With new schedules and all of the back-to-school activities, it’s easy to skip family dinnertime. But there are so many benefits to keeping this important part of your evening routine—or getting back to it if mealtime was more flexible during summer vacation. In addition to structured time where you can catch up with your kids, cooking and eating dinner together teaches them an important life skill, inspires good eating habits and encourages contributing to family chores.
If you are struggling to carve out family dinner time, here are a few tips to make planning easier during the busy school year.
Build a Weekly Meal Plan
Plan your weeknight dinner schedule each weekend and make a grocery list of ingredients before heading to the store. Stick with simple recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less and try to incorporate ingredients from each of the five food groups—grains, vegetables, fruits, protein and dairy—as well as plant-based protein from beans, nuts and seeds.
Stock Your Freezer with Healthy Heat-and-Serve Meals
Not every dinner needs to be a made-from-scratch, gourmet achievement. In fact, it’s helpful to keep some heat-and-serve dinners (like lasagna, mac and cheese, chicken nuggets or pizza) in your freezer for days when unexpected practices or school activities pop up—or you just don’t have the time or energy to cook
Give Each Family Member a Mealtime Task
Just as giving your kids morning responsibilities can help you streamline the morning rush, divvying up meal prep tasks can help emphasize the “family” aspect of dinnertime. For example, your youngest children can set the table or wash fruits and vegetables, teens can assemble salads or assist with the entree and adults can handle stovetop and oven-based cooking.
Consider Offering Two Dinner Times
In a perfect world, your family would have dinner at the same time each night, with all members present. But modern family life often requires creativity and compromise.If you or your significant other gets home from work past your scheduled mealtime, have one parent prep the meal and eat a smaller portion with hungry kids at an earlier time. Kids with extracurricular after-school activities can join (or re-join) the table later in the evening, when the other parent is present. .
Let Conversations Flow
The dinner table provides a natural setting to ask your kids about their day. To encourage conversation, it helps to ask questions that require elaboration (“Tell me one good thing and one bad thing about your day at school,”) instead of ones that require short or yes/no answers.
If you have more than one kid, it’s OK to let the quiet ones listen. You can also invite extended family members over, or your child’s friends, to make some meals feel like a special occasion and build deeper connections.
Focus on Enjoying Food, Not Perfect Manners
It’s in every frustrated parent’s nature to want to encourage picky eaters by comparing them to their siblings—or bribe them with dessert. But praising one child for eating more food or finishing quickly can sound like criticism to others, and making sweets a reward turns dinnertime into a chore.
Speak kindly to your kids when asking them to eat, as well as when praising manners like good posture or chewing with mouths closed. It’s more important for you to spend time together as a family and model healthy eating habits than to demand perfect behavior.
Give Yourself Grace
Always remember to give yourself grace. Life with kids is busy and sometimes the drive-thru is the only option—and that’s okay! Even striving for family mealtime a couple of days a week will help your family reap the benefits.
