Dinner together

While economic indicators seem to be positive – and I’ve spread the good news in our country and even in our OFW communities in Europe – this troubling fact remains: current reports say that the Philippines now ranks second in terms of number of teenage pregnancies and first in terms of number of teenage smokers in South East Asia.

These are statistics I (and I’m sure all parents) don’t like to hear. But heed them we must.

In light of such statistics, Monde Nissin’s advocacy for parents to regularly spend meal times together with their kids become all the more relevant, and the recent launch of Famealy Matters, timely.

Famealy Matters (with famealy purposefully spelled as such) is my new book, a product of my partnership with food company Monde Nissin. It features 50 stories of notable personalities from various industries and sectors of the community on how they’ve learned life’s most valuable lessons through conversations and interactions with their parents around the dining table.

Nissin has commissioned a body to do a research on the effect of spending meal times together with the family. They’ve discovered that kids who spend regular dinner time with their parents have lower incidents of teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and teenage smoking. Imagine, just by regularly having dinner with your kids, you can spare them from the usual troubles of teenagers!

These findings reinforce the ideal that Monde Nissin and Famealy Matters uphold: kainang pamilya mahalaga! Spending meal times together as a family is essential!

When I speak to successful entrepreneurs and high-powered professionals, and I touch on the topic of the family, a serious silence would permeate the place. I think it’s because, for many of them, the road to success is littered with “family casualties”.

Sometimes, in our pursuit for success, the family ends up as the sacrifice offered at the altar of our personal ambitions. The “sacrifice of the family” doesn’t happen suddenly, dramatically. It is subtle, almost unnoticeable – a Sunday lunch skipped, a missed soccer game, a couple of dinners skipped – until one is faced with its consequences: low grades, school violence, teen pregnancy, drug abuse. The list goes on.

I’ve met successful people at the peak of their career who look in the mirror and ask themselves, “What’s the meaning to all this?” Cliché but true: No amount of success in business or career can ever compensate for failure in the home.

Spend time with your kids. Have dinner with them. Share life values around the dinner table to form a generation of achievers who would love God, love their family and serve the country.

I hope and pray that Famealy Matters will encourage and remind parents to regularly spend dinner time with their kids. Its benefits are tremendous; overlooking it leads to dire consequences. What could be a better argument for it than this, I wonder?

(Thank you to all those who attended the recently-concluded Developing The Leader Within You! We had a full house during the two-day seminar. The next run will be on October 15-16 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, and is now open for early registration! For further inquiries, contact Hannah at 09228980196, or call 632-6310658 or 6310660 for more details.)