Want to fight premarital sex, drug use, suicide?: eat more meals as a family
Norman Rockwell's famous "Thanksgiving Dinner" painting.
The dangers facing young people today are many: premarital sex, drug abuse, suicide, and dropping out of school among them. And if you listen to the “experts,” there are no easy answers for protecting our kids. And of course they are right. But saying there are no easy answers is entirely different from saying there are no answers.
I believe there is something moms and dads, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers can do and start doing it tonight — that’s right — tonight — to make a real difference in the lives of our young people. It’s time to reclaim the family dinner.
I’m not saying this out of some kind of nostalgia for Ozzie and Harriet and the supposedly golden age of the 1950s. Families had problems back then, too. But I think a lot of families back then knew something many of us have forgotten: That it’s good to sit down together for a meal....