How To Encourage Family Mealtimes at Home
When you have children and they start to get a bit older it can sometimes feel like a chore to get them to sit down with you at the dinner table and actually have a family meal. But it is important to maintain these family routines to encourage good eating habits and to keep a close bond with you all. These suggestions could help you and family have more family meal times together.
Switch Off The TV and Keep Cell Phones Away From The Table
If your kids have the tendency to be glued to their cellphones at the table then perhaps you could encourage them to leave them in another room whilst you are all sitting down to eat. This will help to stimulate conversation as opposed to family members scrolling through their smartphone and disengaging. You want to encourage conversations and family bonding time, so the less distractions around you all such as a loud tv in the background or cellphones at the dinner table, the better.
Try Out New Foods
If you cook the same meals each night then it is going to get boring really quickly. Ideally you want to try and create a variety of different meals each week, that do not take up too much of your time, but are all very tasty, such as this chicken shawarma recipe. It will make your meals more interesting and encourage the kids to sit down with you as well if they have new foods to try, as opposed to the same boring meal.
Get Your Kids Involved In Meal Prep
It doesn’t just need to be at the family dinner table that your kids decide to join you. If you can encourage them to help you out in the kitchen then they are going to show more of an interest in then sitting down to eat. They might enjoy the meal prep activity and how to put together a delicious meal which will make them feel more excited to sit down and taste the food they have helped to make. If you give your kids tasks to do in the kitchen it will keep them busy and enable them to feel part of the meal making process which will help you spend more time together as a family which is really important.
Buy a New Dining Table
If you haven’t got somewhere in which you can all sit down together comfortably as a family then it is going to be more difficult to encourage family meal times. Perhaps you need to buy yourself a new dining table with matching chairs so that it will be comfortable to enjoy having a meal and will create a bit of buzz at home by having some new furniture in the house. The more comfortable and accessible it is to sit down and eat together the more likely it will happen on a regular basis.
Overall it shouldn’t feel like a chore being able to enjoy some much needed family time together at home. But with these simple steps you could be enjoying a lovely family meal together in no time.
