This Space for Rent

This is not the way to convince your children to eat dinner with you

My corporate masters have been sending out email spam shilling some faith-based nonsense called "National Family Day", where the hook appears to be that if you eat dinner with your sproglings, they won't drink, smoke, have sex, or play pool.

Presumably, you'll be having dinner with your children without telling them about this alleged feature, because, if my recollections of my childhood are at all typical, the very last thing your teenage children will want to do is something that will reduce their chances of getting it on. I could just imagine the response to chirpily announcing "we're going to eat dinner at home so you won't be getting it on with MOTASes during afterschool homework hour" would be a teenager-sized chunk of vacumn as your offspring bolts for the door with a hasty "ooops, I forgot to feedthedogpickupmyscienceprojectatschoolwatertheyardputgasinthecar! See you tomorrow!", and that would be the last you'd see of them until their allowances ran out and they had to return to get clean clothes and take a shower.

The children who say "oh, that's (snicker) nice" and stay politely to dinner, well, it's likely that they've already disproven the "National Family Day" theorem.

But, hey, you've got to get your faith-based payola somehow, and if you're a family that will only eat together if it means your children will have less fun, here's your excuse.