Tips for Making the Family Meal Happen
Choose one night a week that is sacrosanct.
The family can vote on which day of the week this will be. Once chosen, this is the evening that no sleepover, work overtime, homework, or bedtime routine can touch.
Start small.
Only have a fifteen- or thirty-minute overlap with everyone in the house at the same time tonight? Avoid the temptation of buffet style and announce which five, ten, or fifteen minute chunk of this time will be spent together eating. Do the best you can to increase frequency of family dinners each week, even if it means abbreviated meal times. It’s having the time together, making it pleasant, and doing it often that matters.
Find recipes that allow for more time around the table.
If the likelihood of family meal time is higher when dinner is fast and easy (rather than the majority of time spent cooking, leaving limited time for eating), look for meal ideas that will shorten cook time. This could be batch cooking on the weekend or making less involved meals.
[Related: 12 Easy One Pot Meals To Save Your Weeknights]
Dinner doesn’t work? No problem.
Some families have seasons where there are literally no weekday or weekend nights when everyone is available to gather for dinner. If this is you, consider making Sunday morning brunch a new tradition. Once you’re in a rhythm with a weekly meal or two that works, you’ve got a good base to build from. The goal is to eventually be eating together at least five times per week. Start with a meal that works and build from there.
Involve your kids.
They can help with everything from grocery shopping to cooking. Keep an ongoing grocery list on the fridge and invite them to add to it when a grocery staple needs replenished. Check out a cookbook from the library (or download to your device) that has 30-minute dinner ideas with pictures for your kids to look at and help come up with new meal ideas. Older kids can be in charge of cooking dinner one night per week. And as soon as a child can walk steadily, he/she can begin setting and clearing the table.
Meaghan Ormsby, MS, RD is a private practice dietitian in Seattle, WA.