Homemade Meals:  Reconnecting Families in an Overly Wired Age

In our highly wired culture, with every family member now owns their own
MP3, smart phone or IPod, there is a serious disconnect developing. 

The crisis developing within families today is the disconnection of three 
vital elements of what it means to be a family:  

1.           Daily relational interaction, 

2.           Shared life experiences

3.           Growing spiritual community. 

Consider this:

             Many families now eat at different times from one another. 

             Many families report eating only one meal together as a family during the week. 
             The average amount of time a father has with each of his children in focused conversation

                       is approximately 90 seconds. 

             With the reality of a majority of mothers working outside the home during the day, the
                       number of meals times has dropped dramatically. 

This cultural and technological dissection of the family produces fewer meals together
each week which causes troubling results:

1.  Fewer Meals together causes Children to have less relational interaction.  

Instead of sensing that they belong around the table to a loving, involved and available
family interested in helping them develop and grow through life's daily difficulties and problems, 
they sense they are simply one person among many busy individuals all pursuing their own agendas 
and schedules but happen to be living under the same roof.

2.  Fewer Meals together cause Children to have fewer shared life experiences.  

To love and be loved requires time and attention in a family. It requires spending enough face time
with eye contact and hours together that allows deep relationships to develop through meals involving
fun, love and unhurried conversation. Today children experience homes where people are more wired 
to their social network more than they are to their family unit. Meals times are more like a college
cafeteria where people come and go as they wish, they pick which foods they prefer to eat
(usually different from each other) and they either eat alone or just with one another person. 

We ourselves are struggling with this and have made a renewed commitment to be diligent every
day in seeing that two meals together happens every day – breakfast and dinner.

3.  Children are lacking spiritual community. 

Make meals times linger and have spiritual discussion, prayer, and Bible reading and study.

Solutions to Reconnecting Families in a Wired Age:

1.            Regardless of how late in the evening it may be, wait to eat supper until you
               all can be together.  Or, at least wait and eat part of the meal together
               (even if some family members have to save tea, fruit, dessert or some 
               portion of their meal until later.)

2.           Resolve to make at least one homemade meal a day.

3.           Use something as simple as Cheryl’s cookbook to solve your dinner dilemma

              to make a delicious and home-made meal.

4.           Parents take 30 minutes each day to talk to each child one on one, or in the case 

              of a larger family, at least one hour a week one on one with each child

5.           Use your technology to connect with one another  (send Tweets, text messages, 

               and g-chats to the family distribution list daily even what’s for dinner)

6.           Take one weekend a month where you spend the entire time together nesting 
with just the family with long family meals (no guests, visitors, outside 
appointments).

7.           Designate one day a week (the Sabbath) as a technology fast (no Internet, 

              no iPhone, no cell phone, no cable – spend the time instead reading, talking,

              playing games, planning your two slow-cookers favorites.

8.           Take 15 minutes each evening to read Scripture and pray for the needs  

              of each family member at the end of the evening family dinner.  Ask questions to get

              spiritual conversations started.