Family Dinner - Who Has Time Anymore?
Does this sound like your family? Are you like most of us who race around the city dropping and picking up kids, or come home from a long day of work exhausted and wonder what am I going to feed my family for dinner tonight? Maybe you even think about sneaking through the fast food drive through to grab your kids something fast and convenient?
Is this the scenerio we really want for our family. Do we really want to feed our family unhealthy and unsatisfying food, burn a lot of extra fossil fuel waiting in drive throughs and then feeling really unsatisfied and bloated after the meal.
Did you know you are also missing out on an important opportunity to connect with your kids around the dinner table. Recent studies show children who have regular dinners with their parents around the dinner table do better in almost all areas of life, whether its higher grades at school, to maintaining loving and healthy relationships, to staying healthy, safe and out of trouble. The family dinner table is the ideal place for children to develop language and vocabulary skills, share stories, talk about what’s on their mind and how to appropriately express emotions.
Many people think they simply don''t have time to have a real meal around the dinner table but studies show that we have somehow found 2 extra hours a day for screen time... what about people time?
Even if you can't sit down every night of the week try for as many evenings as possible. Focus on the conversation and the family bonding not on how many mouthfuls of broccoli your child has eaten. Ask your child for the days highlights and what they are grateful for. My family has recently committed to family dinners and now the children happily come to the table having thought about what they want to talk about and what they are grateful for ahead of time!
Give it a try your family will be grateful you did.
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