It seems more challenging these days with our ridiculously busy lives to have the opportunity to eat a family meal together. What if you knew the essential reasons to ensure this occurs.

Finding the time isn’t always easy. The family dinner doesn’t just allow us all to be present and together and fill our stomach, it provides the opportunity to talk, share, laugh and check-in; it nurtures our family spirit, feeds our mind and improves overall health.

Research shows

Enjoying family shared meals our teens are less likely to display violence, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Kids are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and less likely to engage in risky behaviour.
Teens that share family meals are also more likely to focus on their future goals.
Children who grow up sharing family meals are more likely to exhibit prosocial behaviour as adults, including exhibiting more fairness and respect or others and self.
Studies show that kids who share meals with their family three or more times per week are less likely to be overweight, more likely to choose and eat healthy foods and far less likely to have an eating disorder.

Additionally, we find adults and children who eat at home more frequently are less likely to suffer obesity, particularly if prepared family meals are associated with healthy choices. Children that are taught to participate in the preparation of meals have an even better outcome.

While we are all so busy nowadays, a family can enjoy at least some family meals together, albeit breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Tips to enjoy that family meal

Plan ahead.
Involve the children with meal choice, ordering or shopping, and preparation.
Have music playing while you prepare so you can talk, dance and sing together to make meal prep fun and a uniting time.
Have some meals prepared that you can refrigerate or freeze to use when you’re rushed for time.
Don’t forget the clean-up roster. Part of preparing meals means clean-up, which is yet another life skill for children to learn.
No devices during mealtime. Remove these outside distractions to create greater engagement.
Learn the techniques to remove all conflict from every meal and conversation

While we think of a family meal as an evening meal together, given crazy work shifts, kids sports, our own activities, sometimes breakfast or lunch on the weekend is a great idea too. While an evening dinner is often more relaxing because you have nowhere to go except to bed, if this is challenging, try a breakfast or lunch. Book it in, so all the kids set aside the time or day and work at doing a few family meals throughout each week.

If you are one of the families with a mixture of challenging personalities and baulk at all being together, may I strongly suggest my new book Communication Harmony. The book is written to teach readers how to take charge of every conversation, and how to eliminate all drama and conflict (which is exciting based on your kids’ personality). It provides techniques and strategies the reader can learn and use to take charge of conversations and guide the conversation where you want it to go, without any arguments or disagreements. It is based on NLP and 3 powerful secret words. Once learned, you command every conversation.

Imagine how amazing life can be when there are no arguments or drama at home with your partner or kids. Learn more by visiting the Communication Harmony website and grab your copy now. How incredible a calm happy life can be. The satisfaction of living in a friendly conflict-free harmonious home is priceless and so achievable, once you know how. Get your copy now and start learning how Communication Harmony