I shared just a little bit the other day in stories about how we do family date night. We typically take the girls out to dinner once a week and have found that it’s our favorite time to be together as a family because it’s focused and intentional. I wanted tp share a few of the ideas that have helped shape our time together and honestly taken it from a frustrating experience to something that we genuinely look forward to! While most of I’m sharing applies to eating dinner out as a family, a lot of it also applies to having dinner at home around the dinner table, too!
Eating out is a great opportunity to teach our kids how to act in public. This takes LOTS of practice and patience but it’s so worth it. Within the past few years, we have started letting Reese and Rowen order for themselves (after we talk about the fact that they can’t just eat a plate of cheese for dinner). They have to start by looking at the waiter/waitress in the eyes and say “May I please have vegetables and grilled meat”… if only… I kid, I kid ;-) This is helping them to gain confidence when talking to adults and strangers while we are right there with them.
We put our phones down. We don’t bring i pads, phones, or hand held games. We do color and play family games like tic-tac-toe, hang man, etc. I know this is probably a trigger point for a lot of people, but this is what we do as a family so please hear me on this… I’m not saying this is the only way. I’m saying this is our way. You do you, boo. One of the reasons we don’t do phones is because this is our most intentional time as a family. If we were to be on our phones or i pads, we are telling our company that we’d rather be somewhere else than with them. We want our kids to know that their presence is valuable to us and we want to really be there with them.
We ask questions. This is something that Matt and I love to do on our date nights and we’ve started doing it with the girls, too. Asking questions is a great way to get to know your kids and your spouse and you’ll be AMAZED at what you’ll learn if you just ask. An example of some of the questions we ask would be “If someone gave you $100, what would you do with it?” Or “If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Or even something as simple as “What’s your favorite color combination?” A lot of times either I will go first or Matt will so they’ll understand the questions. Then a lot of times, they will start coming up with their own questions to ask. It’s SO much fun!
My final tip and probably the most important one is to let go of expectations. Your kids are in training. They’re still learning. They’re still KIDS. Allow them a safe place to be who they are while you teach them how they can grow and learn different ways of doing things. Reese was very nervous to order at first and asked Rowen to order for her. We encouraged Reese to order for herself and would help her along if she forgot or got uncomfortable. Now Reese is a pro at ordering! All three of our girls sometimes act CRAZY in restaurants but we find that happens more often when they get bored. When they’re engaged in table games and conversation, their behavior is normally incredible!
The acronym OPEN can help you remember some of these ideas we use:
O - Order your own food
P - Put down the phones
E- Engage in conversation by asking questions
N - No Expectations
I hope this is helpful to y’all! Family time is so important and our best time to be together is around the table. We don’t always do this perfectly but we always try and that’s what matters!