Talking about faith at home is important for your family, but how do you find the time to work this into your busy schedule?
Make family dinner a priority
Here’s a book to help achieve this goal: The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David.
Ann Arbor District Library has this book.
See if it is available!
Paraphrased from the book, here are some “rules” (they call them “simple steps”) that you can implement:
- Everyone comes to the table, even if they aren’t hungry.
- No electronics: No TV. No phones. No texting. (This applies to adults as well!)
- Everyone stays at the table until dinner is over.
- Everyone tries one bite of each food.
- Everyone helps clean up.
Another thing they suggest is to play games at the table! (Either while eating or afterwards.) Check out some suggested “dinner table games.” (Clicking on the underlined words takes you to the most recent post in the category “dinner games.” Scroll down to see other options.)
This all sounds hard! Something may have to give in order for this to happen. But it’s important, isn’t it?
How about making it a New Year’s an any time of year Resolution?
Photo credits:
Table setting by Gisela Francisco on Flickr, who licensed this photo under: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.
Other photo – from my archives. (I took a picture of this book when I had it checked out from the library!)
Family Faith Companion 
We do make this a priority and we use a family devotional book during dinner. I worry that it will get harder as the kids get older. Right now the biggest challenge is getting my 2 year old to sit still 🙂
You are on the right track Jami! Glad to hear that it’s working out for your family during dinner. Be patient and keep trying!