As a kick-off for a school-wide commitment to family dinners, the Ford Elementary School in Lynn, Massachusetts recently invited The Family Dinner Project to host a community dinner. The Family Dinner Project aims to raise awareness about the many benefits of family dinners and to share resources that make dinners easier, more fun and more meaningful. Most of all, we want to learn from the families at the Ford School what has made their dinner conversations memorable and lively, and their meals nutritious and tasty.
The kids, ranging in age from 3 months to 15 years, offered tips for how parents should encourage their children to eat more vegetables: “Tell us to just try it;” “Use reverse psychology;” and “Add some sugar.” They also practiced what they preached: Most of the 16 children dipped carrots and celery into humus and ate spinach salad with craisins.
During the dinner, The Family Dinner Project team shared an idea, “The Four Corners of the Table,” which the families are going to experiment with over the next four weeks. Like a sturdy table that has four corners, a great family dinner has four parts:
- The food, which should be nutritious and delicious
- The participation of every family member, so the food preparation and cleanup is shared
- The conversation that it is lively, respectful and interesting
- The fun, so that everyone looks forward to dinner and makes time for it
Each family is going to try new strategies, a week at a time, to explore each “corner of the table.”
In about a month, each family will invite a new family to join The Family Dinner Project, and we will have another community dinner at the Ford School. At that dinner, families will swap recipes, share photographs of their dinners and report on their four corners of the table.
The Family Dinner Project is honored to be part of this vibrant school that has such a rich tradition of innovation and investment in their kids.