Take The Real Happy Hour Winter Challenge

Started by a coalition in Marathon County, “The Real Happy Hour” focuses on promoting and supporting opportunities for families to spend quality time together while engaging in healthy behaviors.  

The Real Happy Hour has two goals.  First, we would like to identify how families in the School District of Lodi spend quality time together.  We would like to “brand” these moments as The Real Happy Hour.  This can be anything from cooking and enjoying a meal together, to going on a walk, taking a bike ride or reading together before bedtime.

Our second goal is to identify for families why quality family time is important and how to achieve this, especially regular family meal time.  According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, teens that have infrequent family meals are:

  • 4 times likelier to use tobacco
  • Twice as likely to use alcohol
  • 2 ½ times likelier to use marijuana
  • 4 times likelier to say they expect to try drugs in the future

However, teens having 5 to 7 family dinners per week are:

  • 12% less likely to be overweight
  • 20% less likely to eat unhealthy foods
  • Likely to report a better relationship with mother, father and siblings

WHAT CAN WE DO??