Family Meals: The Secret Weapon Against Childhood Obesity

When everyone’s home, I sometimes feel like a short order cook. Lunch, dinner, breakfast, I cook it all up with a smile. Mostly.

This means more dishes and more headaches. Today, for example, my older son and my husband both sat down to lunch late and Raymond had just a few bites of potato salad and a few mouthfuls of chicken. Sigh.

But the good news is that children of parents who cook at home and who eat together as a family are less likely to be obese. This was one of the interesting points food advocate Michael Pollan made in his piece in the New York Times Magazine Sunday on how cooking is becoming a spectator sport, with watching cooking shows becoming more popular than actually cooking.

In an interview on NPR, Pollan explained that many adults are watching an hour of cooking shows while spending only half an hour on meal preparation.

I don’t watch cooking shows and I usually spend half an hour to an hour at the most on meal preparation because who has time? I tend to get a bit huffy when people start ranting about not enough time being spent in the kitchen because in most houses it’s the mom who spends time in the kitchen. And if Mom doesn’t want to lovingly prepare meals after working all day, that’s her prerogative.

That said, I do spend time lovingly preparing meals because I believe in them. Yes, we are having hot dogs for dinner tonight. But on most nights, I at least slice up some vegetables for my little darlings.

It turns out all the alarm over the disappearance of family meals may be overblown. Researchers who tracked 14,000 children from 1996 to 1999 in the “Growing Up Today,” study released earlier this year found that 84 percent said they eat home most days or every day. The other good news for all those families who do have a family dinner hour is that the children who did eat at home most days were 15 percent more likely to be obese. (See an article on the study and other obesity studies here).

The researchers noted that while family dinners may not prevent obesity, they at least ensure that children are getting good food. The obesity rate for children ages 2 to 5 increased from a 1976 to 2000 study to a 2003 to 2006 study from 5 to 12 percent, and from 6 to 17 percent among 6 to 11 year olds, according to the CDC.

There are complex reasons for obesity that go deeper than family meals. But it’s good to know while I’m sweating over that hot stove, that I’m keeping my kids healthy when I’m, keeping them away from McDonald’s.

Found: One bag of mini marshmallows in my living room

Found in my living room: one Lego truck, a set of cards, a computer game, three trucks, a matchbox car and a bunch of old birthday cards. Behind the couch there is a mass of toys that includes a wooden sword and cymbals. There are blocks rejected by my toddler nephew and there perched on the table is an open bag of mini marshmallows.

I catalogue these items because this is what my living room looks like on a good day and because I want to record the fact that these marshmallows are the final blow, the coup de grace, the sign that I have lost not just the battle but the war.

The marshmallows are a sign that my children are out of control and have taken matters into their own hands, climbing up to formerly unreachable shelves and pulling down sticky, coagulated, white candy that only a desperate, sweet-loving child who is starved by his parent could crave.

The marshmallows mean that the chaos in my house has reached such a level that even as I go about the motions of doing battle each day: straightening out pillows and removing dirty socks, I am still so beaten down, so defeated that I no doubt saw that bag of marshmallows and let it go. "So what?" I thought to myself. "So there's a bag of marshmallows sitting in the living room? It could be worse! It cold be Cheese Doodles.

But I will live to fight another day. Indeed, I will take a nap and return to battle this very day. And some day, I vow, as God is my witness, the Legos will be vanquished from my living room. The toys shall be banished from the land of the adults and no bag of marshmallows will be allowed to stand.

Mom Has a Boogie Board

Watch out boys and girls, Mom has a boogie board. You can see her on trips to the shore trying to catch a wave and swerve around toddlers. Then observe as she tries to get up gracefully despite a mouthful of ocean water and a bathing suit full of sand.

Having spent 10 years on the Jersey Shore when I was young and single, I count boogie boarding as one of the few adventures I can have as a mom. I can’t take off at midnight to watch Bruce Springsteen play at the Stone Pony anymore. And frankly, I can’t imagine going anywhere but my bed at midnight.

But if having a family means less freedom in some ways, it gives me more freedom to be a kid myself. I get to ride the roller coaster at the amusement park and go out for ice-cream sundaes and splash in the pool. So what if my thrills consist of coasting down a hill on a sled in the winter or hopping on a boogie board in the summer? It’s nice to know I can still get my kicks somehow.

This is a transition for me. I’ve always liked the water but when my boys were small, I spent most beach trips sitting at the water’s edge as vigilant as a Secret Service agent guarding the president. Often I watched friends’ kids as well and I counted heads over and over again – shouting at them not to go too far and to move closer to the lifeguards.

Then my children got a little bit more adventurous and the boogie boards appeared – first a 50-cent boogie board from a yard sale then more serious investments from the five and dime. Off my boys would go with their boards under their arms and they’d catch the waves close to the shore for long stretches of time. They’d stop only when their lips got blue or they got dunked. I’d stand in the water like an ocean goalie, fishing them out and helping them get back in. And I’d watch the look of sheer joy they’d have when they coasted into shore.

Often I’m fine being the spectator while my kids do things. I don’t want to join them on the field while they play Little League or help them play Hide and Seek. But seeing them whiz by on their boogie boards made me want to try it too. And I discovered that boogie boarding is not a spectator sport. I could watch them better when I was catching the waves beside them than I could in my goalie position. And when they came in for some sand castle building, I could watch them just as easily from the ocean as I could from my beach chair.

