Family Dinners

I recently read an article about reducing obesity rates through family dinners.  It seems the effectiveness depends on socioeconomics.  At my house, like many, the kids eat early, sometimes I eat my first dinner, and then the parents eat later. In my case this is mostly due to the fact that my husband gets home just in time to put them to bed and in many cases the husband does not even get home in time for that.  We don't really have much choice to have dinner together. But the other night, my husband came home a little earlier.  Not in time for the kids dinner, but just after, so he ate while the kids were getting ready for bed.  The kids had already eaten the same dinner he was eating, rather poorly I might ad, but all of a sudden they wanted more.  They wanted what their father was eating.  So he gave them a few bites and they kept asking for more, when only twenty minutes earlier after only a few bites of dinner they got up and said done.  For my kids, at least right now, obesity is not the worry.  I mostly focus on getting them to eat a healthy balanced meal.  With three kids with different tastes, this is not an easy task.  So, I could not believe how well they ate when it came from their father's plate. 
I learned that they would all probably eat better and more of the healthy food if we all ate together as a family. 

It was nice to learn, but unfortunatley, the reality is still the same, my husband gets home too late to eat with the kids and I am scrambling to get everything done for dinner and bed and homework for all of them that I can barely sit down either.  At least I know what I want to strive for, maybe one day we will make it.