Imagine if there was a simple little thing. A daily thing… that quietly transformed almost every part of your child’s life in a positive way.
No drama. No pressure. No side effects.
Just real benefits you could see.
Let’s start with the health part. This one thing would help your child grow stronger, move with more confidence, build healthy habits, and even make them far less likely to struggle with extra weight as they get older.
Now the brain side.
It would support clearer thinking, stronger communication, better focus, smoother social interactions, and higher self-esteem.
Kids who use it regularly tend to feel more resilient, more capable, and more connected. And here is the fun twist. This magic thing also helps boost classroom performance. And research suggests it can set kids up for better opportunities later in life.
Oh, and the cherry on top?
It tastes amazing.
Your child will actually ask for it.
So at this point you are probably saying…
Alright, alright.
Enough suspense.
What is this thing?
To answer that, we will hand it over to the researchers from Cornell University who wanted to know the exact same thing.
What turns children into Fortune 500 CEOs?
Let’s say you wanted to raise a successful child to one day become a high-functioning adult in the corporate world… like, say… a Fortune 500 CEO.
What should you do as a parent?
Invest in an Ivy League education? Listen to Beethoven at home? Hire a tutor to teach them Greek?
Well, a few years back, researchers at Cornell answered exactly this. They took the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and studied their backgrounds to find what they had in common.
What did they discover?
The findings they uncovered were truly amazing.
What the CEOs had in common from childhood was not a fancy education with a big price tag.
It was not listening to Mozart.
It was not joining every sports team.
The thing they shared was something any child can have. Something that does not depend on income, privilege, or special access. It’s simple:
The plain old family dinner.
Why the “ordinary” family dinner is almost magical
At this point, you might be in as much disbelief as the researchers at Cornell.
Family dinners?!
How can eating round a table be so important?
We did some digging and found out the benefits of family dinners are practically endless. For example:
1) They skyrocket kids’ vocabularies. When you think about it, at the kitchen table kids are exposed to “grown-up” conversations containing thousands of words they’d never hear from friends, TV, or kids’ books.
Speaking of which…
2) Dinner conversations boost resilience and self-esteem.
Ever had a problem you didn’t know how to solve and had no one to talk it through with?
It doesn’t feel good, does it?
For kids, same thing. Problems are better out than in.
And that’s where family dinners help. Kids can bring up what’s bothering them and get solutions they wouldn’t have thought about otherwise.
3) Family dinners can foster growth mindsets.
Picture it:
Timmy comes home after a bad day at school.
Dad:
“What challenge did you learn from today, Timmy?”
With one tiny question, Timmy reframes, “My day was bad” into “I learned something today.”
4) Vegetables + home-cooking = healthier kids.
Studies are pretty clear:
Kids who eat dinner with their family are healthier. (Some studies say they’re 40% less likely to be overweight vs. peers).
5) They make families happier too.
One family therapist half-joked that if more families had dinner together, she’d be out of business. Because everything she tries to get families to do in therapy—connect more, enjoy each other, have difficult conversations—happens for free around the dinner table.
And for all the reasons above…
Family dinners = better grades.
But wait. If family dinners are so great, why are they on the decline?
Here are three weird facts:
– Most adults (84%) want to have more family dinners.
– Most teens (!) say they’d like to have more family dinners too (although they might never admit it to their parents).
– And yet, family dinners are on the decline.
Take, for example, the percentage of each generation that had family dinners every night:
Boomers: 76%
Millennials: 46%
Gen Z: 38%.
And if we’re really throwing it back, 60 years ago, the average family dinner lasted an hour and a half.
Now?
It’s just 12 minutes.
So, what happened to dinner?!
The short answer: The 21st century.
Both parents are typically busy working. Kids are busier too, with evening clubs and classes. And let’s not forget screens. Instead of competing against chess and playing cards, dinners now compete with screens.
That said, there’s another reason that family dinners are on the decline:
A lack of simple cooking confidence
Because here is the truth. Families love coming together over food that tastes good and feels easy to prepare. And when parents feel relaxed in the kitchen, kids feel that energy too.
One mom shared it beautifully:
“Once I learned a few new dishes that my kids loved, everything changed. Dinner became something we all looked forward to.”
That is really the heart of it.
When parents can make tasty meals without spending hours in the kitchen, when cooking feels fun and creative, and when kids are excited to eat what is served…
Family dinners start to flow naturally.
Everyone shows up.
Everyone enjoys themselves.
And the meal becomes a moment that brings the whole family closer.
Could afterschool cooking program lead to more family dinners?
Yeah, we’re biased, but we think so. 🙂
Because kids who learn to love cooking? Turn into adults who love cooking. (And adults who love cooking = more family dinners).
Plus, one thing we hear again and again: afterschool cooking workshops get kids excited about home-cooked food, which spills into the kitchen at home, even 6 months after the program finishes!
And that’s why, in our opinion, if you want to improve children’s lives through enrichment programs, there’s no better option than an afterschool cooking program.
And if you’re wondering how an afterschool cooking program would work in your school (along with the government grants available to fund it), you can book a free call with one of our team by clicking the link below:
Previous Newsletters:
Behind the scenes of filming recipes from LIFT Enrichment’s cookbooks, LIFT Enrichment and New York schools are teaching hundreds of children how to cook, Lift Enrichment and Rosemead: 600 Kids, 60 Recipes, One Big Impact