Playing Smart: Dinnertime Rituals

Make every day a Family Day and make a date for dinner.

Good food, great conversations and loads of laughs - that’s what family dinners are made of.  If busy schedules are making it hard for your family to pencil in regular family meals, take a “time out” to consider all the benefits of gathering around the dinner table because family dinners are about more than just sharing a meal.

Benefits of Family Dinners:

The more often children and teens eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink and use drugs. Children and teens who have frequent family dinners:

are at half the risk for substance abuse compared to teens who dine with their families infrequently

are less likely to have friends or classmates who use illicit drugs or abuse prescription drugs

have lower levels of tension and stress at home

are more likely to say that their parents are proud of them

are likelier to say they can confide in their parents

are likelier to get better grades in school

are more likely to be emotionally content and have positive peer relationships

have healthier eating habits

are at lower risk for thoughts of suicide

are less likely to try marijuana or have friends who use marijuana.

Source: Family Day

The evening meal may be the only time many families all sit down together. It can be a challenge to compete with TV and other enticing forms of entertainment, but when parents and children don’t make time to really talk to one another, a vital connection is lost. One great way to find out what everyone in the family has been doing and feeling all day is to seek out creative ways to make dinnertime fun. Think of the dinner hour as a special and enjoyable time to build the values you would like your children to live by. Here are some activities to try:

A Bit of Planning

• Tabletop Crafts – Begin setting a festive mood for dinner by having your children make simple napkin rings. Cut inch-wide circles from the tube inside a roll of paper towels, then have the kids decorate and personalize the rings. Another possibility is for the children to design placemats for themselves or for each family member, finding some creative way to tie the illustrations to a theme of the day (such as “First Day of Autumn”). Or, kids can put together a simple centerpiece featuring toys, clay, trip souvenirs or other crafty materials. Any of these table decorations may make for stimulating conversations during the meal.

• Basket of Inspiration – Choose a small pretty basket for the dining table. Anytime someone in the family feels like it, he or she can drop a newspaper clipping or a note about some outside or personal event (“Johnny won the spelling bee at my school”) into the basket. At dinner, dip into the basket for a fresh discussion topic. You might set a “rule” that the person who deposited the clipping or note is the one who opens the discussion.

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