What’s cooking?
On my ‘bearded journey’ I have developed the dream of growing wellbeing and resilience in myself, my loved ones, and my community. A big part of this process for me, is being the best Dad I can be, which lead me to search for strategies to grow family wellbeing.
The importance of positive family relationships has been shown both within the family system (eg marital conflict) but also events such as Hurricane Katrina. Evidence shows we can indeed promote resilience through nurturing close relationships and shared family beliefs. Expanding further, early life experiences of parental warmth have been shown to predict wellbeing and resilience in adulthood.
But in a world where we are all so busy, how do we go about this?
Not only are we busy, we now have the potential new stressor of a global pandemic. COVID-19 research is underway investigating risk factors to both family and child wellbeing, highlighting confinement, social distancing and job loss, especially for those families with pre-existing vulnerabilities to wellbeing.
One might suggest, now more than ever, we need strategies to grow positive family relationships. One such strategy considers the classic family meal.
Did you know there has been much research into the humble family meal? Positive family outcomes which are also seen as intergenerational include,
- Psychosocial wellbeing
- Healthy dietary intake
- School perfromance
- Decreases in substance use (including nicotine and alcohol)
- Decreases in depression
Time to dust off the good dinner set, and break out the old family recipes.
The Happy Family Kitchen Program has the primary focus of the family coming together to share the family meal, through both cooking and eating together. The study showed improvements in family communication and family wellbeing by considering one of five positive psychology themes,
- Gratitude – promotion of expressing gratitude towards family members, particularly around meal preparation.
- Flow – Identifying and utilising character strengths through meal preparation and eating together.
- Happiness – promotion of positive communication during the family meal.
- Health – promotion of optimism through healthy lifestyle of the family and proactive problem solving.
- Savouring – promotion of positive emotions through savouring meal preparation and eating together as a family.
You may notice the underlying theme of mindfulness, where the goal is to create a meaningful family mealtime ritual, not just moving through the family meal as simply another daily chore. In doing so, it is suggested there will be a real commitment to positive family communication, and this is considered a significant predictor of family wellbeing.
The Happy Kitchen Program did involve formal activities with program facilitators, however you and your family could keep it simple and use the homework components of the program. Let’s explore savouring,
- During your family meals, encourage the practice of savouring food
- Plan happy cooking days for your family to share in meal preparation. Record the event in a way which resonates with your family. (Stay tuned for a future blog post)
How often should you aim to partake in meaningful family meals? As the old saying goes, it is quality not quantity that is important. Work with your schedule, aim to build a family meal ritual that works for you, and grow positive family relationships together in the kitchen.
Growing Wellbeing and Resilience - A Bearded Journey 