Last month, the New York Times ran an article on the front page titled “Families with Full Plates Sitting Down to Dinner.” It was about how over-scheduled families are reacting to research on the positive effects of family dinners.
The research shows that kids whose families have dinner together regularly get better grades, show less stress, and are more likely to avoid drugs and alcohol as teens.
“After decades of decline in the simple ritual of family dinners, there is evidence that many families are making the effort to gather at the dinner table,” says the article.
Bravo!
But I would caution that having dinner together is just the first step. You have to make sure that the time isn't entirely dominated by “Pass the butter,” “He kicked me!” and “Don't talk with your mouth full.”
I once interviewed a sociologist who spent his entire career studying family dinners. He told me that they last an average of 20 minutes and are comprised mostly of mumbled comments on the food coupled with parental criticisms of table manners and other behavioral issues.
There are many ways to make family dinners more fun and worthwhile without making them last much longer. I've got lots of dinner rituals in The Book of New Family Traditions, but today I just want to focus on the Family Dinner Conversation Basket, which is something I've taught workshops about and tried with my own family.
During a television appearance on family dinners several years ago, I talked about the value of such baskets and drew some sample questions from a model basket I made for the show. At the time, we didn't have such a basket at home, but my son saw a videotape of the show and felt deprived. “Why don't we have one of those?” he asked. So now we do.
Ours is a small, pretty basket decorated with beads that hang down from the handle, spelling out the words “Talk, Talk, Talk.” Inside the basket, I placed 50 colorful strips of paper, with a question or instruction on each one. I also put in lots of blank papers and a pen, so any family member can add a question whenever they want. This keeps the questions fresh.
I wanted the questions to get family members talking about their beliefs, passions and preferences, to truly express their personalities. I wanted us to exercise our minds as well as our jaws. Some are serious, some are silly. One paper says to make up a new nickname for every person at the table including yourself (nothing mean is allowed). Others ask: If you could have dinner with any person in history who would it be? Name something you can do better than your parents. Or, “If there was a holiday named after you, how would people celebrate it?”
At first, we would do the questions every night, but we later settled into a pattern of weekly Basket Nights. Usually each person gets to pick one slip, and after he or she answers the question, the others chime in with their response. The answers are often revealing, surprising and funny.
Feel free to adapt the basket to your own situation, adding questions that pertain to your religious faith, ethnic backgroound or favorite pastimes. Our basket has loads of questions about movies and books because we love stories of all kinds. Such as “If you could be any character in the Harry Potter books, who would it be?” My son's questions are often about Japanese anime or video game characters.
Truly, this exercise is endlessly elastic, simple to tailor to your family's circumstances and easy to change over time. Conversation baskets are a perfect example of the type of simple but powerful rituals that I love and champion: they accomplish multiple goals in short bursts of time. What a great tool for faith development, but at the same time your kids have fun and the family gets closer.
A former staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, Meg Cox has spent the last decade researching and writing on contemporary family traditions. She has written two books and articles for such publications as Family Fun, Good Housekeeping, Working Mother and Parents. A mother and stepmother, Cox also lectures frequently and has worked as a traditions expert for such companies as Pillsbury, KFC Corp. and Hallmark. She publishes a free monthly email newsletter on rituals, and can be reached at FamilyRituals@aol.com.
This article was adapted from one of her newsletters.
