Harnessing the Power of Family Dinners to Create Change in Family Therapy

Abstract

Family dinner and family therapy confer many similar benefits to family members and they are both settings in which families can connect and interact as a group, in a designated space and time. Over the last 20 years, a large body of research documents the physical, academic, and mental health benefits of family dinners. Research links regular family meals with healthier eating habits and lower obesity rates, lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, depression, stress, and anxiety, as well as stronger self‐esteem, parent‐child connectedness, resilience, and even better vocabularies. Family therapists can harness these benefits in four ways. First, by asking screening questions of families to determine whether and how often they are sharing meals and then discussing solutions to overcoming common obstacles. Second, by asking about or enacting a family dinner to obtain a snapshot of a family's organisation and functioning, in terms of their gender roles, division of labour, expression of affect and conflict, capacity to have fun, and tolerance of difference. Third, by playing non‐competitive games in therapy that promote conversation, games that can also be played at the dinner table. Fourth, using family dinner as an annex to therapy as a place to experiment with new roles, behaviours, and patterns of communication, which can be enacted on a nightly basis after being discussed in therapy. Two case examples are presented to illustrate the ways that dinner can be a place for change, begun in therapy, and implemented at home.

Family Rituals and Routines in the Developmental Trajectory of Urban Southern Angolan Families

“…The additional payment of “fines,” due to premarital pregnancy, ensures the protection of the couple and of the new family member (Granjo, 2006). At the level of the routines, for example, during family meals, besides understanding the family dynamics, it could also be a prescribed way to improve the communication within the family (e.g., use of games such as “20 questions” about a family memory; Fishel, 2016).…”

Family mealtime against adolescents’ drinking, drug use, and other risk behaviours. Then and now.

“…Family holidays or other family-shared routines do not allow the same privileged perspective on the daily development of children and adolescents (Fiese, Foley & Spagnola, 2006). Fiese and colleagues (2006) (Fiese & Schwartz, 2008), family meals have also been described as fundamental for intergenerational transmission of traditions, as well as for learning (Larson, Nelson, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, & Hannan, 2009), and to create change in the context of family therapy (Fishel, 2016).…”