Level Up Your Mealtime Game For Your Family's health and overall connection

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Have you heard about the mental health benefits of family meals together? Family meals are protective against a variety of child and teen challenges such as depression/suicidal thoughts, disordered eating, substance use, and violent behavior. This is especially important to be aware of with mental health disorders on the rise in teens.

So, how do you make the most of family mealtime? Well, today I will discuss a few different ideas for leveling up your mealtime game by making your time together higher quality and more meaningful. I will discuss some questions to ask at dinner to spark discussion. I will also explore some realistic goals and expectations to have. There are some insights and observations from my own family I would like to share with you. Lastly, I have a family meeting activity idea and some inspirational questions for you to think about.

Meaningful (and Fun) Questions to Discuss at Dinnertime:

• What was your high (or best part of the day)?
• What was your low (or worst part of the day)?
• What was the funniest part of your day?
• What are you grateful for?
• What are you looking forward to?

​I recommend making the above questions (or another set of core questions that you prefer) a habit that you do as often as possible at dinnertime. You can play around with the questions you to ask to find which ones you like the best. Or start from scratch and make up your own.

Realistic Expectations and Goals for Family Mealtime:

• The questions above can work with couples who have kids or who don’t have kids. The questions are nice because they really help you to catch up with and connect with anyone important in your life that you are sitting down to eat a meal with.
• It’s okay if you can’t eat every meal together with your partner or your kids. Don’t give yourself a guilt trip. For many families eating every dinner all together just isn’t a realistic expectation with work schedules, the kids’ extracurricular activities, and possibly the parenting plan if you are a blended family. Maybe for your family, breakfast meals or weekend meals are when the family can all be together. Furthermore, you don't have to only ask these questions at mealtimes; discuss them when it works in your family's schedule.
• You can ask the questions above at breakfast or lunch too, but you might change them a little bit. For instance, since breakfast is at the beginning of the day, you probably wouldn't ask the high and the low for the day because it really hasn't all happened yet! No worries! Just brainstorm some other more relevant questions to ask (for example, "what are you most excited about school or work today?"). Or, you can ask what the high and the low was of the day before. If you haven't seen your kids all week because they were staying with their other parent, you might ask them what the high and the low was of the entire week.
• Focus on the quality of your interaction. Put away your phones (totally out of sight and on silent), don’t answer phone calls and texts, and focus on being fully present. How often do you answer texts, answer phone calls, or respond to social media posts at dinner? A little more than you'd like to admit? You might consider a no electronics rule (for everyone) at dinnertime. 
• If you do have kids, the parents are the leaders of the family, so it’s up to you to model and put in place healthy mealtime habits.
• If you start to implement new mealtime habits and your kids aren’t so hot about the new rules and new questions, stick with it. Don’t give up when you ask your kids about their day and they don’t give you much of a response. Or maybe your kids complain about not having their cell phone at the table. Please know mama and papa bears that you ARE making progress just by starting some new habits! What counts is that you demonstrate consistent genuine care and concern. Consistent genuine care and concern is forward progress no matter what your child's immediate response is. When you do that with your children, they will get the overall sense/feeling that you love them, care for them, have their backs, and are genuinely interested in their lives. This impacts the culture of your family (for generations), and in my opinion, it helps create an atmosphere where stress levels can come down and bodies can physically and mentally heal knowing there is safety and love in the home. So, your kids will share when they are ready; just keep doing your thing no matter what they do! You might find that outside of mealtime they share something important about their lives with you because they feel comfortable sharing the information. Be patient and don’t push too hard. These questions are supposed to be fun and spark conversation. For more on this topic, click here for my blog on 17 Tips to Encourage Healthy Parent and Child Communication.

Insights and Observations from My Own Family
Start when your kids are young, and start now. My family (Nathan and Alex) began discussing the dinner questions above at family dinners when Alex was 2. We usually have each person answer all the questions at once, and then we go to the next person. You of course can do them how you like; maybe you ask one question and then have each person take a turn answering the same question. When Alex was 2 she couldn’t always answer all the questions, but she answered quite a few of them. Some days she talked a bunch, and other days she didn't have anything to say. Sometimes she didn't say anything for several days. What was amazing was that because we made it a habit at dinner, Alex started asking us the dinnertime questions at mealtime! She now has all of our regular dinnertime questions memorized and seems to genuinely enjoy our mealtime interactions. Sometimes she even asks other people or her friends the mealtime questions.

