I can’t believe it took an academic study to figure it out, but here it is: eating together as a family makes for healthier, happier kids.

Read on:

Social scientists at New York’s Columbia University have discovered certain phrases that help make it less likely that teenagers will smoke, drink, or use drugs.

“Pass the potatoes, please.”

“What did you learn today?”

“Not carrots again!”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Yes, according to more than 10 years of research at Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the more often children and teens eat dinner with their families the less likely they are to abuse alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.

Specifically, CASA’s 2006 report says that kids who eat dinner with their families from five to seven times a week are 70 percent less prone to substance abuse, half as likely to try cigarettes or marijuana, one-third as likely to try alcohol, and half as likely to get drunk monthly compared to kids who have family dinners fewer than three times a week.

CASA’s studies also consistently find that children and teens who have three or more dinners at home with their families each week are more likely to do better in school and to say they can confide in their parents.

The positive effects of family meals on the lives of children are why CASA sponsors an annual “Family Day: A Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children.” This year’s observance will be Sept. 24.

The Family Life Bureau of the Diocese of Wilmington, Del., is joining the national effort to remind families that the dinner table is a place where “parents and children learn about one another’s lives and bond together as a unique community,” said Tom Jewett, director of Family Life. The family meal, he said, “is an experience with profound and long-range consequences, especially for children and teens.”

While the CASA studies chart the salutary results of family meals, the addiction and drug abuse center’s Family Day information has little to say about why family dining helps so much.

Jewett said he thinks regular family meals help because of the relationships that are developed between parents and children. Eating dinner together builds trust, Jewett said, which leads to “a growing unwillingness of kids to disappoint their parents because they know them.”

Jewett recalls that his own parents realized he, his brother and two sisters wanted to sit next to their dad, so his parents arranged to rotate seats at the table each night. “We knew he was important because mom loved him,” Jewett told The Dialog. “I think we thought that since he’s important, if we sit next to him, we’d be important, too.”

Jewett added that when he and his wife, Marynell, were raising their three children, mealtime was sacred.

“Our motley crew grew, and we became a family. Stories were told around the table — stories by the kids about their neighborhood and school friends. We learned a degree of respect, a way of honoring one another as unique individuals, and developed a desire not to disappoint one another. We learned to love one another in the midst of the chaos and messiness of family meals.”

You can find out more about it at the link. And: don’t forget to say grace…

Photo: Elizabeth Duchesneau helps her mom Denise prepare a pizza dinner. Picture by Don Blake.