We cannot overemphasize the importance of sharing meals as a family. The daily work demands and pressures aren’t making it any easier for families to convene at dinner time. Meal times afford families the opportunity to bond, therefore, parents must learn how to let go of the pressure and make family dinner fun. At the dinner table, there will always be a joke to tell, a conversation to have about world affairs, a story from the day to share. My husband always has many fond memories of family meals that would last for hours, with everyone sharing stories and telling jokes.
While eating together seems like a magical solution to all your parenting problems, most parents know it’s more complicated than that. With realistic expectations in mind, learn how to make family dinner fun. Eating together might not solve all of your problems, but it will bring your family closer. Here are the six general rules we try to live by during dinner.
Sitting down for dinner as a family isn’t as simple as it sounds. Over-scheduled kids and busy parents don’t always intersect at mealtime. Instead of trying to cram a family meal into every day’s schedule, try making plans to eat together three or four times a week. Avoid frequently eating in the car or at restaurants. If you can’t get together for a bare minimum amount of meals, it might be time to rethink your evening activities.
Make the dinning comfortable. For years our younger son just couldn’t sit still. He would squirm, wriggle and hop up and down from his chair. It drove us crazy!
Then finally one day he told us that the back of the chair was uncomfortable. We offered him a pillow, and like magic the squirming stopped. Now, I’m not saying you should have only upholstered chairs, but think about what can make your eating space appealing.
Clearing the table completely before setting it for dinner (no papers or piles), having comfortable chairs or benches and having plenty of room so people don’t feel crowded are all great ways to make the space more welcoming.
For a long time my younger son was quite the picky eater. It drove my husband and me crazy, and we’d often get grumpy at the table over how little he was eating. After a while we realized that all this approach was doing was making dinnertime tense and miserable for everyone, so we decided to go another route. We chose to focus on dinner as a time for connecting and sharing, not a time to pressure our kids to take “one more bite” or finish their broccoli.
It wasn’t an easy transition, but as we made the switch we discovered that not only was our son eating more but also he was trying new foods! So now we strive to have at least one food on the table that each person enjoys so no one will go hungry, we encourage adventurous eating and trying new foods and we keep dinner as a time to focus on spending time together.
For all of us to stay focused on each other and truly connect, we have a no-electronics-at-the-dinner-table rule—for both kids and grownups. Occasionally the phone will come out to check a fact during a discussion, but other than that we focus on each other and let the texts, calls and emails wait until dinnertime is over.
