Can you remember the last time you sat around the dining room table with the entire family for a home cooked meal? If you're struggling to remember, it's been too long.
The positive effects of a family dinner go well past children's biological health, it also effects their mental health too! Katie Kimball from Kids Cook Real Food explains how you can get your kids engaged in family dinners, so they become "supercharged."
There are plenty of benefits of family dinners; they're strongly correlated with teens avoiding drug and alcohol use, better grades in school, and becoming better connected to their family. Good meals and family interaction are the foundation to being resistant to mental health imbalances.
In order to "Supercharge" a family dinner, Katie says it's important for every minute to focus on quality, not quantity, or these family meals. There are three ways that families can start "Supercharging" their meals together:
Put Down the Screens
Constant motion on screens puts our brains in fight, flight, or freeze mode. We need a physical break from them, especially when we eat. Also, obviously we should be connecting with the human beings at the table!
Start with a Moment of Rest and Gratitude
Expressing gratitude immediately helps people feel more positive about their day and reduces stress, and deep breaths put our bodies in a parasympathetic state so we digest our food better.
Let the Kids Talk More Than The Adults
We want our kids to be used to talking to us for whenever a problem arises. Two strategies include sharing High / Low of the day, or asking everyone, "When did you Laugh, what did you Learn, how did you Love others today."
Want to continue the process of connecting with your kids around food? Katie Kimball is offering Fox 17 Morning Mix viewers a free copy of her e-book "3 Ways to Get Kids Involved with Food and Build Brain Resilience."
