When I was growing up, family dinner happened every night at 6 pm. In spite of crazy schedules with sports, dance, gymnastics,and school activities, we knew that our mom would have dinner on the table every night at that time. During our meal, we were not allowed to take any phone calls – dinner was a time spent together to talk and eat.
During family dinner, we would discuss the happenings of each day and to talk about the things that were going on in our lives. It was a time to laugh and share funny stories and a time to talk about serious current events. Many of my favorite memories happened around the dinner table and helped shape me into the person that I am today.
When my sisters and I started our blog SixSistersStuff.com, we shared many of our favorite family recipes and we soon realized that one of the reasons we loved these recipes so much were because of the many memories and traditions associated with them. As our following grew, we started to get emails and comments from readers who would tell us that family dinner was a rare occurrence in their home – for many, Christmas and Thanksgiving were the only times that their family gathered around the table to enjoy a meal together.
My sisters and I couldn’t believe what we were hearing! It seemed to be that family dinner was a old tradition that was quickly being forgotten. We decided that it was important to start sharing why we were so passionate about family dinner and invite others to experience the benefits that eating together can have on your children, your relationships, and your overall happiness.
We did some research and found a couple of studies on family dinner that had mind-blowing data. Who knew that family dinner was such a powerful thing? Here are a couple of statistics about dinner that we learned:
-Family dinner will help children get better grades in school.
-By having family dinner together, there is a lower chance of children experimenting with smoking, drinking, or other drugs.
-Family dinner can also help lower depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts during the teen years.
-Family dinner has been proven to help with a child’s vocabulary development even more than playtime or story time.
-By eating family dinner together, adolescent girls will have a smaller chance of developing an eating disorder.
-Children that have dinner with their family on a consistent basis will be less picky and be more willing to try new foods.
-Family dinner has shown to help lower stress in adults.
It just blew us away that something as simple as eating dinner with your family each day (or as often as you can) would have such an impact on your family and their lives!
To help promote the idea of family dinner, my sisters and I launched the 4×4 Dinner Challenge. We challenged our readers to eat dinner with their family at least 4 times a week for 4 weeks straight. Thousands of people around the world took on the challenge. We shared ideas on how to make dinner a success by giving them easy family-friendly recipes, dinnertime conversation topics, and ways to include the family on the preparation of the food. We asked our readers to share with us their experience, whether good or bad, and the responses came pouring in. The responses that stood out the most to us were from families who had never had dinner together; the ones who did not know how to talk to their children when they did finally sit down together because family dinner and conversation was something completely foreign to them.
At the conclusion of the 4 week challenge, we invited our readers to join us in the “Family Dinner Around The World”. On the day chosen for the worldwide family dinner, we asked our readers to eat dinner with their family at 6 pm and share a photo on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter so that others could see it and we could track the different dinners around the world. We also had a sign-up page on our blog where people could put in their location and a little pinpoint would appear on the map so that we could see where they were located. We literally had people sign up from every country in the world and in every time-zone. It was so fun to watch the pictures roll in all day long- families in Australia, India, Sweden . . . the pictures just kept coming! Families across the world were sitting down together and making memories, strengthening their families, talking to each other, and of course, enjoying their food.
I know that sometimes the smallest things in life can make the biggest difference and I firmly believe that family dinner is one of them. If you are looking for a way to strengthen your family, a way to have better relationships with your children, or a way to keep the doors of communication open with each other, I know that family dinner will provide the way to do that. I invite you to take the Family Dinner Challenge – eat dinner 4 times a week for 4 weeks – and see if you notice any changes.
Have I got a deal for YOU! What if I told you that I have something that could fix ALL of your child’s misbehavior with a simple solution—regardless of their age! And if you act now, I’ll throw in some ways to improve both you and your marriage!
I know what you’re thinking.
“How am I supposed to trust a guy who overuses exclamation points? This sounds like a pyramid scheme.”
Your skepticism at this point is understandable and healthy. (At one point in my life I was a door-to-door salesman and I can be very persuasive if needs be . . . even without exclamation points.)
Back to pyramid schemes. This offer to transform you and your family is indeed based in pyramids. But before your enthusiasm causes you to start sharing this article with every person you’ve ever known on Facebook, you might want to keep on reading just to be sure there isn’t a catch.
I know you are dying to hear about the pyramid and you’ve probably even skipped ahead because you can’t take it anymore. But first, a musical metaphor.
Same Ole’ Song & Dance
Since the early days of pop music many, many songs pretty much use the same four chords over and over. This trend holds true for country, rock and other genres as well. The songwriter simply has to change the lyrics, tempo, and dynamics enough and BAM! You’ve got yourself a new song…sort of. A very simple example of this is found in singing the “ABC song” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Not only is it the same chord structure, it is the exact same melody. And many people have never even picked up on it!
(I know you are singing it right now just to test it.)
So what’s my point, you ask?
Far too much of the parenting advice found in books, talk shows, blogs (not this one, of course), and even from many experts has a common thread through it. They are saying the same thing but using different words, strategies, and techniques. In other words, they are all using the same four chords and making slight modifications. The “song” (advice) goes something like this (you can use the ABC tune if you’d like):
“Correct your child’s behavior now, demand respect and obedience.”
I break this theme down in more detail in a previous post: Parenting Isn’t Rocket Science…it’s Harder!Unfortunately, this focus on correction is a lot like building a pyramid upside down.
Who would build a pyramid upside down you ask? This guy. Is it even possible?
Not in the real world.
