Table talk

Posted on June 26, 2005
Filed Under: Books, Personal
Tagged: children, communication, dinner, family, talk

Matthew Homann’s [non]billablehour posted some information from Eide Neurolearning Blog about the benefits of family dinner:

According to a Harvard study, family dinners were more important than play, story time, or other family events for building vocabulary. And “families that engaged in extended discourse at the dinner table, like story telling and explanations, rather than one-phrase comments, like ‘eat your vegetables,’ had children with better language skills, said Dr. Catherine Snow, a professor of education at Harvard and the researcher of the study. Parents should be encouraged to use adult-level vocabulary and encourage back-and-forth conversation with their kids. It also helps social skills. Today, 65% of families with kids under the age of 6 have dinner together 5 or so nights per week, but that drops to 50% if a family has kids age 12 to 17.

How true. We routinely have discussions at our dinner table and include our daughter in them at all times. Recently she and I had watched both The Incredibles and the first 3 Star Wars movies together. Some people would argue that those films may be a little “old” for her - but they didn’t hear our dinner conversation either…

She held a solid, hour-long conversation with me about the use of good and evil in film and how having both creates an essential tension in the plot line to carry the audience through the story.

My daughter is 4 years old...and she understands concepts like this because we talk, talk, talk (and laugh) at dinner. Her vocabulary has grown at an incredible rate over the last few months and more and more, she’ll ask “what does ... mean?” when she isn’t sure about a word. I’ve also noticed that she actively works her new words into her sentences. It’s as if she’s captured the word and now she’s trying to own it.

Funny...all this reminds me of a story my parents used to tell about my sister and I. She and I were at the dinner table one night and I babbled something that she didn’t understand. She told me to “PLEASE, enunciate your words!”. She was 4. I was 3.

I have fond memories about our dinner table. Aside from when the family was on vacation, it is one of a few spaces where we all came together to enjoy one another’s company, my mother’s wonderful cooking and stories of the day. I want my daughter to have the same…

So when you sit down tonight with your family - or complete strangers...remember to eat, drink and talk. There is no greater pleasure in life.

Comments:

  1. lovelacm (June 27, 2005 at 12:19 PM):

    “Funny...all this reminds me of a story my parent’s used to tell about my sister and I.”

    Apparently, all the dinner conversation didn’t help with your grammar. tongue wink

  2. tripp (June 27, 2005 at 01:30 PM):

    I have no idea what you’re talking about…

    smile

    (ahh, the power of the “Edit” button)

  3. lovelacm (June 27, 2005 at 02:15 PM):

    From the looks of the “comments” display on my browser, you may need to edit the template for comments.. puts the story and all the comments down below the main menu.

  4. tripp (June 27, 2005 at 04:34 PM):

    Ah...you’re using Internet Explorer aren’t you?

    I can’t help it if IE doesn’t render standards compliant CSS code. It looks beautiful in Firefox on the PC and on the Mac. smile

    [sigh] I wish Microsoft would get off their ass and start making decent products.

    Let me see what I can do.

  5. tripp (June 27, 2005 at 04:44 PM):

    Grrrr…

    You know what it was??? The italics in your first comment (I removed them).

    More info on the subject:

    http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/italicbug-ie.html

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001907.php

  6. tripp (June 27, 2005 at 04:45 PM):

    My work is done. Can I go home and play Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 on the Xbox now??

  7. Article Author (February 20, 2008 at 01:08 PM):

    Try this book :D

    The Table Talk of Martin Luther
    by Martin Luther, William Hazlitt, Alexander Chalmers

  8. Tripp Fenderson (February 20, 2008 at 02:58 PM):

    Thanks for the note, “Article Author”.

    Selections from the book you reference are available as a free download through Project Gutenberg.

    You can find it here:
    http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9841

Leave Your Comments:

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.