Simple Ways To Improve Family Meal Times
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Simple Ways To Improve Family Meal Times

Mealtimes with your children might sometimes be stressful, especially when they don’t want to eat what you have prepared for them. And getting your children to come to dinner might be difficult too, especially if they are fixated on their phones or gaming devices. 

So, if you are relating to this, here are some useful tips for improving mealtimes in your household. 

family meal times

#1: Reduce snacks between meals

If your children are hungry, they are more likely to heed your call to dinner when mealtime rolls around, even if they are busy elsewhere. They will be more likely to eat what you have served up too, as they won’t have filled themselves up beforehand with snacky foods that could spoil their appetite. So, go easy on the snacks in between mealtimes, and make sure your children eat very little during the hour or so before mealtime begins. 

#2: Get your children involved in the cooking

If your children have had a hand in the meal before eating, they might be more inclined to eat what is before them, even if those dreaded veggies are involved. Research has shown that their involvement can influence their attitude towards food, so find ways to involve them in the kitchen, and be age-appropriate when handing out jobs for them to do. 

#3: Find ways to prepare healthy foods in fun and interesting ways

If your children are resistant to those foods that you know are good for them, try to be creative with your meal prep. So, rather than serve your children a plate of vegetables, you might want to make your own homemade pizzas and use some of these vegetables as toppings. If your children are hesitant about eating fruits and vegetables, you could turn these into a smoothie to compliment the foods they do prefer eating at mealtime. These are just a couple of ideas, but for more inspiration, check out these kid-friendly recipes and experiment with your cooking. 

#4: Sit around the table at mealtime

If you have a dinner table at home, use it! Eating together is just one of the things your family should do regularly, as you will have the opportunity to talk to one another about each other’s days, and you will be able to monitor what your children are eating. So, no matter how old your kids are, get together with them. Have a no-phone rule too, as this way there will be fewer distractions when you’re trying to bring about a sense of family unity. 

#5: Treat your children

Healthy eating is important, but that doesn’t mean you can’t treat your children at mealtimes. The promise of a bowl of ice cream or something as scrumptious as a vanilla mug cake from BakedByAnIntrovert.com can do much to encourage your children to polish off their main meals before dessert time comes around, especially if you lay down the rule that they need to eat what’s on their plate first. Of course, you can still find healthy twists on traditional dessert recipes, so look online for a few ideas. 

Simple Ways To Improve Family Meal Times

Mealtimes should be fun, not stressful, so use our suggestions if you have related to this article, and see what kind of a difference they can make to your household. 

Please include attribution to WPSpublish.com with this graphic.

Early Childhood Development Phases and Beyond

40 Comments on “Simple Ways To Improve Family Meal Times

  1. Snacking too much and NOT eating at the table is something my family and I really need to work on. I want to be like the families on the sitcoms I used to watch lol

  2. Loved each tip. It’s really important to sit along I believe. And also the treat part is like a reward which every child longs for.

  3. My family and I need to get better at snacking between meals! But sitting around the dinner table is my favorite part of the day 😀

  4. Sitting around the dinner table is the best part . And encouraging healthy snacks it good too. Great post

  5. Oversnacking ruins proper meal time. We try to minimize snacks at home (except fruits coz that’s good).

  6. Wow these are the great points about improve family meal.Here in my house we are working Reduce snacks instead were making healthy food like fruits desserts.

  7. What great tips to improve family meal times during these times. I hope parents and families can get inspired to make more meaningful meal times from this post!

  8. These are great tips. I noticed that when my stepdaughter helps cooking dinner she likes to eat it more. Weird how that works lol.

  9. These are good ideas, and I like not having all the snacks so that people are more hungry at meals. It is nice to have a good sit-down dinner. We are often too busy to have much of a set dinnertime.

  10. These are some great tips!! i love family meals!! my daughter used to like cooking with us, now she just likes to hang out in the kitchen with us.

  11. I used to give the kids snacks 3 times a day but I noticed they were losing their appetites,most of the times they were not hungry enough to have main meals so I’ve reduced snacks from 3 times to once per day.

  12. My boyfriend gave me free reign in the kitchen. I love cooking and he loves to eat. Hahaha! Though since the lock down started, I try to get him involved by helping me research for new meals to cook and in preparing the food. In return, he also gets to choose his dessert (thanks youtube!). We’re both guilty of number 1! Thank you for the tips!

  13. One silver lining of the quarantine for us has actually sitting down for dinner all together

  14. I love this! We make an effort to all eat as a family every night and it defiantly helps. I am going to try to cut back on the snacking but it makes me feel bad!

  15. reducing snacking is one thing i need to work on some more.. 🙂 but yes, all these are things we love to follow as a family too

  16. Love these tips! Due to the lockdown, my children are now involved in cooking and they’re having a blast. I have never seen them more excited about dinner time.

  17. Snacking during the day has been a problem! I do think getting kids involved with the cooking is a great idea!

  18. Mealtimes are such a great time to connect as a family. To be honest, our busy schedule doesn’t allow much for sitting down as a family. Things are quieter now that we are in quarantine and we should take advantage of it.

  19. I grew up eating dinner as a family every night. I knew I wanted to make this a priority with my own kids.

  20. This is a great post right about now! We’ve been having major meal time struggles. I know for a fact I give too many snacks, that’s for sure. And it’s true – why not treat them to a yummy dessert at the end of the meal. I need to loosen up a bit. haha!

  21. These are all great tips to improve family meal time. It is really important to eat with family completely and make a talk about something should parents know.

  22. If something tastes better than you expected, you could use the word wow to express your surprise. If you say something tastes amazing, you’re saying it tastes even better than great or really good.

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