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Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009

Family challenge: One meal a day together

DALLAS -- Dawn McMullan juggles the family schedule around league sports for her 9-year-old, rock-climbing for her 12-year-old, her husband's bank job, her work as a freelance writer, and church, school, social and volunteer activities.

When Noah's rock-climbing coach suggested extending practices to 7:30 p.m., she reached her breaking point. She responded with a family challenge: Commit to eating at least one meal together every day over the next year.

McMullan, who lives in East Dallas, writes about her family's commitment on a Web blog -- www.bringingdinnerback.com -- and hopes to inspire others to come back to the table.

Studies by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse have consistently found that teens who have frequent family dinners (five to seven per week) are less likely to smoke, do drugs and drink, and are more likely to have better grades, go to religious services and have good relationships with their parents.

Eliminating the dinner distractions makes a difference, according to the center's survey released this fall.

The survey found that teens who have fewer than three family dinners a week are twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana, and more than 1½ times likelier to use alcohol. The results are worse among teens who have infrequent family dinners and when people at the table use cellphones, BlackBerries, laptops or Game Boys. Those teens are three times likelier to smoke pot and tobacco, and 2½ times likelier to use alcohol.

Dinner together every day for McMullan's family started on Nov. 1, with McMullan blogging about the experience. Her blog combines several of her passions: family, food, writing and the desire to help the needy in Africa.

McMullan, who is on the board of Refugee Services of Texas, visited Rwanda over a year ago and felt changed by the experience but didn't know what to do about it. At the same time, her freelance work started to dry up because of the bad economy. "I was lost for the first time in my life," she said.

The family dinner pledge is for 53 weeks -- 53 because that's the number of countries in Africa, and McMullan highlights a country a week on her blog.

McMullan's husband, Clyde Thompson, thought the challenge would be easy. "I didn't realize that we didn't eat together every night," he said. But on a few occasions, they've had to get up early for breakfast. One night, they ate at 9:30.

They haven't missed a day.

There are new rules; Noah isn't allowed to text at the table. And there are old rituals; younger brother Sawyer climbs onto his dad's lap at the end of the meal, while the conversation continues.