Children behave better if families sit together to eat

SITTING down to eat together as a family makes children calmer, fitter and better behaved, a study has found.

They are likely to feel better, both physically and mentally.

Those who had supervised mealtimes at the age of six were fitter and drank fewer fizzy drinks by the time they were 10, according to Canadian research.

They also seemed to have more social skills and be less aggressive.

Shared meal times seemed to promote conversation, equipping children with better communication skills and leading to better behaviour in school. Families should be encouraged to have more meals together, says Professor Linda Pagani, of Montreal University, who led the research.

She said: “The presence of parents during mealtimes provides young children with first-hand social interaction, discussions of social issues and day-to-day concerns, and vicarious learning of social interactions in a familiar and emotionally secure setting.

“Experiencing positive forms of communication is likely to help the child engage in better communication skills with people outside the family unit. Our findings suggest that family meals are not solely markers of home environment quality but are also easy targets for parent education about improving children’s well-being.

“At a time when family meal frequency is on a natural decline in the population, this environmental characteristic can become a target of home-based interventions and could be featured in information campaigns that aim to optimise child development.”

The study, published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Paediatrics, looked at 1,492 children born between 1997 and 1998.

At six, their parents started reporting on whether or not they had family meals together.