Are Family Dinners Even Possible with Young Kids?

As the late, great Anthony Bourdain put it,

“We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.”

Family dinners are something we have made a commitment to making a priority in our house; and although it hasn’t been easy through all of the ages and stages of raising little ones, I know it’s worth it. Not only do studies show that kids and teens who have regular meals at home with their family are all around better off in life, it’s simply just a nice time to feel connection and support and take a break from our hectic lives to enjoy and learn about each other.

Sounds peaceful and amazing, right? Well, with a 3 year old and a 2 year old, dinners at my house are often anything but peaceful. However, below are some things we’ve practiced over time that really help make dinners a bit more enjoyable than this…

• The number-one, best way to have an enjoyable dinner is to serve something that everyone likes. This makes ​all​ the difference, but of course isn’t always possible. I try to serve at least one thing that I know the kids like (or at least they did at some point) as a part of each meal.
• Have a few simple, well defined rules for the table. Ours are below. We drilled the first 3 rules into the kids’ heads as soon as they were old enough to join us at the table. The next two have evolved as the kids grew.
  • Sit on your butt.
  • No playing with the tablecloth, utensils, food, etc.
  • ​No feet on the table.
  • You have to wear clothes (yup, we actually had to make this a rule!).
  • You must ​smell​, ​lick​, or ​taste​ everything on your plate before having seconds of anything.
• Play some quiet, relaxing music in the background
• Try to have dinner around the same time every night
• No snacks up to 2 hours before dinner
• Get the kids involved! Have them help prep, cook, chose recipes, set the table, etc.

One of the hardest parts about dinner time is to get the kids to actually sit and stay sitting at the table for longer than they can say, “I’m not hungry”.  Sure, I understand that a 2 year old doesn’t have as long of an attention span as a teenager or an adult, or even as a 3 year old, but I’ve found it’s important for everyone to sit at the table until everyone is done eating.

When the kids were littler, we would occasionally let them color at the table while everyone finished eating.

Now, we try to engage them in conversation to keep them entertained while we eat. We love playing games like…

• “I’m going to a picnic…”
• I spy
• Questions (each person has a chance to ask a question and the other members of the family have to answer it)
• Copy Cat (someone copies everything another person at the table is doing and you have to guess who they are copying)

Try out one of our little table games or make one up yourself!

What do you do to help make dinnertime possible with the whole family at the table?