Parenting is a tough job. Unfortunately we often have to balance parenting with a number of other tough jobs, like the one that pays the bills or that of maintaining our relationship with our partner, for example.
Finding enough time to spend with our children and to explore all those parenting things such as communication, encouraging achievements at home and school, boundary setting and teaching social skills is almost impossible. Yet there is one simple (not easy) way to achieve many of those goals at the one and same time.
Sharing one meal a day together for say 5 days per week around the dining room table. That would equal some 260 plus quality hours of parenting each year! Meals are a great time for people to share information and communicate, engage in that elusive eye contact necessary to reading the emotional moods of those you live and go to school with, raise interesting topics for discussion and allow questions to be asked and explored by all.
It may not sound like much but it’s a great way to begin, everybody has to eat, and if some simple ground rules are set at the beginning such as no talking with you mouth full, waiting for others to finish before you speak, no leaving the table until everyone is finished for example it could just be the start of an exciting adventure.
Research supports this simple approach and it is worth trying.
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