~Submitted by Lisa Corbett, co-owner Dream Dinners, Ventura
Click here to see Dream Dinners Parent Perk
 Sitting down to a family dinner can be such a challenge! Gone are the days where moms spend the entire day in the kitchen preparing dinner, gone are the days when kids were home every evening and families all expected to sit down at the table together. With soccer, baseball, music lessons, martial arts, etc, are days are bursting to the brim. Eating dinner together around the dinner table can become a major challenge, but it a challenge that must be met!
Studies have validated it: eating together regularly as a family brings with it many diverse and sometimes surprising benefits. Children benefit the most from family dinners in ways such as: improved grades, higher IQ scores, greater self-esteem, fewer behavioral and eating disorders, less depression and risk of suicide, overall better behavior than their peers. Some health professionals consider whether or not a family has dinner together a key measure of how well the family functions. Pediatricians frequently ask families to tell them about mealtimes. "it's a marker...if a parent is organized enough to have family meals on a regular basis, that says a lot about having order in the home." (Martha Marino, a dietician for Washington State Dairy Council and a member of the Nutrition Education Network of Washington)
Children who eat dinner regularly with their families eat more nutritious foods, have better nutritional information, form better long-term eating patterns, eat a wider variety of foods and find it easier to maintain a healthy weight.
The food industry sees that families would like to do the right thing, but are feeling the time crunch and have developed a variety of ways to help you make family dinner time a reality.
1. Meal assembly stores ~ Dream Dinners and other meal assembly stores are a great answer to this dilemma. They take the hard work out of home cooking and allow you to prepare 12 dinners in less than 2 hours. You retain control of your dinners and can be sure you are serving something healthy and nutritious to your family at least 3 days a week! 
2. Expanded Deli Sections at your local grocery store. You will find many more products like rotisserie chicken, meatloaf, mashed potatoes and more in your local grocers' deli section. Heat up at home & serve. Be creative with those chickens and use them for salad, enchiladas or tacos, or just slice and serve!
3. Pre-packaged convenience foods: Trader Joe's & your local grocer have come up with many convenience foods - Orange Chicken, Complete Pasta Dishes, and many more items that simply need to be heated and served. These will save you time for sure, just be sure to read the nutritional information to ensure that the items you are choosing are nutritious and not loaded with fats and preservatives!
I encourage you to do what you can to get your family around the dinner table at the very least, 3 nights a week. Your children's future depends upon it!
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Some of my fondest memories of childhood center around dinner time, helping my Mom in the kitchen, the conversations at the table. Just having that check-in time, whether it's just two of you or a family of 12, is so important in our busy lives. It's not really about the home cooked meal, it's about the connection, and that can happen over pre-prepared food, frozen 
meals that become dinner lightening fast, or even take-out. If work schedules keep dinners together rare, give breakfast a go or do a big family style Sunday dinner. You could go to Farmers Market or your favorite store together and let each child help pick out part of the meal. Anyway your family can make more of this together time happen, will surely benefit everyone.
Columbia University has consistently found that the more often kids eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs.