One important thing that we can do as a family is have meal time together on a daily basis. Sitting down at the table, eating and conversing with each other. This is not sitting in front of the TV while eating dinner with your family or eating dinner at table with mom or dad looking at their phone or listening to music or TV is blaring in the background. I am talking about sitting down, enjoying a meal together with all attention and focus on each other. Now for some of you, you have way more extracurricular activities and/or traveling for work, so eating together on a daily basis is impossible. If you cannot make it for dinner, try getting up a little earlier and eating breakfast together! Or pending on school and work schedule try eating lunch together! Right now, with COVID-19 and social distancing eating together and building a stronger family unit can happen a little easier since we are all together...all the time. However, the overwhelming feeling of being together all the time can be burdensome and exhausting. But I encourage you during this time to try - eat a meal together and see what happens!!
Mealtime with the entire family can be tricky, especially with young children. Young children sometimes are crying for food at 4pm so you give them a snack then they are crying again at 4:45pm for more food. Even if my child has had 2 "dinners" before we sit down for our real family dinner, we all sit down for at least 5 - 10 minutes at our table and talk with each other as a family.
We start with our prayer then we ask each other about our days
1. What we did that day
2. How we are feeling
3. One great part of our day
4. One bad part of our day
We allow every person in our family to have their time to ask and answer questions. Listening is important too! Ask questions and get interested in what is happening in your family members lives.
I believe that eating together as a family is empowering and builds a really strong family. It teaches our children:
-Listening
-Answering and Asking Questions
-Expressing emotions
-Social Skills - maintaining conversation and topic maintenance
My challenge for you is:
Find a time daily or just once a week or just once a month to sit down and have a conversation with your children and family. Listen! You will impressed what your children have to say!
Here’s some research I found while I was putting this post together:
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