Abby Nadeau
Community Editor

“Teens who have infrequent family dinners (two or fewer per week) are twice as likely to smoke daily and get drunk monthly.”

True or false?

Unfortunately, true.

According to a report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, teens who have fewer family dinners are twice as likely to have tried cigarettes and marijuana, and one and a half times likelier to have tried alcohol.

However, the students from the Century Jr. High Leadership Team are trying to change all of that.

The group of roughly 20 students from the Student Council and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD), are creating “Let’s Talk”: conversation starters for busy families.

The group is sending out roughly 3500, quart sized paint cans, to homes all across the Forest Lake school district.

Let’s Talk

The idea for Let’s Talk cans came from the Tri-City Partners for Healthy Youth and Communities in Minnesota.

The idea is to “encourage families to turn off the TV, sit down to a meal and talk.”

The CASA research, from their report called The Importance of Family Dinners III, shows the importance of regular family dinners.

The report found that students who had “infrequent” family dinners were more than “twice as likely to say future drug use is very or somewhat likely.”

A lack of family dining is not only harming students, but parent’s relationships with their children.

The report concluded that parents who have infrequent family dinners were:

• Five times likelier to say they have a poor relationship with their teen.

• One and a half times likelier to say they know the parents of their teen’s friends not very well or not at all.

• More than twice as likely to say they do not know the names of their teen’s teachers;

• Twice as likely to say that parents deserve not very much blame or no blame at all when a teenager uses illegal drugs.

Beyond the negatives of what happens when students don’t have regular family dinners, the report found many positives to having frequent family dinners.

The CASA research said “Teens who have frequent family dinners are likelier to get better grades in school, and higher academic performance is associated with lower substance abuse risk.”

“...one factor that does more to reduce teens’ substance abuse risk is parental engagement and one of the simplest and most effective ways for parents to be engaged in their teens’ lives is by having frequent family dinners,” said Joseph Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

Community Project

So how do Century Jr. High students fit into this?

Every year the group, with the help of the Forest Lake Area Partnership for Families (FLAPF), completes a community project and this year the group decided to make the cans.

The cans are filled with 100 questions that focus on creating conversations among family members.

Some of the questions in the can ask:

• Would you rather be the most attractive, most athletic or the smartest kid in your school?

• When in your life did you feel the happiest? The saddest? The most vulnerable?

• What is good about a rainy day?

“It is a great opportunity to hear what is important to the parents or the children,” said Kathy Bystrom, a FLAPF member and the Student Leadership Advisor at Century.

She added that the questions are a great way to start a conversation about a tough issue.

“We want to encourage open dialogue that is without judgement,” Bystrom said.

Over spring break, while everyone else was on a warm beach somewhere, several Century Jr. High students were at the Central Learning Center collecting questions and preparing them to be distributed.

All the products for the projects were donated, and the 3500 paint cans, yep, those were donated as well.

Sherwin-Williams in Forest Lake donated the cans.

Mike Cane, a sales associate for Sherwin Williams, had a neighbor call him, asking the cost of paint cans.

“I talked to the VPs of sales and they offered to donate the cans,” Cane said.

Since the Sherwin-Williams in Forest Lake was the closest store, the cans came from Jason Kozak’s store that opened in October of 2005.

“It’s good for the schools,” Kozak said.

Included in each of the cans are discount cards for the Sherwin-Williams Neighbor to Neighbor program.

The Neighbor to Neighbor program allows the card user to save 20 percent on all regular purchase and 5 percent on sale purchases made at Sherwin-Williams.

Every time the card is used Sherwin-Williams will donate 3 percent of the purchases back to the Forest Lake School District Prevention Education Programs.

Distribution

The 3500 cans will be distributed throughout the Forest Lake district for grades kindergarten through seventh. So far the cans have gone out to Linwood, Forest Lake and Scandia Elementary schools.

The remaining schools should receive their cans in the next several weeks.

Bystrom said the cans were being distributed to the schools with younger children because that was their target age range. She said the idea was to reach the kids who were just approaching adulthood.

She added that she is anticipating a few left over cans, which will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis.

Bystrom said they would just like to get the cans in as many hands as possible.

To learn more about the CASA study visit www.casacolumbia.org or www.tricitypartners.org.

For any left over Let’s Talk cans contact Kathy Bystrom at 651-982-8391. Again, the left over cans, if any, will be distributed on a first-come-first-serve basis.

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