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The Casual Family Dining Experience: Positive Tips to Sitting Down and Dining with Family

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

The Hooker Furniture Dining Room Sanctuary Spindle Side Chair is as casual as it gets.

In an ideal world, every family should spend quality time together, every evening, while sharing a hot, mother-prepared meal. The conversations there would be bursting with energy and excitement. No one will be looking at their smart phones or even try to sneak a peek at the TV. Everyone would be relaxed and calm and laughing.

Now the reality – family members have different work and school schedules and they come from last-minute activities that leave mealtimes with fidgety kids and distracted teenagers.

Turns out, taking a simple meal as a family is important no matter how difficult it is to establish one. Studies have proven that kids do a lot better in school when they eat together with their moms and dads. Also, they are physically healthy and psychologically well-adjusted as compared to children or teens who display risky behaviors.

Since family mealtimes are such as important activity, it pays if you spend time planning for this daily event. This may not mean an enjoyable experience each time but it is worth trying. So how do you do it? Here are some useful tips –

Plan

Failing to plan is just like planning to fail – as the cliché goes. You need to take part in planning the dinners. Don’t just resort to heated pizzas or chicken nuggets. Kids would surely love to come home to meals that have been carefully planned.

Weekends are a great time to plan for the meals during the week. Use meal planners that can be bought in bookstores or the downloadable types that you see online.

Make Special Meals

To make people want to come home for dinner, you have to make sure that they are going to enjoy something great.

Use the best dinnerware, a decent tablecloth and if you can eat outside with your family once each week, then family members would have a wonderful memory of your shared meals.

Don’t be cheap. Eat with real spoons and forks and not the plastic ones that you can just throw after. It may take a while for everyone to get used to the wonderful dining experiences but you’ll find out that, pretty soon, everyone’s simply enjoying the meals.

No Gadgets on the Table

While everyone’s dining, it would also help if an unspoken rule is respected by everyone – this is to have zero gadgets while dining. Never allow TV, laptops, smart phones or tablets get in the way of meaningful conversations shared with family.

It is okay to watch the TV as a family if you’re eating dinner while watching the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl. A pizza and popcorn night once in a while also won’t hurt.

FFDM’s Summer Home Collection features this display cabinet that could also feature conversation starters.

Everyone Must Participate

As much as possible, ask everyone to get involved in planning and especially in cooking the dinner. Encourage the smaller kids to smell the spices and pick one that they love. The more that family members feel that they contributed to something, the more that they would want to attend the next meals.

Get everyone to talk as well. Ask the kids about school and don’t let their statements stop at it’s okay. Don’t just talk to your spouse, make time to listen to everyone who wants to share their experiences. You can have your convos in the form of formal interviews or a game. It’s up to you.

If there are topics that need to be discussed, then there are also those that you need to veer away from. Avoid berating a kid for not eating vegetables. This will only result in dreaded family dinners rather than the enjoyable ones that you want them to remember.

Get crazy, be more creative all in the name of family dining.

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