To the Editor:
Re "Families With Full Plates, Sitting Down to Dinner" (front page, April 5):
I have memories of sitting down to family dinners five, six, even seven nights a week. My father, who commuted from Manhattan to the southern tip of Brooklyn, relaxed with the evening newspaper and we all sat down to dinner at 6:30 sharp every night.
Today, the 9-to-5 job and single-income household are a distant memory. I spend dinner hours teaching college courses until 8 p.m., and my husband travels on business. When family dinners are not possible, we have found another solution: the family breakfast.
For the past 10 years, every Sunday and sometimes Saturday, we make pancakes or waffles together from scratch. Weekend breakfasts are often more relaxing, and conducive to intimate family conversations, than late-night dinners.
And now that my daughter is 12, she whips up the homemade pancakes and sets the table all by herself.
Our family breakfasts are even better now that Mom and Dad are served a sumptuous breakfast. And we linger together in our pajamas — a perfect way to begin the day.
Candy Schulman
New York, April 5, 2006
To the Editor:
Families are returning to the dinner table?
Some of us never left. Some of us chose to find the balance that allows for real quality family time — the intimacy of eating, watching TV, and laughing and talking together that comes with just being home together.
Be bold, families! Set boundaries on your workday. Make careful choices about the quality and number of activities your children engage in.
Say no! And, say no to your own need to feel effective with endless committee work and board of director activities.
Work, school and community involvement can all come together to enhance the family. But not if family is the last thing on the list.
Create your vision of family life and make that your primary goal to achieve — and then build your life around that.
Roberta Herche
New York, April 5, 2006
To the Editor:
I have found a simple way to preserve the family dinner hour. I don't schedule activities for my daughters, ages 6, 9 and 12, between 6 and 7 p.m.
The occasional school event or late-afternoon meeting may require some mealtime juggling, but this is the exception, not the rule.
It is important to me that I pass along the family tradition of the dinner hour to my children. (But this doesn't mean that I always feel like cooking ...)
Celia Tazelaar
Princeton, N.J., April 5, 2006
To the Editor:
Not only does the dinnertime hour allow family members to hear about and learn from each other's day, it also allows the children to learn better table manners.
Marla Schiff Stein
New York, April 5, 2006
To the Editor:
It really tells you something about our society when a family sitting down to eat dinner together is newsworthy enough to be on the front page of The New York Times!
Elaine Edelman
East Brunswick, N.J., April 5,
2006
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