I want family dinners to be a cornerstone of our daily life, but man, they are so difficult to facilitate! We all know how important it is for families to have meals together around the table, but how do we make time for those meals and ensure they are meaningful? 

Our family is in the thick of youth league baseball and T-ball. I want my kids involved in sports, but honestly, I dread this season every year. So many practices and games are packed into every week for 3-4 months, which makes it very difficult to have dinners at home. 

Family dinners is an important part of my parenting strategy – at least, I would like it to be. Family dinners around the table are a great chance to spend a few minutes of quality time together. This is typically our only time to catch up with each other. I believe that, even though we live together, we need to be intentional about learning to understand each other. Dinnertime is a perfect opportunity to get to know each other a little bit more and get a glimpse of the world through each other’s eyes. 

I have two main goals for family dinners together: 

1. Teach the children (and remind us parents) how to converse and enjoy a meal with others, without distraction.
2. Create memories that bond our family together.

But between work schedules and the kids’ extracurricular activities, dinner times with the whole family don’t happen as often as I would like. Then, when they do, my kids want to shovel down their food and move on to something else – like watching the movie we interrupted or playing their video games.

With such limited opportunities, how do we make the most of family dinners together? If you have suggestions that work for your family, please share! We can learn from each other!

Here are some ideas we are trying in our family.

1. Set a timer

This has been helpful for getting our kids to stay at the table without much whining, even after they finish eating. After we all sit down, but before we dig in, I set a timer for 15 minutes and tell the kids they can get up when the timer goes off. Somehow, 15 minutes doesn’t seem so long when they know there’s a set end, but if I just had everyone sit down with no timer, the same amount of time would feel like an eternity for them.

Strange how our brains work, isn’t it? Aren’t we like that as adults, too, though. When we know there’s a set time for something and a set end, it can make an unwanted task much easier.

Eventually, as the kids get older and we all get more used to these types of mealtimes, we will probably extend that time, but 15 minutes feels right for our family at this stage. After the timer sounds, we allow the children to take their plates to the sink and go play. This is when my husband and I get to have adult conversation. Sometimes our oldest will stick around and listen to our discussions, which is great with me. I believe it’s good for children to hear about what’s going on in their parent’s lives when they are not around. I like to think it helps children see a bigger view of life and, ultimately, realize the world does not actually revolve around them. 

However, we don’t force our kids to listen because, well, that wouldn’t make for very good or productive conversation, would it? 

2. Turn conversation into a game. 

Conversation doesn’t have to be boring with kids. In fact, it can’t be – they won’t allow it! The first conversation starter that I use is the High-Low game. People have different names for this, but the concept is the same. You ask each person about the best part of their day (the high) and the hardest part of their day (the low). It’s amazing what you can learn with these two basic questions. This is when I learn what my oldest son played in P.E. at school. That’s usually his “high,” and it tells me what kind of sports activities he enjoys (baseball and dodgeball) and which ones he doesn’t (soccer). This is also typically when I learn that one of the children is having a hard time with a classmate, a teacher, or a test, which can lead to teaching opportunities about how to interact with people and deal with difficult situations. 

Other games that can lead to more conversation and opportunities to better understand each other are:

• Would you rather 
• Two truths and a lie
• What’s the question? – Think Jeopardy for kids. You make a sentence, and the others have to figure out what question corresponds with that sentence.
• Who am I? – One family member thinks about a person. The others have to ask questions to figure out that person. Bonus point if you try to imitate the person’s speech or mannerisms!
• Word associations – One person says a word and everyone else says the first thing that comes to their mind. 

For more ideas, check out this article from The Family Dinner Project or this one from Focus on Your Child.

3. Tell jokes

What kid or adult doesn’t like jokes? If laughter is the best medicine, let’s get our daily dose together! Keep a joke book near the table and take turns reading from it during dinner. Or, assign a different child to find a joke for each meal and see what they come up with! You should also have your own jokes ready, just in case!

4. Play games

Outside of conversation games, games during dinner time can be fun, relaxed ways to interact. If the mealtime starts out tense or the kids (or adults!) come to the table grumpy, maybe you need a different kind of game to lighten the mood. We sometimes pull out the Uno cards during dinner or a book of mad libs. My children also like “the animal guessing game,” where one thinks of an animal and we have to ask questions to guess the animal. 

5. Share stories

Admittedly, we haven’t done this as much, but I love the idea. I think this takes a little more forethought, but if you can think of favorite family stories ahead of time, share those with your kids! If it’s close to a holiday, tell about a favorite memory from that holiday in your childhood. If your child is dealing with a situation in school, like having trouble with friends or schoolwork, try to remember a time you struggled and overcame a similar situation. 

You could also share your favorite Bible story and what you learn from it. Or, share a story you heard from someone else that moved you, made you laugh, or taught you an important lesson.

6. Come with a conversation plan

Have your stories, games, and jokes ready before dinnertime so you’re not scrambling to remember what you want to do during the meal! You can even have a couple of fun, open-ended conversation questions in mind. Be sure and ask follow-up questions to keep the conversation going! In the long run, we hope this will teach the kids how to actively listen and engage in two-way conversations with others.

7. Manage your expectations

Ultimately, I have to remind myself that dinnertime will never be perfect. As with everything, I can expect imperfection because we are all imperfect humans. People will be grumpy sometimes. Fighting and fussing might ensue, despite my best efforts. The kids may ask 10 times if they can leave the table. It may be imperfect, but that shouldn’t stop me from trying. I believe the effort makes a difference in the long run. It’s worth it.