Lawyer Parenting Tip: Eat Dinner With Your Children

Lawyers with kids who constantly find themselves stuck at the office each night might want to consider periodicially scheduling a "family dinner" night -- may we suggest once a week? Research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. CASA adds that the conversations that go hand-in-hand with dinner will help you learn more about your children’s lives and better understand the challenges they face.

To promote family dinners, CASA created Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™ in 2001. Family Day is celebrated on the fourth Monday in September. But we hope busy professionals will somehow find the time to eat dinner with family more than once per year.

To learn more about Family Day, see here.

At least one attorney who doesn't seem to be getting much dinner time with his family is O'Melveny & Myers partner Brad Butwin. According to a recent post on the WSJ Law Blog, The Rachael Ray Show will pay tribute to Butwin and his family as America’s "prototypical" family that never eats dinner together.