I like that my daughter is learning at a young age about the concept of gratitude since so much has come out about how important gratitude is to our mental health. I also know it’s important for me to stop every day and think about the things in life I am grateful for. For me personally, practicing a mindset of gratitude has really helped me to be aware of the things I do have and the things that are going right in my life. It's sometimes easy to get caught up in all the things I have to do, the stresses in my life, or the things I wish were different.

You know, I really look forward to hearing my family answer the questions. It helps me stay connected to my family from the day to day. I have noticed that sometimes information gets shared with each other that likely may not have been shared unless we took the time to ask and check in. There have definitely been moments where I heard a response and I have thought to myself, “I’m glad we ask these questions!” I also enjoy answering the questions—it’s nice to be able to share what happened in my day.

Along the lines of sharing your day and connecting, research is finding that loneliness and disconnection is harmful to our health. Is there someone you can connect with regularly about your day even if you live alone? The article I just linked to about loneliness recommends quality face to face interaction as the best way to combat loneliness, and discusses how social media can actually make us feel more isolated.

My family falls into the category of some scheduling conflicts so I miss family dinner Monday through Thursday (I work and see clients in the afternoons and evenings because that is a good time for couples to come into the office). So, I just aim to be flexible. For example, in the mornings I have the opportunity to have a nice slow breakfast with my daughter. I use that time to connect with her. Sometimes on the drive to my daughter’s preschool I will ask her what she is looking forward to. She has spontaneously come up with a question she wants me to ask her every day—she likes having me ask “what kind of day do you want to have today?” When I ask her, she usually says a "silly day," because she loves being silly! In the evenings after my daughter is asleep, my husband and I will ask each other the “dinnertime questions” so we can catch up with each other. On Friday’s and the weekends, we all have the opportunity to eat dinner together, and so we use that time to ask the dinnertime questions.

Activity Idea
Even though parents are the leaders in the family, it doesn’t mean you have to do all the work. Hooray! Find ways to include your kids in thinking about family mealtime. For example, call a family meeting. Have everyone (especially the kids) brainstorm ideas for family mealtime rules (e.g., no answering text messages at the table). Do a separate brainstorm for your set of regular family mealtime questions. Remember the rules of a good brainstorm session: don’t shoot down anyone’s idea, put all the ideas down on a list, and once the brainstorming is done go through and decide what you will do. By including your kids in discussing family mealtime habits and encouraging them to come up with some of the rules, this will help garner more buy-in and interest. Your kids may have so much interest that they might even remind you when you are not following them! You're welcome :) 

Inspirational Questions:

1. What are some of your best, favorite, or helpful family mealtime habits? What do you think really helps your family to feel connected at mealtime? 
2. Are there some good habits at mealtime that you have done in the past, that you really liked, but maybe got dropped off because life got busy? Can you add them back in? This applies to a lot of things in life; it's okay to be in survival mode (it happens to all of us). Just whenever things calm down, remember to put back in place the good habits you have had in the past that worked for you.
3. If you had to narrow it down to one, what mealtime habit would make the most difference for your family?
4. What are some bad mealtime habits that might need changed? What shows you that someone is distracted and not engaged in a family meal? Can you flip around the negative and use this as inspiration to discover what you would rather do instead? In other words, what is the opposite of the bad habit?
5. Were there any mealtime habits that you really liked growing up that you want to implement, or do more of, in your household now? You might consider sharing the answer with your partner and kids (if you have children), and explain why it was meaningful to you—please know that sharing your story is important and meaningful for your family.
6. When your kids are all grown up, what do you want them to remember about family meals? As a Relationship Legacy Leader, what impact do you hope to make on the next seven generations in your family?
7. What is one simple change you can implement today to foster connection at mealtime? 

Thank You for Joining Me Today
Thank you so much for joining me today. I don’t take it for granted. I greatly enjoy being with other Relationship Legacy Leaders. I hope today’s blog got you thinking and gave you some helpful ideas for leveling up your mealtime game. What are your favorite mealtime questions? Please comment below. I know you have some great ideas out there, and I would love your input. My family has been using some of the same mealtime questions for a while, and so I am interested in changing things up and trying out your fun mealtime question ideas!

Have a wonderful rest of the day!

If this blog was helpful for you, please like and share the link to this blog on your social media page: http://tinyurl.com/y5xtfl47 Thank you so much.
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All the best,
Holly