Dinnertime provides a great opportunity for the family to engage in meaningful conversation but it doesn’t seem to happen automatically in my home. In fact, if left to itself, our dinner time conversation usually starts with a complaint about one of the food items or the size of the portion and moves on to debates among the kids as they give each other instruction on the correct way to chew and other food etiquette.
A while back I entered into the fray with a new idea. Why don’t we encourage one another? One by one each of our children received a turn to encourage someone else at the table. My wife Lois and I would join in as well, usually going last to encourage anyone who might have been left out. I found our children, if given something to talk about, could have some very encouraging meaningful conversation. Since those first encouragement exercises we have explored other ways to lead the family in meaningful conversation and fellowship during our main meal. Here are a few of ideas to try with your family at dinnertime.
- Save individual encouragements for members of your family to share with everyone during your dinner meal. Just before I wrote this blog entry I received an email encouragement from a friend about my son. It ended up being part of our encouragement time at dinner that night. This helped also in showing the kids how God loves to provide opportunities for us to build up one another.
- Share testimonies and articles with your family that affected you. It might be a page from a book you are reading or a story from the days paper. If it affected you, read it to your family and talk about how it touched your life.
- Read a novel to your children a little bit at a time. As soon as your children get hooked into the story, they will long for you to read to them at dinner. It gives them something to look forward to at dinner time. We’ve read through the Chronicles of Narnia, some of the Little House books, and stories from Brian Jacques’ Redwall series as well as Pilgrims Progress. Sometimes we read a few pages while other times we’ve read a whole chapter.
- Do your family devotions after dinner. If you are using our Get Into the Story devotional but can’t seem to get everyone on the same schedule in the morning, put the book by your spot at the table and read the days devotion just after you finish eating.
- Ask good questions. They don’t always need to be spiritual. A month or so ago I asked everyone which of the vacations we took in the past ten years would they like to do over again? It lead to some great interaction and gave me some ideas of what the family might like to do for a future vacation.
Of course, all of these ideas assume you are regularly eating together as a family. This isn’t always possible but the benefits of sharing the dinner meal together are worth trying to protect that time. If you get home a little later, try to eat a little later as a family whenever possible.
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