Tips for Involving Your Kids in Family Meals

Eating meals together has many benefits for the family unit as well as each individual member of the family. Eighty-four percent of people agree that family meals are important. However, only 30-50% of families manage to regularly eat meals at home together due to different schedules, conflict, mental health conditions, food scarcity, and ingrained habits.

The positive effects of eating together include:

• Structured time to discuss different topics and check-in with each other leads to feeling closer, more connected and better known by family and others invited to meals
• Better nourishment – home-prepared meals contain more fruits and vegetables as well as less sweets and processed foods
• Slower eating, less obesity
• Increased marital and family satisfaction
• Lower teen substance use
• Better recognition of emerging mental health conditions and eating issues or disorders
• Increased gratitude

Involving Children in Meal Preparation

The benefits are multiplied when children are involved in the meal planning, preparation and clean-up!

• Counting items, measuring ingredients and learning about fractions can all help build math skills with younger children.
• Cooking teaches a real-world skill, provides a sense of accomplishment and pride, and boosts self-confidence, responsibility and self-esteem
• Meal prepping with kids offers the opportunity to learn about food safety and hygiene
• Provides a way to explore their artistic side
• Engages the senses which is great for anxiety reduction and memory building
• Families have the chance to connect with and talk about their unique family culture and traditions
• Bonding opportunities for adults and children
• Exploring different foods and food groups offers a fun atmosphere
• Shared mealtime is a great time to talk about health, nutrition and build a positive perception of food. It is also a great time to talk about the day, kids’ friends and what’s happening in your child’s life

Meal Planning with Kids

Meal planning gives a little predictability and perhaps something to look forward to, and it holds families accountable in the sense that they’ve purchased and committed to a meal already. We all need nutritious food to fuel our bodies no matter what age, and it is integral to good physical and mental health.

The meal planning process starts with deciding what to eat in advance, which can involve a casual or more formal polling of family members about what they like, don’t like, and suggestions for weekly meals. This is actually much easier than making it up as you go or waiting until you’re tired at the end of a long day, and opening the fridge to discover there’s not much inside!

Meal planning may involve conversations about foods family members won’t eat (I’m looking at you sardines/cottage cheese/olives) or allergies. Some find it helpful to limit “won’t eats” to three foods (whole groups of food cannot count as one) and decide that they are not willing to do what amounts to short order cooking and making lots of different kinds of food so that everyone is happy. (There are exceptions of course, like special diets and sensory considerations.)

• Look through cookbooks or have themes—like holidays, different types of cuisines and meals from books or movies
• Create a favorites list for everyone in the family. Talk about why they are your favorites.
• Guide them in writing a shopping list for menus they helped choose.
• Have children help determine which items you already have for recipes and which you need to purchase. Perhaps approach like a scavenger hunt, where you list off the ingredients and they find and count what is in the kitchen and/or pantry.
• Post the weekly menu in the kitchen; ask kids if they can decorate it.
• Many people subscribe to meal services. In this case, make meal choosing a family activity. Parents and kids can review what they are in the mood for, remind us about what they don’t like, and discuss what meals they’ll be attending in the first place.

Grocery Shopping with Kids

Even basic meal plans require food, and so we go to the grocery store (to select our own items off the shelf or have the items waiting to pick up) or bring the grocery store to us via delivery. I haven’t talked to many people who enjoy grocery shopping. Some love it, but many abhor it, and some are simply overwhelmed by it: bright lights, overabundance of options, implications for appearance and weight, difficult choices because of cost.

Grocery shopping needn’t be an exercise in dread, and if there is any trepidation or anticipated hassle, there’s strength in numbers. Bringing family members when you grocery shop along can…

• Make shopping go faster (yeah!)
• Help parents teach kids how to read labels and compare volume and price for the best deals
• Prepare kids to shop for themselves and parents if they are busy or indisposed
• Help kids understand the cost of food, which can influence their own consumption—no guilt trips, just awareness, gratitude, and making choices when there are limits

Grocery shopping can be made to be a little fun too. Kids can be given choices and the opportunity to make decisions/plans about lunches if they bring theirs to school, and smaller kids can be given responsibility to look for certain items or place them in the cart.

