Reasons To Sit Down for Family Dinner

When was the last time you sat down for a family dinner?  With the kids back in school, sports, music, and other afterschool activities finding the time to cook a family dinner that you can sit down and enjoy together can be difficult.  However, rounding up the family for mealtime has some great benefits for not only your children but parents too. 

Reasons To Sit Down for Family Dinner

It doesn’t have to be dinner!  I know I say family dinner, but at the end of the day it’s about spending time together during mealtime!  Here are a few reasons that you should try to sit down together for breakfast, lunch or dinner several times a week. 

• Communication – Getting the family together for dinner provides everyone a chance to connect.  It’s a great chance for everyone to share something that happened during the day, maybe tell a few funny jokes, feel loved, and remember that they belong to a family who cares deeply. 

• Get to know your kids – Sitting down for a family meal gives parents a chance to hear about their kids day and pick up on things that might be bothering them.  You’ll also learn more about your child’s typically dinnertime conversations to know when something might have happened at school so you can talk to them later.  It’s not only good for you but for your child as well.  Sometimes children don’t want to come out and say, “I’m getting picked on” but talking to your child in the same setting daily can help you better recognize when something is wrong or they are in a bad mood, where you might miss it if everyone just grabs their plates and scatters to different areas of the house.

• Eat healthier – If you sit down for dinner as a family regularly you’re likely to cook more which allows you to make healthier choices for you and your family.

• Teach table manors – Family mealtime is a great time to teach and display table manners in a relaxed and comfortable environment.  It’s important children learn how to appropriately act at mealtime, it will be especially helpful as they get older.  Start early, it will benefit them in the long run.

• Control portions – When you cook and prepare your family meals you also control portions, which is another important thing for children to learn about.  Portion control is essential, and restaurants often serve HUGE portions, which gives kids the wrong impression.

• Have a healthier and closer family – Spending time together as a family helps create a healthier family physically and mentally.  It’s a great way to bond with your family and research has shown that teens are less likely to abuse drugs, smoke, and drink when they sit down for with the family at mealtime. 

• Cooking can be fun – Don’t think of rushing home and cooking dinner as pain in the booty, think of it has a stress free way to regroup from you day.  Have the family help or at least chat with you while you cook, relax, and make your family a healthy meal. 

• Save money – Sitting down for a home-cooked meal with the family helps you save money on eating out. 

While family dinner might not always be perfect, it’s worth the effort and can be life-changing for you and your children – better bond, communication, ability to recognize and address issues your child may be having, eat healthier, and be closer with your children.  It’s a win-win in my book and I just love what DinnerCall app is doing by launching The Billion Family Dinners Challenge for National Family Meals Month. 

September is National Family Meals Month

Happy National Family Meals Month!  

The Billion Family Diners Challenge launched on September 1^st 2015 and is calling for busy American’s like yourself to stop and reconnect at mealtime.  This movement is to bring people together by challenging them to achieve one billion shared meals and encouraging friends and family members to join.  You can encourage others to join by simply logging your experiences on social media and the DinnerCall app! 

DinnerCall is taking a different approach.  Rather than preaching to us about the importance of unplugging during mealtime they are suggesting family’s embrace mobile tech as a hub of our lives.  Using the app to share pictures, encourage other families to join DinnerCall and The Billion Family Dinners Challenge and use the app to find table topics. Now, I’m not saying you and the kids should have your phone to your nose and be on Facebook the whole time, but it is fun to take fun family pictures.  It’s about the memories and the benifits for everyone when the family sits down for a meal together.

I recently downloaded the DinnerCall app and joined the challenge with my family.  It’s awesome, and a lot of fun to use.  My favorite thing about the app is the fun conversation starters.  Tonight our conversation starter was “If you have to leave the earth on a space ship and take four friends with you, who would you take?  We all went around the table and answered the question, which I’m going to admit was difficult and we ended up changing it to 7 people because there is currently seven of us living in the house, but it was a lot of fun and it really made everyone stop and think about just how important everyone in the room was to them.  Not only was a great conversation starter, it helped the kids realize how important family is, and we even solved the problem together.  Rather than leaving anyone behind us figured out seating arrangements, lol. 

[easy-tweet tweet=”Join the #BillionDinners Challenge today. It’s fun, easy, and great for the family. @sjblahblahblog”]

The DinnerCall app also allows you to track meal occasions, which includes the number of people you’re eating with, minutes spent at the dinner table, along with your long-term averages and it even allows you to compare things on a global scale.  Which come to think about it, I think the reason the conversation starter only asked us to pick four people was because I accidently selected four people and didn’t go back to change it.  OOPS, I’ll have to remember to go back and change it going forward. 

Anyway, you can also keep a log of pictures to help you remember some of your best family meals.  Remember every meal might not be picture perfect, but it’s a memory worth keeping and the time you’ll spend with your family is priceless.  Plus, you’ll also see global dinnertime activity, how many people are eating around the world, when they are eating, stats page, and even check out how many people shared dinner with someone else at the same time you’re sitting down when you’re finished tracking. 

You can learn more about The Billion Dinners Challenge on their website at http://billiondinners.org and you’ll want to join the challenge by downloading their AWESOME app in Google Play, and the Apple App Store.  So all you iOS users, be sure to be on the lookout for the DinnerCall app.

“To join in tracking 10 Family Dinners in 2 weeks, take the #billiondinners challenge today! The 10 in 2 challenge is simple: sit down to 10 family meals in the next 2 weeks. In just 10 meals, you’ll begin to see a difference. In just 10 meals, dinnertime will be something your family looks forward to each night.”

Leave us a comment and let us know if you’ll be joining us by downloaded the DinnerCall app and taking the Billion Dinners Challenge.

This is a sponsored post.  All opinions are our own!  We’re loving The Billion Dinner Challenge and hope you’ll join us!