BOSTON (Boston Globe) — When she was growing up, Laurel Dickson-Bull's parents made sure the family ate dinner together every night. Ditto for her husband, John Bull. Now parents themselves, they'd like to duplicate the tradition for their own children, but they don't seem able to pull it off.

First, they both work. Bull sometimes doesn't get home to Boxborough, Mass. until after 7:30, too late for their kids to wait to eat. On top of that, Andrew, 11, Juliet, 9, and John, 7, have a kazillion activities of their own that often interfere with dinner.

``We shoot for eating together three nights a week,'' says Dickson-Bull. ``Most weeks, we make it.''

In our jam-packed, over-scheduled lives, the nightly family meal is fast becoming an anachronism, a ritual we think of with fondness, but one we associate with previous generations. That's a mistake, say psychologists and others who research families. As we settle into new routines with a new school year, they urge parents to make family mealtime a priority.

``I think of eating together as home base, a kind of glue that keeps a family connected. When it disappears, the family is in jeopardy,'' says psychiatrist James Comer of the Yale Child Studies Center.

A daily family meal is so important to family educator Jean Illsley Clarke of Minneapolis that if she could make her adult children young again, she'd be inflexible about it.

``If we couldn't have dinner together each day, I'd insist on breakfast, and I don't mean a piece of toast standing at the counter,'' she says. ``If that couldn't happen, I would arrange for a time each day where we all sat down with a cup of cocoa.''

Clarke likes to serve food that brings pleasure, but it's the act of eating together that counts, not the food. That's because humans learn from birth to associate bodily nourishment with emotional closeness. ``Whether they are being nursed or taking a bottle, an infant's first relationship occurs during feeding,'' she says. ``It's an association parents would be wise to capitalize on.''

Unfortunately, we often don't, especially when we have babies and toddlers. Dinnertime can be so chaotic and inconvenient, not to mention messy, that many parents choose to eat separately.

It's not enough to plop food down haphazardly. ``The tenor of the table counts,'' says Clarke, author of ``Connections: The Threads that Strengthen Families'' (Hazelden Press).

The way the table is laid as well as the mood around it can make the difference between a meal being a positive experience or a nightmare. Some good rules of thumb:

Avoid charged topics. ``If a child's done something wrong, this is not the time to air it,'' says Comer.

Monitor manners sparingly. ``I met a family who gave timeouts for giggling at the table. That's overkill,'' says pediatric and family psychologist Peter Goldenthal of Wayne, Pa.

``I back off when I can,'' he says. ``For me, it's more important that kids be at the table enjoying our company than having perfect manners at a given moment.''

Goldenthal is author of ``Beyond Sibling Rivalry'' (Owl Books).

Keep conversation engaging. Conversation doesn't always have to be about or directed to children, but the more they can join in, the better. One Harvard University study links children's literacy and school success to explanatory talk at the dinner table - for instance, discussions of presidential politics or the day's news. Not only does that expand a child's world but it also helps a child learn to handle differences of opinion, negotiate ways to get into a conversation, hear new vocabulary words, and predict and anticipate parents' reactions.

Assuming parents are pleasant and not sniping at each other, the habitualness of the family meal can be ``a kind of security,'' says Comer.

That's true even for teenagers, says psychologist Blake Bowden, a researcher at Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati. In 1997, he conducted a study to see what protects teenagers against maladjustive behaviors. The answer: sitting down to a meal with a parent at least five times a week. That was such a surprise, it made headlines all over the country.

Bowden found the results personally validating. He grew up in a single-parent home and had friends who were always angling for an invitation to dinner. Now he knows what it was all about.

``My friends knew my mother was always home for that meal,'' he says. ``Their parents weren't. It was her input they wanted.''

Bowden has another theory about his findings: ``It may not be only the mealtime that's working in a teen's favor. If parents are organized enough to make a routine out of dinner, despite how busy we all are, maybe this is symbolic of the way this family functions.''

Eating also makes family members kinder, says Comer. It ``puts people in a better mood.''

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