Princeton Celebrates Family Dinner

Janet Giles knows how difficult it can be to find time for a family to sit down to eat dinner together.

As a mother of four, she understands the constant driving to pick one child up from baseball practice, drop another off at a game, and find time to help the other two with their homework. Where does dinner fit in?

“We don’t always sit down and have dinner, but whether its lunch or a snack, we make sure we do something,” Giles said. 

That's why Giles volunteered to organize the Princeton Family Dinner Week, which launched on Sunday, April 15 and continues through Sunday, April 22.

Monday night was a community potluck dinner at the Princeton Public Library, where local restaurants- Blue Point Grill, Massimo’s, McCaffrey’s, Naked Pizza, Nassau Street Seafood & Produce Company, Olives, Terra Momo, Whole Earth Center and Witherspoon Grill- provided the main course and community members attending provided dessert.  

The library's Communty Room was arranged cafeteria-style with long tables so several families could eat together and people could come and go throughout the evening.

A variety of people who came to share the meal: families, couples, singles, kids with moms and kids with dads.

Eric Dorman-Schroede and his two sons, Dylan, a student at Princeton High School, and his younger son, Will, sat down to eat together. 

“We have a family dinner every night,” Eric Dorman-Schroeder said.  “We’re always making an effort to sit down together. We talk about each other’s day. It’s definitely important and I think my sons enjoy it.”

Studies show that sitting down as a family can help lower teens' chance of risky behavior in teens.

According to a report from the The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University teens who have fewer than three family dinners per week are nearly four times as likely to smoke, twice as likely to drink alcohol and more than twice as likely to use marijuana than teens who have at least five family dinners a week.

“My wife made me come tonight, but I would have been here regardless,” Eric Dorman-Schroeder said. “We would have been eating together if we were at home, and it’s nice to see others from the community too.”

The weeklong roster of events, of which Monday's dinner was part, is co-sponsored by Corner House, Princeton Alcohol and Drug Alliance and dozens of local businesses. 

The annual celebration of family dinner will continue, Giles said. 

“The inaugural event was a success and Princeton Family Dinner Week will be back again next year,” she said.

But there's no need to wait for a certain week each year to celebrate family dinners, organizers say. Make an effort all year round to share a meal, or even a snack. 

On May 1, the conversation continues during a town hall meeting at Princeton Township's muncipal building to discuss underage drinking in Princeton.