This is where the pyramid scheme comes in…
Parenting Up the Pyramid, Not Down
Ok. So it’s not actually a scheme, but a powerful yet simple parenting model shaped into a pyramid. The model originally came from Dr. C. Terry Warner—founder of the Arbinger Institute—and has loads of research to support it. The parenting pyramid helps parents to look past the behavior—and misbehavior—of their children and start asking the right questions.
If we start with a false premise or assumptions about our kids, then we will inevitably ask the wrong questions—thus, leading us further away from the actual problem.
What Kinds of Questions are We Asking?
Consider the following questions I have recently received from well-meaning parents.
How can we get my teenager to stop skipping class?
What do we do to stop our toddler’s tantrums?
How can I get my daughter to put down her smart phone?
Our child won’t practice the piano. How can we fix that?
As mentioned in my Parenting Isn’t Rocket Science article, each of the above questions is focused on correction—the top of the pyramid. They are also, in essence, asking what to do when things go wrong. This is either flipping the pyramid on its head and starting with correction or assuming that all of the other pieces are firmly in place.
Now contrast the next set of questions with the previous set.
How do we teach our children to be responsible?
What do we do to help our children love each other?
How do we help our children excel in the things they do?
How do we help our children enjoy family activities?
These questions start from the overarching question: How do we help things go right?
Back to the Pyramid
Alright! I know you are dying to see how the pyramid is connected to all this! Me too. Let me break it down briefly and leave you with some homework. But don’t worry; my next posts will go deeper into each one of these levels.
Although correction is a part of parenthood, IT IS THE SMALLEST PART.
The key to effective correction is effective teaching.
The key to effective teaching is a good parent/child relationship.
The key to a good parent/child relationship is a good husband/wife relationship.
The key to a good husband/wife relationship is our personal way of being. Indeed, this quality affects every other aspect of the pyramid; that is why it is the deepest foundation.
Your Assignment
Now it’s time for the homework. With your spouse, think of a problematic behavior in one of your children. Decide carefully together how to ask the right questions — that is, making things go right. Then review the pyramid from the bottom up. Identity at least one thing you can do to improve in each of the bottom four levels. Then report back in the comments below.
The Catch
Remember, if it doesn’t work the first time, it’s not because this really is a scheme. It’s probably because this is a new way of looking at parenting. Don’t forget that improvement—in both you and your family—takes time. Step by step, you can build a happy and healthy family.
“How can I get my child to do or stop doing ______________ (fill in the blank)?”
If we start with this question then we’ll likely get answers that focus primarily on behavior or action, and not on character or the process of becoming. Granted, actions and character are—or at least should be—linked together. But it is possible–and far too common–to focus on one at the expense of the other.
Beware the Carrot!
Far too much of the parenting advice out there is creating generations of hoop-jumpers—folks who go through the motions without true purpose or conviction. Yet for the most part, we parents gobble up these ideas because we can get immediate results (or behaviors) and thus feel like we are doing things right.
One of the two primary ways to get kids to do or stop doing what we demand is the bribe. Bribes/rewards, in essence, are dangling something that the child values out in front of him or her to fulfill our requests or expectations. We usually refer to the carrot as the dangling item, but I know that none of my children are doing anything for a carrot . . . that’s probably closer to a punishment (which I’ll address in future articles). For your kids, perhaps the bribe is candy, money, gadgets, or something else tantalizing.
The Pizza Ticket Isn’t Much Better
Unfortunately, bribes come with many unintended unintended short and long term consequences. This article could really be a novel filled with research, doctrine, and personal stories illustrating the drawbacks of bribes and artificial rewards. But for now, this post will have to be a little teaser to get your attention. 🙂 I will have my 6-year-old daughter, Naomi, demonstrate what I am about to share. In a candid moment, I was able to interview Naomi without her knowledge as I held the phone casually below my chest. Notice Naomi’s enthusiasm for pizza . . . not reading.
Let’s be honest, if I have to bribe my child to do something then they clearly don’t see the value in it. But we parents usually do see the value. What Naomi—and research—teaches us is the action or endeavor we value becomes a “blah, blah, blah” when an artificial reward is involved because they only care about the “pizza ticket.” Doing a task because you want to is very different than doing it because you want something. Alfie Kohn summarized the mountain of research on rewards this way:
The more that people are rewarded for doing something, the more likely they are to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
Besides reading and pizza tickets, we can all think of other examples where this is true:
Grade-focused students are less concerned about actual real learning;
Boy Scouts that are coerced with bribes to get their Eagle will probably get it and only it;
Getting paid to practice the piano will likely lead to practicing but won’t likely produce a love for it
The only motivation that matters is the one that comes from within! That’s not to say that you should avoid all rewards at all times. But perhaps we should use rewards sparingly.
Reflect Before You Correct
If you are appropriately skeptical at this point and asking, “What am I supposed to do instead?” Stay tuned and keep reading my posts. But for now, I’ll invite you to reflect on the following questions:
Where’s the line between treating my child as an individual (working with) and treating them as a pawn (doing to)?
Are my requests and expectations more for me, or for them?
What are the short-term and long-term reasons for why I want my child to ____________?
What natural or intrinsic reward is already built in to the activity? How can I help my child discover that for him or herself?
I realize that most children won’t see the value in something from the get-go, but we don’t have to ruin it for them by making it all about the reward. One alternative to bribes when they have to but don’t want to comes from Mary Poppins. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.” This requires mental exertion on the parents part. This also teaches children how to find fun and purpose in mundane things as they grow older.
So what else do we do instead of bribe? Stay tuned for more good things to come!
Please help us strengthen families by sharing this article with your friends and family! Likewise, to see more of Dr. Tim’s articles (as well as articles by Dr. Rob), please also check out the rest of our blog and our Facebook page.
