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Dining Rooms

© Schatze Rasmussen

Socialization is very important for all human beings of all ages. My first memories of interacting with others conversationally is around the family dining room table. Most of us have these memories. In these times of hustle and bustle and bergeoning technology however it has become easier to eat in front of the TV by ourselves than in a group interacting with each other around a table at meal time. My husband and I are staunch advocates of meal times at the table because 1) it is one of the few times we get to spend time interacting as a familial unit every day and 2) our children need to learn how to converse with others both as a speakers and a listeners and we are easy to practice with.

I have seen the effects of dining room communication among many different age groups in other settings than in homes. As a "teacher" I have had the pleasure of supervising lunch duty in the elementary school I work at. I have also watched and taken part in eating with colleagues in the cafeteria of our local hospital that I used to work at after we all had seen patients for therapy all morning. I have taken some high school students from my CDB classroom out into the community for breakfast at local diners. I have also interacted with patients at an area nursing home to observe them swallowing during meal times. Snack time during Early Childhood classes is a particular treat; all those messy faces are adorable! The one constant I have observed during all of these dining experiences is human beings need to express themselves and food brings out the "best" communication in all of us, whether we are intently conversing, throwing food because we are upset about something and don't know how to verbally express our thoughts or talking with our mouths full as we learn the rules of socializing at meal time. Eating food together brings out expressive skills sometimes never seen before. We also learn alot about how to converse with others during times such as these.

A recent study done by an associate professor and her graduate students at the University of Utah found that nursing home residents with different types of communication disorders including everything from strokes, muscle weakness (causing hard to understand speech) and removed voice boxes (laryngectomy) who dined with residents with good communication skills all demonstrated "more talking" in general. Not only did they make longer sentences, but their utterances were more complex or of increased difficulty. The reason for the study was to determine if there was a way to provide better communication opportunities for patients with communication impairments living in the nursing home setting. This supports the belief that giving patients real life situations, or everyday situations such as group mealtime, improves their ability to interact verbally with others.

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