Family Dinner Isn't Always Possible. Try This Instead.

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HKV5GZ86 Families ask me all the time how to get closer, and somewhere in that conversation somebody brings up family dinner. They've read that families who eat together every night are closer, that kids do better, that teens struggle less. All of that is true. And then they tell me why it doesn't happen at their house.

Practice runs until 7. One parent works nights. A kid is sick. Dinner gets eaten standing up at the counter.

Here's what I tell them. The food was never the point.

When researchers look closely at family meals, what shows up is the time, the attention, and the connection around the table, not what's on it. A review of 50 years of research on family routines and rituals found that simple, repeated rituals are linked to stronger marriages, healthier kids, better school performance, and teens with a firmer sense of who they are.

Strong families are built out of small things that happen over and over. That's the same thing I wrote about in Relationships Are Strengthened in the Repair. The big moments get the attention, but the small repeated ones do the actual work.

Five minutes is enough

My own family has been doing this for over 10 years. There are six of us and four pets and nobody's schedule matches anybody else's. We still try for dinner together. On the nights it doesn't happen, we do this instead.

Everybody gets in one room for five minutes. It might be 9 at night, or 6 in the morning before school, or 10 pm when the last kid finally gets home. The time doesn't matter.

We read a quote out loud. Somebody usually has an opinion about it. We figure out who needs a ride tomorrow and who has a test. Then we say I love you, hug, and everybody heads off to their own corner of the house. That's it. That's the whole thing.

Why the hug matters

The hug isn't a nice extra. It may be the most important part.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon tracked how often 404 adults were hugged, then exposed them to a cold virus. The people who got more hugs were better protected against the effects of stress and had milder symptoms when they did get sick. You can read the Carnegie Mellon summary of the study here, or the full paper in Psychological Science.

That's exactly why you hug on the hard nights, not just the easy ones.

This also lines up with what the Harvard Study of Adult Development has found. It has followed the same people since 1938, making it the longest study of adult life ever conducted, and the finding is simple. Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Not money. Not achievement. Relationships.

A book for it

When we started this, I went looking for a quote book to read from. I wanted something short, meaningful, and easy to read out loud with kids of different ages. I couldn't find one, so I wrote my own.

Five Minutes Together has one page for every day of the year. Each page has a quote and a question to get people talking. It isn't religious and it isn't political. Miss a night, or a week, and it doesn't matter. Just open it again tomorrow.

Your family is your team. Five minutes a night is how you remember that.

If your family is struggling with more than a busy schedule, we see couples and families at our Grapevine, Texas and Louisville, Colorado offices. Reach out anytime.

Carrie Coplen, MS, LPC, NCC