The only drawback was that I had to beg and borrow boogie boards from my kids and this seemed undignified. I’m not above cajoling some cotton candy from my kids but wheedling boogie boards out of an 8-year-old made me feel more like a pesky kid sister than a mom.. So I screwed up my courage and consulted the surfer dude at the local surf shop on the shore. I was relieved when he didn’t giggle or even crack a smile. He found me a good, adult-sized boogie board for both me (in purple) and my husband (in green). My begging days were over.

So until the day when arthritis sets in and Mom’s in danger of losing her dentures in the water, when Mom takes the family to the beach she’s bringing along her boogie board.

* Photo from dreamstime

Napping on the beach

I just got back from vacation where I learned or relearned an important lesson: It's important to nap.

I gave up the beach to nap and even an ice-cream cone to nap on this vacation. Of course, my deep growl of a cough that kept me and everyone else up all night had something to do with it. But it was a good lesson to learn.

When we all discusssed what we learned on this vacation, Will said he learned to skimboard better and Raymond said he learned how to have fun. (I think he knew already but never mind). As for me, they both chimed in together that I learned to nap and I'm still learning. It takes a lot of practice but I think I'm getting pretty good at it.

On vacation

Parentpapers is on vacation until July 27.

Mommy Time

Darn that Protestant work ethic and my Puritan ancestors! They have doomed me to run through the day trying to check off items on the to do list that runs through my brain like an endless tape: I should be applying for jobs, I should be writing, I should put away the boys' laundry, I should neaten up my room, I should put another load of laundry in.

That's why it was so great for me to escape with a friend yesterday to get a pedicure. I'm not normally a pedicure kind of girl. In fact, I've never gotten a pedicure in my life but I got a pedicure for my birthday (seven months ago) so off I went with my friend Diane yesterday to be pampered.

We spent about an hour having our feet soaked, scraped and beautified. We chatted and we read People magazine. By the time I emerged, the to do list had been replaced in my head by useless trivia about who is dating who in Hollywood and I had beautiful hot pink toenails.

We spent a nice day leisurely having lunch and we stopped by the library and visited a friend where we sat in her kids' new tree house and pretended we were 12. I lay back and looked at the pine tree where the tree house is built against the blue sky. The to-list felt a million miles away.

Then I came home again and my boys had miraculously done their reading and worked on their workbooks. It turns out I am not as essential as I think to the running of the household! Yahoo! I managed to throw in a load of laundry and make some dinner but the to-do list still remained as background noise.

If I could relax at home I could take more advantage of our beautiful yard and our pool. We never seem to never make it out there until late in the the afternoon because I'm too busy playing catch-up with household chores. I'm also always trying to find time to write (darn that writing!) or to apply for jobs so I can only give myself about 10 minutes of reading the newspaper before I realize I should be using that time more productively.

I guess that endless tape helps me stay on track but it also keeps me from having too much fun. Now instead of showing off my beautiful toes at the beach or swimming pool, I'm typing away in the office. Maybe I'm not cut out for the so-called "staycation." I'm ready for a real vacation instead. When you're on the beach, that to do list eventually disappears. At least until you're home again.

No Kids in the Neighborhood

One thing that's different for my kids is that we don't live in a neighborhood where there are kids to play with and that makes me kind of sad for my kids.

When I was a kid, we just went outside and knocked on someone's door for a play date and then we would play all day. We'd go to someone's house and play for a few hours: I remember long games of Monopoly and some playing with Barbies (although I never loved Barbie). Then, we'd move on to someone else's house or come back to our house where we'd have elaborate pretend games or we'd jump in the sprinkler.

In my memory, adults were scarce. Mothers would pop in once in awhile to tell us to be quiet because a younger brother or sister was napping or they'd come out with some Kool-Aid or watermelon but supervision was minimal at best.

When we got older, we'd wander a couple of blocks away and wouldn't come home until we heard our mothers calling or they came looking for us. When we were about 12 or 13 or a little older, we'd ride our bikes to the local pool and stay there all day. When there was nobody to play with, I'd spend the day with my head in a book.

Unfortunately, there are very few kids in our neighborhood and the few who live within walking distance are at camp or on vacation. As a result, the only time we only get together with other families when I set up playdates.

I have a fantasy of sending my kids to visit their friends but this means they will literally have to go over a river (OK a little stream but still) or through the woods.

It also means that both of us would have to get used to that independence. I would have to let them go and they would have to accept the responsibility of finding friends on their own. They're so used to either playing by themselves or having me set up play dates, I'm not sure they're up to the task without some major push from me.

Having my kids go out and find kids to play with would solve a lot of the challenges of having the kids home in the summer: the constant turning off of the TV and confiscating the computer and the two boys squabbling. They're all a result of the two boys being a little bored and a little tired of each other.

Maybe we can never go back to the "good old days." Maybe we know too much about the dangers to kids from child molesters and other creeps to let them be quite as free as we were.

But one day this summer, I'm going to give them that little shove out the door to go find some fun on their own. I'd love to let them see what that freedom feels like, even if they knock on some doors and nobody's home.