Jahnavi Sarma
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University of Montreal researchers say that children who have their meals together with their family are more likely to experience long-term physical and mental health benefits. @Shutterstock
Your family can play an important role in your overall well-being. This is true for mental as well as physical health. Families provide a secure and nurturing environment that boosts all-round development. At the same time, a disruption or dysfunctional family can take a toll on fitness and health. This is especially true in the case of children. Kids need to feel secure and safe and if they don't get this, their health may suffer. Today, on the occasion of International Day of Family, let us see how family can affect the mental health of children.
The International Day of Families is observed every year on May 15 since 1994. The day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993. Since then every year this day celebrates the importance of families in a person's life. Here, let us see how strong family ties can influence a child's mental health.
According to researchers at McGill University, regular family suppers contribute to good mental health in adolescents. They say that family meal times are a measurable signature of social exchanges in the home that benefit adolescents' well-being, regardless of whether or not they feel they can easily talk to their parents. More frequent family dinners related to fewer emotional and behavioural problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviours towards others and higher life satisfaction, they further add.
Another study at Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland) says that quality of early family relationships affects children's mental health. According to researchers, the birth of a child is often a long-awaited and deeply meaningful event. But the transition to parenthood forces parents to revise their interparental romantic relationship. At the same time, an infant also undergoes one of the most intense developmental periods in his or her life. Researchers say that many attachment studies have demonstrated the importance of the mother-infant relationship to children's emotional development, but there is still relatively little research on the role of fathers, the marital relationship and the family as a whole.
University of Montreal researchers say that children who have their meals together with their family are more likely to experience long-term physical and mental health benefits. In earlier studies, researchers were not very clear on whether families that ate together were simply healthier to begin with. Moreover, measuring how often families eat together and how children are doing at that very moment may not really capture the complexity of the environmental experience, say experts. The study is published today in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics.
The Canadian researchers saw that when quality of family meal environment was better at age 6, higher levels of general fitness and lower levels of soft-drink consumption were observed at age 10. These children also seemed to have more social skills, as they were less likely to self-report being physical aggressive, oppositional or delinquent at age 10, they say.