Meal Preparation with Kids

Regardless of the size of your kitchen, you can cook with others, including smaller children. Although precautions need to be taken for safety (i.e. exercise extreme caution and supervision when using knives, appliances, hot surfaces), kids can learn alongside adults (while adults can also learn) many cooking and life skills, such as:

• Measuring and the importance of precision (especially when baking).
• Hygiene to avoid food-borne illness (hands, vegetables, counters, cutting boards).
• Reading to the end of the recipe so you don’t make assumptions or mix things in wrong order
• How to improvise and find substitutions for ingredients you can’t find at the store or when you’ve already gotten home, realized you don’t have something the recipe calls for, and don’t want to go back (so you don’t just scrap it all and fall back on delivery or takeout).
• How to multiply a recipe for more people.
• Timing so things come out at certain times and don’t get overcooked.
• Safe storage of food.
• Using appliances and simple machine utensils safely, such as a can opener, mixer, microwave.
• How to work as a team and navigate around a kitchen.

Assigning Roles

Everyone can be included and can have a role:

• Weekly meal planning
• Grocery shopping
• Cooking
• Place setting
• Saying prayer
• Choosing topics of conversation
• Clearing table
• Dish cleanup

Tips for Talking to Your Kids at Mealtime

• Save the four C’s—Conflict, Confrontation, Criticism, and Complaining—for another time
• Approach table talk with a free flow style of rolling topics and standard questions or topics for conversation. Ask about kids’ highs and lows, or funny stories from day (or from the past). Talk about things your kids might be struggling with. Ask big questions like “What does it mean to be responsible?”
• Ask about your kids’ favorite (fill in the blank) and let them be the expert on a topic of their choice (snack, animal, book, movie, sport, celebrity, holiday, family tradition, etc.). Catch up about an activity they are involved in. Find out what happened today, what are they good at, what’s the hardest part. Ask what super power they’d like to have and what they’d do with that power. Go around the table and ask what is everyone grateful for today.
• Don’t talk about food if it’s triggering for someone at the table who has an eating disorder.
• Use FaceTime in situations involving few people or individual eating alone (also very helpful for encouraging better meals and eating habits).
• Listen actively and don’t monopolize the conversation.
• Keep cell phones and other devices on silent and not visible—allow your family to step away from the world for the duration of a meal. (Just seeing a cell phone on a table can be distracting!)

Establishing Basic Table Manners and Guidelines

Some guardrails can be helpful, some more so in families with high energy, complicated dynamics, shifting participants, infrequent meals, or conflict.

• Compulsory attendance.
• No opting out of eating or eating alone somewhere else.
• Not talking about food if it’s triggering for someone at the table who has an eating disorder.
• Taking “no thank you bites”.
• Eating slowly and putting the fork down between bites.
• Ability to invite guests.
• Rules about helping one’s self to and/or offering others second helpings.
• Being excused once everyone is done.

Resources for Families

Some families have unique challenges including picky eaters, cost of food, lack of time, and disinterest or decisions not to cook. However, there are ways to work around these challenges:

• For kids who might be reticent to try certain foods, use creativity. We had success getting my sons to take vitamins by renaming them Jedi Pills. And when my picky eater wouldn’t eat his fries because they had flecks of herb on them, we called them Green Lantern flakes, and he was good to go.
• How to Help Your Child with Autism Overcome Picky Eating, Autism Parenting Magazine. The ideas in this article can be a luxury for those in food insecurity situations (facing questions about where to eat and how to procure any kind of food), and yet portion size can be reduced to suitable but smaller, generic brands that will usually work as well as name brands. Food pantries are also available in many communities.
• Research Healthy Eating on a Budget at MyPlate, Food Network and other sites.
• Use packaged subscription meal delivery services.
• Find recipes with fewer ingredients and sauce recipes that can be used on all kinds of foods.
• Take turns making and sharing meals with neighbors.
• Find more ideas about preparing, shopping and sharing meals together at The Family Dinner Project!