Family Dinner

I tend to beat myself up a little bit about my boys' poor eating habits. I am always focusing on what they eat at dinnertime. If they don't eat anything I cooked, I deem it an unsuccessful meal. But recently I read something about the "how, where, and with who" when it comes to eating family dinner, and how those things are just as important, if not more important, than what my kids are eating. While I still place a lot of importance on the types of foods my family eats, this article did make me feel better about our family dinnertime. And it made me realize that I am actually doing something right!

Every night we sit down at the table together as a family. TV is always turned off, unless I make a conscious decision to make it a "movie night" or something like that. Nobody is on the phone or playing a video game while we are eating. It is just the 5 of us and our food.

The food is almost always homemade. It may not be very gourmet these days, but I do my best to make it healthy and tasty.

While we are eating we share our favorite part of the day and our worst part of the day. We started this tradition about a year ago and I love it. The boys have come to expect the question from me "What was your favorite part of the day?" and they often fight over who gets to share first. Ryan typically answers the same thing...."Playing with Daddy!". Lucas, however, always stops to really think about his answer. And he always comes up with a really great part of his day!

The other night I posed the question to Lucas. He sat there thinking for a minute, and then shouted "Right now!". I loved his answer! My favorite time of the day is often dinnertime, and I love that we are forming a tradition as a family of sitting down together and sharing our day with each other.

Now if I could just get my boys to eat what I cook!

What does dinnertime look like at your house?