Community Corner

Family Day: Help Your Children Make Positive Choices

Starting Point of Ozaukee County encourages families to participate on Sept. 23.

Editor's note: The following was taken from a press release submitted by Starting Point of Ozaukee County.

Olive oil, chopped onion, minced cloves garlic, a green bell pepper, chopped carrots, chopped celery ribs, ground chili powder, ground cumin, paprika, dried oregano leaves, salt, black beans, red kidney beans, garbanzo beans, diced tomatoes, spicy tomato juice  and chopped cilantro leaves. This might be the ingredients to chili, but it is also the ingredients to keeping children drug-free.

Good food, great conversations and loads of laughs— that’s what family dinners are made of. Whether you’re cooking a gourmet meal or ordering from your favorite takeout place, rest assured that what your kids really want at the dinner table is YOU! The conversations that go hand-in-hand with dinner help you learn more about your children’s lives and help you better understand the challenges they face. If busy schedules are making it hard for your family to pencil in regular family meals, take a “time out” to consider all the benefits of gathering around the dinner table. Family dinners are about more than just sharing a meal.

The most important findings of years of research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Colombia University are that: Teens from families that almost never eat dinner together were 72 percent likelier than the average teen to use illegal drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, while those from families that almost always eat dinner together were 31 percent less likely than the average teen to engage in these activities.

That’s why CASA created Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children in 2001 as a symbol to encourage parents to make family dinners a regular part of their lives.  Family Day is held on the fourth Monday in September every year – the 23rd in 2013.  

We are simply encouraging you to start or continue a tradition of sharing meals as a family and to remind you that dining together regularly is one way to facilitate parental engagement.  The conversations that go hand-in-hand with dinner are simple, powerful and effective ways to help keep our children free of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.

For more information on Family Day, please visit www.CASAFamilyDay.org or contact Starting Point of Ozaukee by phone at (262) 375-1110 or (262) 284-3144 or e-mail start@startingpointoz.org.


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