Bayside Dietetics
By Sarah Smith of Bayside Dietetics
www.baysidedietetics.com.au
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If you’ve read my blogs over the years, you may have noticed that I don’t preach what to feed your family. Chances are you already know enough about that. Sometimes new information or food ideas are useful, but the message you’ll consistently hear in my blogs is to remove the food battle or food “shoulds” and allow everyone to come to a meal ready to enjoy the time together and to naturally judge their own appetites.
If that approach fits your values around food, then you might take the opportunity to do a quick mental audit on whether your family meals are currently aligning with those values. How does each family member feel about coming to the table for a meal? Does the meal feel relaxed enough for everyone to comfortably stay at the table and meet their needs around food?
If mealtimes are feeling a little low on family connection or enjoyment, here are eight ideas to stimulate the family to laugh and engage together. Using them at mealtimes may help to change the mealtime vibe closer where you’d like it to be.
Stimulating questions
Here are some questions to stimulate interesting conversation. The best thing about this activity is that it can be adapted to any age:
“If you were a book character, which one would you be?”
“What superpower would you most like to have?”
“If you could go back/forward in time, where would you travel to?”
“If your favourite toy could talk, what would it say?”
“What is your ideal pet / holiday etc?”
“What is your favourite smell?”
“If you were the parent for a day, what would you change?”
“What makes you feel nervous / happy / silly?”
“If you could get rid of one thing in the world, what would it be?”
“If you had $10 / $1000 for older children what would you spend it on?”
“What is the silliest sound?”
“When was the last time you made someone smile?”
“Do you think it is more important to be rich or kind?”
“If you wrote a book, what would it be about?”
Would you rather
This is another game appropriate for all ages. Ask each family member to pick which they’d rather do…be as big as an elephant or as small as a mouse? Would they rather have crab claws for hands or a tail that wags when they are happy? For older children, would they rather be able to heal people or make people laugh? Create your own or check out this great list:
https://www.familyeducation.com/family-games/the-ultimate-list-of-would-you-rather-questions-for-kids
Celebrity Head / Guess Who
Write a fictional or real character/person on a sticky note and put it on the forehead of the family member on your right. Take it in turns to ask questions to guess the character on your forehead. Questions need to be yes or no, and if the family answers no, the next person takes a turn to ask questions.
Bananarama or Scrabble
While the dinner table may not be the best place for a full setup of the game, a simplified version may be engaging. Both Scrabble and Bananarama have letter tiles that you can divide between family members. Each family member can then try and create a word using the letters they’ve been provided. This may be done separately or to form a grid of words together.
You may even place a few letters in the middle of the table that everyone can try and build on. For example, the letters O N E may be in the middle. One family member may have an “N” to make NONE while another may have “S”, “I” and “E” to make ONESIE etc.
If you don’t have letter tiles, you can easily make them using paper and a pen.
Younger children may team with a parent to create a word together.
Word games
Word games are useful to keep little hands on knives and forks rather than being moved to a physical mealtime game.
A simple one is to think of a topic and a letter, and go around the table asking everyone to think of a new word on the topic that starts with the letter. For example, fruits and vegetables starting with “P” or something made of paper starting with “B”. Everyone takes a turn adding a word until they can’t think of any new ones. Older children may be able to extend this to use the last letter of the previous word to start the next word. For example, on the topic of fruit and vegetables, banana could lead into apple which leads into eggplant.
Another fun word game is “I went to the zoo”. To begin, the first person says, “I went to the zoo and I saw a …” and they choose an animal. The next person says “I went to the zoo and I saw a …” and they say the first person’s animal then add one of their own. Family members take turns to recite the animals and add their own. The longer the list, the harder it gets to recite all the animals. See how far you can get!
You may also use the game to visit the supermarket or list favourite football players.
Crazy Story
Pick someone to start a story. They may start with a single word or a sentence. The person sitting next to them, then needs to add a word or sentence to build the story and so on. See what crazy stories you can build as a family.
Gratitude
Simply ask everyone to tell the other family members something about their day that they were grateful for. You can also do this with something that made them laugh, something they learnt, something that was challenging etc.
Switch
This game is sure to get some laughter. Write everyone’s names on a piece of paper and throw them in a bowl. Before your family sits down for dinner, ask everyone to draw a name. Everyone then has to sit in the other person’s regular seat and act like them during the dinner. You can also write down book characters or animals to impersonate.
