s very doable to have nightly dinner. The whole process of cooking and eating together can take just an hour (less than 30 minutes to cook and the average meal is 22 minutes*), and that hour is transformative. If we still planted vegetables, played instruments for our entertainment and quilted on the front porch, we might not need family dinners, but it\u2019s the most reliable time of day that we have to connect with one another. When kids feel connected to their parents, it\u2019s like a seatbelt on the potholed road of childhood.<\/li>\n<li>Try new activities and share talents. Dinner can be a great place to try out new behaviors. A family dinner is like an improvisatory theater performance. The family shows up night after night, and as a group they can try out new ways of interacting with one another. Or, one member\u2019s behavior can set off a cascade of others. For example, a family might agree to refrain from making any negative comments at the table and see what happens. Or, a teenager might be invited to make a family dinner or to create a musical soundtrack for the meal.<\/li>\n<li>Share your family history. The dinner table is the best place to tell stories, and kids who know their family stories are more resilient and feel better about themselves. Most inspiring are lemonade-from-lemon stories, stories about adversity where a lesson is learned, or negative events that transform into something good. Stories help us make sense of the world, and they help kids connect to something bigger than themselves. Tell stories about yourself and other family members when they were the same age as your children. Tell stories about romance, first jobs, immigration, how names were chosen, a childhood pet, a favorite recipe or kitchen disaster.<\/li>\n<li>Stay connected. Table conversation is one of the richest language experiences you can provide for your children. When else do we sit and talk for several minutes, offering lots of comments and explanations on one topic? Try asking questions that go beyond, \u201cHow was your day?\u201d For example, instead ask everyone to tell a rose (something positive) and a thorn (something negative) about the day, as well as a bud (what you wish will happen tomorrow).<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s good for you, too. Rituals like dinner, which punctuate a world that often feels frenzied and out of control, are good for adults, too. Knowing that one part of your day is going to unfold in basically the same way, day after day, is comforting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.parenting.com\/food-recipes\/breakfast\/breakfast-treats-weekend-holiday-mornings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.parenting.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Target Point, Italian Ideas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last 20 years, dozens of studies have confirmed what parents have known intuitively for a long time: sitting down for a nightly dinner is good for the spirit, the brain and the body. Research shows that shared meals are tied to many teenage behaviors that parents pray for: reduced rates of substance abuse, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":35254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[65,347,814,815,816],"class_list":["post-35226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","tag-table","tag-table-en","tag-dinner-table","tag-teenager","tag-teenager-at-table"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35302,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35226\/revisions\/35302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetpoint.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}