Better Dinners

Unfortunately for Michael, the title of this post does not refer to a higher quality of more tasty food. :>

Fortunately for our family, though, the title of this post does refer to our having a more peaceful, enjoyable dinner time together.

Let me back up. Dinner time at our house was, bar none, the worst hour of the day. No matter what time I started feeding the kids, they were ALWAYS whiny, fussy, and complain-y in a throw-self-down-on-the-floor-and-cry sort of way (even when I made their favorite food!).

The fact that dinners were unpleasant deeply saddened me and completely exhausted any remaining emotional reserves. I so wanted dinner to be a warm, fuzzy time of family bonding. That's how it was with Leave it To Beaver and The Waltons, right?

Well, enter The Family Conversation Jar.

We're only on our third night, but already, we have had the best three dinners together as a family ever.

I had looked into family dinner devotion books, but really, we do devotions in the morning during school and at bedtime...too much of a good thing is not a good thing, right?

Part of our ABC Jesus Loves Me curriculum includes a set of questions on everything from correct social behaviors, to emotions, to random likes, etc, etc. I had printed them all out but was having trouble finding time to go over them with Jonathan.

One day I looked at the questions...I looked at the dinner table...I looked back at the questions and I had a flash of brilliance. I let Jonathan cut out the questions (another flash of brilliance--took about an hour), put them in this glass holder, and began a new tradition. Every night, we each pick out a question to read and answer. We have bonded over favorite pizza toppings, what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what do we do if someone gives us a present we don't like, and what do we do when our friends don't want to play with us. Jonathan loves it!

Great questions, great learning, great bonding, great memories...great dinner.

What do you do to bond over dinner?