Mealtime tips - Parenting Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
As kids grow older, they should take part in helping to prepare the meal. This can seem like a lot more trouble than it's worth, but at a certain age, you want your kids to be able to take care of themselves. At a certain age, they should be able to take responsibility for one entire meal. By the time a child is 12, I think they ought to be able to prepare a simple meal for the whole family. This way, they learn to take care of themselves when they are on their own. We tried this in our family, and it worked to a degree. It led to the development of what I call the no vegetable diet.
Video 2 Transcript
Something that I think has been a good thing that our family has done for mealtimes is that set the expectation right away that mealtime is family time and that you eat together and you talk and no electronics. I have some great memories from mealtimes with my family. Another thing that I started doing a little bit later when our kids were a little bit older is that I put them in charge each in charge of a night that they would be totally responsible for the meal and I help them come up with recipes, maybe help them try something new. Also we would do like an international week where they would come up with a dinner from a different country. It gives them a lot of ideas for meals. It's been great.
Video 3 Transcript
If you have kids that don't really like to help clean up dinner, something that I liked to do for my siblings was turn on music. So I would turn on our favorite movie soundtrack and we would clean and sing together as we cleaned and it was really fun and it kind of made us forget that we were cleaning.
Video 4 Transcript
Kind of an unspoken rule at my house is that we aren't on our phones during dinner. Like, we just don't do that. And my mom was really good growing up at making sure that we all ate together, and unless we had like a specific activity that was unavoidable during dinnertime, we were there and we ate together. I feel like that really strengthened my family and has helped me to have more loving relationships with my family. Just those small times every day that we would spend together really helped us to grow together.
Video 5 Transcript
One of my greatest things that I've cherished over many decades of being a mother, and I'll never deviate from it, is the absolute importance of gathering as a family in the evening around the table for mealtime, for dinner time. Years ago we were running to ball fields and ballet concerts and really spread thin with all of our children and a ton of extracurricular. And when we made the choice to exit public school and begin homeschooling, that made an enormous difference with the cohesiveness and the nature and the culture of our family to come back around the dinner table to have time to share and connect and give our children a safe and wonderful and no pressure time around the table to share what was on their hearts and to connect as a family. I don't think it can be overstated how important that hour is around the dinner table at night with your children.
