Storytelling at dinner: what UCLA learned from filming everyday family life

"So, what happened next?" "Wait — how do you know it was him?" "That's not how I remember it!" Listen to a lively family dinner and you'll hear stories being told, questioned and rewritten. For linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at UCLA, those moments are where children learn some of the most important skills of all.

Who is behind the research

The UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families (CELF) was founded in 2001 with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as part of the UCLA Department of Anthropology, and was directed by Elinor Ochs. Its researchers followed 32 middle-class, dual-earner families in Los Angeles, filming their everyday lives at home for about a week each. The project led to several books, including Fast-Forward Family: Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America (2013), which has a chapter devoted to dinner.

Long before CELF, Ochs had been studying how families talk at the dinner table.

What the research found

• Dinner stories are a way of thinking together. In a 1992 study, Ochs, Taylor, Rudolph and Smith showed that when family members tell stories at dinner, others often challenge them, ask for evidence and propose other explanations. The authors described this as a kind of everyday "theory-building" — a family version of critical thinking that children take part in long before school asks it of them.
• Mealtimes teach much more than manners. Ochs and Shohet (2006) describe mealtimes as a place where children learn how to take part in conversation, what is expected of them, and the moral and cultural meanings families attach to food.
• "Eating together" isn't always together. A CELF working paper, Coming together at dinner, observed that families who report eating together may in practice eat in different rooms or at different times. Being at the same table, at the same time, is the part that makes conversation possible.

These are detailed, descriptive studies of a small number of families — they show how family talk works, not that it causes particular outcomes.

What it means at your table

• Tell stories, not reports. "Something funny happened on the bus…" invites a story; "School was fine" closes the door.
• Let children question the story. "How do you know?" and "What else could explain it?" are invitations to think, not challenges to authority.
• Build stories together. One person starts, others add details or a different point of view.
• Actually sit down together, even if only for part of the meal.

How it shapes the Kalmdix method

• Stories are at the heart of the games. Family news asks each player to present a moment from their own day with a headline; The story chain and Yes, and… build one story together.
• Questioning is part of the fun. In Fake or fact? the family investigates which "fact" is fake; in Hot take court a judge asks for evidence.
• Everyone gets a turn. Kalmdix gives turns by name, so stories don't always come from the same person.
• The habit of telling. Missions like Share a moment from your day and Tell a story make storytelling a regular part of dinner.

Sources

• UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families — About. celf.ucla.edu
• Elinor Ochs — UCLA Department of Anthropology. anthro.ucla.edu
• Ochs, E., Taylor, C., Rudolph, D., & Smith, R. (1992). Storytelling as a theory-building activity. Discourse Processes, 15(1), 37–72. DOI
• Ochs, E., & Shohet, M. (2006). The cultural structuring of mealtime socialization. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 111, 35–49. Abstract
• Ochs, E., Shohet, M., Campos, B., & Beck, M. (2007). Coming together at dinner. CELF Working Paper No. 70. Abstract
• Ochs, E., & Kremer-Sadlik, T. (Eds.) (2013). Fast-Forward Family: Home, Work, and Relationships in Middle-Class America. University of California Press.

Kalmdix is independent. UCLA and its Center on Everyday Lives of Families are not partners of Kalmdix and have not evaluated it. This article summarises published research in our own words — read the sources for the full picture.

Frequently asked questions

Why is storytelling at dinner good for children?

Research by Elinor Ochs and colleagues at UCLA describes dinner stories as a way families think together: stories are told, questioned and revised, giving children early practice in reasoning, perspective-taking and conversation.

What did UCLA's CELF study?

The UCLA Sloan Center on Everyday Lives of Families, founded in 2001 and directed by Elinor Ochs, filmed the everyday lives of 32 dual-earner families in Los Angeles to understand how families manage work, home and time together.