If you think of family dinner as a time to nourish your family, prevent all kinds of problems, increase your children’s cognitive abilities, and provide pleasure and fun that they can build on for the rest of their lives, a nightly meal is an efficient use of time.   Below are nine ideas to assist young families as they focus in on providing more family dinners into their schedules

1. My suggestions are simple for you, start where you are. Adding one more family meal a week is a start. It may be Sunday breakfast, a Saturday picnic, or 7:00 pm family snack time. Just make a conscience decision to focus on family time.
2. Invite your child to get involved in the dinner process. Making a salad, stirring a pot, crumbling the cheese, setting the timer or choosing a menu from two choices offered.  Having a hand in making the meal creates pride of ownership, and that may help them stay at the table longer. Calling attention to the family of the child’s contribution during dinner established the importance of their contribution.
   
3. Prepare larger meals on the weekends that can be divided and frozen for evening with tight schedules.
4. Remember, Public’s Rotisserie chicken, is just as good as one cooked at home. Add in frozen steamed vegetables, a salad and bread, and you have a 15- minute dinner ready. Short cuts are okay.
5. Mom eating with Johnny at 4:30 and Dad eating with Susie at 6:30 may sometimes be the only solution. This is still a wonderful time to talk and bond between the parent and child.
   
6. Plan fun nights like Tuesday Pizza nights, or Thursday burgers on the grill. I read about a mother who started a tradition of an ice cream dinner once a month. All that was served was ice cream. Her children loved it and kept the day marked on the calendar on the fridge in anticipation.
   
7. Have a Basket or box away from the dinner table that everyone in the family drops the cell phone or electronic device in prior to dinner. This sets the tone of how importance family dinner time, and with exceptions of emergencies, everything else can wait until after dinner.

The Family Dinner Project is a growing movement that champions family dinner as an opportunity for family members to connect with each other through food, fun and conversation about things that matter. This project aims to bring families together to share their experiences and insights to help each other realize the benefits of family dinners. Together, they will figure out the resources needed – like tips for setting dinnertime goals, engaging everyone in meaningful conversation, and overcoming obstacles such as conflicting schedules – to improve the frequency and quality of their mealtime interaction. The interactive site is: http://thefamilydinnerproject.org/

The Mealtime Movement; enjoying conversations over food helps form connections, one bite at a time. This is what the Mealtime Movement is all about. This project features helpful tips, blogs recipes as well as newsletters, Facebook resources and much more for your family’s development. http://mealtimemovement.com/

Research Resources for “Bringing the Family Back to the Table”