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10 Ideas to Bring Family Dinners Back to Your House
Hurry. Chaos. Yelling. Microwaves. Fast food. Frozen dinners. TV trays. Television. Drive thru lanes. Biggie size. Value Meals.
This is what dinner time looks like for most families in America.
This is also a far cry from what dinner time used to look like and I think it’s time we tried an old school approach to this time of day again.
Understanding that every household is different and schedules may vary from family to family, there are still ways to make dinner a time of refreshing for you and the entire family. This is a lost art in our homes today and we should do something about it. The following are some ideas you can implement to turn dinner time into true family time full of laughing, story telling and bonding.
If you can’t do dinner as a family every night of the week due to conflicting schedules, pick the nights that you can and make those extra special nights. If anything, try to eat dinner as a family at least one night a week. It’s a good place to start. Once you see how special these times are – you may try that much harder to make sure you can do it more often.
10 Ideas to Bring Family Dinners Back to Your House
1. Have soft or fun music in the background and let everyone alternate each night what will be played.
2. If you only get a couple nights a week to eat dinner as a family, eat at the dinner table and not on trays in front of the television. Family is absolutely more valuable than any TV program you could watch. Take this half hour to an hour, turn the TV off and turn your attention towards your family.
3. Plan fun meals – ones that everyone has input in. Create fun desserts and appetizers.
4. Use placemats and cloth napkins – give it a restaurant feel. Add some fresh flowers from your yard.
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5. Candles are a great way to spruce up dinnertime. Pick scents to go with the seasons.
6. If the weather permits, eat outside. To keep the bugs away, get a small bowl or mason jar, fill it with water then add a few drops of eucalyptus, citronella, lavender and cedarwood.
7. If you normally do eat while watching TV and you really feel you can’t give that up, make one night a week TV night so you’re not completely giving that up.
8. Ditch the paper and plastic plates and bring out the good dishes. Not just company is deserving of eating off the fine china and ceramic plates.
9. If you’re not good with talking, have the kids put some ideas in a jar that you can pull out and talk about. Whether it’s silly questions, or your dream vacation spot – anything to get conversation going and the chance for you to get to know more about each other.
10. Have the kids help with the menu planning and preparation. This gives you extra time to spend with each other and they will also learn to appreciate their meals more.
Most importantly, start taking the time to bring family dinners back into your home. Even with impossible schedules, sports practice, after school activities and work – there’s always options that we can work with. Dinner should be a time of day to slow things down a bit, have a little refreshing time and enjoy time with family (maybe even some friends) and a perfect opportunity to enjoy healthy food that will nourish your family.
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