Food For Talk
Does this sound familiar? Dinner is ready… you are trying to get everyone gathered around table. Once seated, you pass around the food and as it is going around your kids are throwing endless demands at you. “Mom, I need more milk.” “Mom, I need another napkin.” “Mom, can you get me some dip for my veggies?” By the time you actually get to sit down to start eating, your food is cold and the race through dinner has ended — everyone is asking to be excused. Your dream of having a nice, leisurely dinner together as a family has come to a halt and reality has hit hard. Your family is not connecting over the dinner table. They are simply there to bark demands, eat, and run.
Author Julieanne Smith was tired of having her kitchen table be the site of a hit and run. She wanted more… she wanted her family to connect around the table and for the conversations to be deep and meaningful. Isn’t that how it was when we all grew up? We didn’t have a million places to be; life was slower and dinner time was an important event in our everyday lives.
Julieanne created a wonderful product to help solve this problem for all of us. The product is called “Food For Talk,” and it is a recipe box full of thought provoking questions to get your family communicating around the table again. The concept is simple: place the box of cards on the kitchen table at meal time and have one child pick a card. That child then reads the question out loud and gives everyone the chance to ponder the question and think about their answers. Then, as dinner is progressing, you go around the table and each person gets the chance to say their answer to the question out loud. The answers in turn will often result in even deeper conversation – just as every parent out there dreams about having with their children.
Some of our favorite questions from the collection are:
- Finish this sentence: “The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is…”
- What is your least favorite household chore? Are there any you like to do?”
- Name ten reasons why you are glad to be alive.
Before you throw out the caution flag and go on strike with your family, change the rules of the dinner race. Pick up some of Julieanne’s cards and see if you can change the dinner sprint into a marathon event. Make meal time an occasion that everyone in the family looks forward to and make it one where you can bring the connection we all long for back to the table.
Food For Talk can be purchased at specialty bookstores as well as through Amazon.com.
