Yahoo! News is reporting a study that links some traditional family behaviors with healthy kids.

Apparently eating dinner together 5+ nights per week, making your kids sleep 10.5 hours a night and limiting TV to 2 hours a day correlate to significantly lower obesity rates.  It is almost like spending quantity time with your kids is more important that quality time.

The saddest part of the story?

Helmcamp said it can be hard to institute some of these behaviors. But she suggested that parents “make these behaviors a priority. Sit down and figure out how you can make it happen. Maybe your child doesn’t need to be involved in four or five different activities.”

She said if it’s tough to eat together five times a week, shoot for at least three nights a week. And, she also recommended removing TVs from children’s bedrooms, which can help with limiting screen time and with getting enough sleep.

Seriously?  ‘It can be hard?’  I didn’t realize parenting was supposed to be easy.  Of course it’s hard; it is supposed to be hard.  How could shaping and forming the next generation of mankind be easy?

Anyway, read the whole thing.