Family Together at the Dinner Table

Dinnertime is often the busiest time in a family’s day. With school activities, soccer practices and doctor appointments, combined with technology distractions like email, texting and TV, getting the family together for quality mealtime may seem nearly impossible. However, the benefits to children and parents alike are worth the extra effort. There are numerous studies that prove how spending quality time together as a family, eating dinner and communicating with one another contributes to healthy child and adolescent development, and helps form better nutritional habits.

With all of life’s distractions, it’s important to use mealtime as a fun and interactive way for family members to spend time together. Whether it’s playing a game or simply asking how someone’s day went, the following ideas are sure to entice even the busiest parent or child to make time for family mealtime.

Chef for the Night

Get your child involved in cooking by having them plan a menu, shop for ingredients or cook and serve the meal. Cooking with children encourages creativity, responsibility and time management. Other advantages include teaching your child where food comes from and having them apply math and reading skills while following a recipe.
Have you taken the challenge to eat together as a family this month?? How is it going?? I wanted to share with you a few more great ideas for having conversation at the table

A couple of fun games would be question games:
"20 questions"
one person at the table thinks of an object, animal or person and have family members guess it by asking up to 20 yes or no questions.

"Two Truths and a Lie"
family members go around the table and say two "truths" of their day and one "lie" and have family members guess which was the "lie" Family members must share information about their day with details about what happened at school or work.

Another way to get conversation going is to fill a bowl with 20 to 30 slips of paper with questions. Each member draws a slip and during mealtime each family member will have the chance to share the answer to their question.

Celebrate the small stuff and daily achievements.
a dinner could be dedicated to a child who got a good grade on her test. Perhaps a game was won, a tooth was lost or you worked as a team to clean the house. This also helps to build self esteem.

Remember to turn the T.V , radio, and all cell phones off during the meal. The goal is to have quality interaction between parents and children