The Book of New Family Traditions (6 page)

There are many variations on this ritual: decide if you want to do this every night, every other night, or once a week.

One thing we learned is the importance of refreshing the questions. We would take out the papers we had just chosen and keep them in a kitchen drawer for a while. Always keep blank papers and some pencils in the basket, and invite family members to add their own questions. Kids who can’t read or write yet will love this tradition, too, though they will need someone to help them with their contributions.

Sampling of Dinner-Table Conversation Starters

What would your personal robot do for you?

What can you do now that you couldn’t do a year ago?

What scares you?

What is your favorite movie pet?

Which character in
Lord of the Rings
(insert favorite movie or book) is most like you?

Describe your dream house.

What do you like to smell?

What cheers you up when you are sad?

What is the best game ever invented?

If you could have dinner with any person in history, who would it be?

What or who makes you laugh?

Tell us about a dream you remember.

You just won the lottery—$1 million a year for life. What will change in your life? What will stay the same?

What is the single best thing about you?

How would you make the world better?

What do you love enough to save for your own children?

If you could relive any day of your life, which day would it be?

What bad habit do you wish you could break?

What stories do they tell about you as a baby?

What was the worst day of your life?

What is your definition of friendship?

If you could possess a talent or gift that you weren’t born with, what would it be?

Who inspires you?

(See the rest of this list in Appendix 1 at the end of the book.)

Family Feast at 4:00 PM

Marla Michele Must is a mother with three kids, and for her family, the best time to eat the big meal of the day happens to be at 4:00 PM, after school and before rushing around to various activities. “Later, they have ice skating or martial arts, or whatever, and it’s too hectic to sit down and eat a real meal at 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM. I realized they were starving when they come home from school, so why have them load up on snacks that are a waste of calories? Instead, at that point, we all sit down together and eat something healthy. Each of us has to share one thing that was unique or different that happened that day. They’ll be hungry again around 7:30 PM, and that’s when they have their weekday snack.”

Daily Family Almanac

When her four kids were little, Letitia Suk of Evanston, Illinois, used to read an Almanac item from the
Chicago Tribune
called “What Happened on This Day in History?” at dinnertime. She got the idea to start a “Family Almanac” project and purchased multiple packs of three-by-five cards. She counted out 365 cards and wrote a date on each card, and started by entering birthdays and anniversaries and other important family dates.

Terrific Online Resource for Family Meals

Dr. Grace R. Freedman, a national expert in public health and public policy with three children of her own, is fascinated by how deeply the simple ritual of shared meals strengthens families. In 2007, she started a website called
www.eatdinner.org
, to encourage families to eat together more often, providing them with support in the way of fresh resources, practical ideas, and the latest related research.

This isn’t a recipe site, but it is full of good information and is frequently updated. The site does suggest great cookbooks for families, including for kids learning to cook, and it links to a whole bunch of other sites and blogs that are getting parents jazzed to make memorable—as well as healthy—regular family dinners.

Then, as the days and weeks went by, she would write down anything notable for that day as it happened. The cards became rich resources for documenting the past, so that as she pulled out a card on a particular day, she could remind her kids what had happened on that day in previous years. Every July 26, she would say, “On this day in 1993, we were at Old Faithful together. Remember that trip?” She kept this card deck of memories in the kitchen for easy access. It does require a bit of work to set up the Almanac deck, but once begun, this Family Almanac is easy to maintain and provides a big payoff!

Mama’s Monday Update and Almanac

Flash forward, and these days, all the Suk kids are out of the nest. Except for the son living in China, the others still live near their parents. But the usual phone texts back and forth are pretty mundane and businesslike. So Letitia started a weekly ritual e-mail she calls “Mama’s Monday Update and Almanac,” in which she updates the kids on any current family news but also checks out the Family Almanac cards for the entire week ahead. “Remember that time in 1990 when our car died and we had to take a cab to church?” was one of the events she reminded them about. She comments, “It’s been so great to remind them of the bond we have together. Usually there will be a flurry of Reply All responses where the kids will chime in and say, ‘Yeah, I remember,’ or ‘No, that’s not how it was, Mom!”’

Unconvention Meals

Don’t be afraid to break some rules about family dinners if it works for your family. Tailor meal traditions to your schedules, passions, and personalities. Paper plates are fine; distractions like television aren’t, as a rule.

Indoor Picnics

Moving the meal from the table to the floor can make the same old carryout Chinese food or pizza feel like a special treat. If you don’t have a picnic blanket, an old sheet works just fine and goes right into the wash afterward.

No Reason Family Dinner Parties

In the book
New Traditions: Redefining Celebrations for Today’s Family
, Susan Abel Lieberman wrote about the Singleton family and the “no-reason” dinner parties they have from time to time. The Singletons set the table with their best china and flowers, dress everyone up, and march the kids out the back door. The children walk around to the front, where their parents usher them in as honored guests. Sally Singleton told Susan that her kids get to practice their company manners, and they love these special nights.

King Henry VIII Dinners

When Ellie Just was growing up, her mom would declare a meal from time to time where table manners
were not allowed.
“We would eat outside, throw our chicken bones and corn cobs on the ground. There was plenty of smacking of lips, burping and elbows on the table,” she recalls. Ellie could invite friends. (Origin story: Ellie’s mom started the ritual because her own mother was very strict about table manners, and they ate at Grandma’s house once a week. This was her antidote.)

Opera Meals

One family I know occasionally declares an Opera Meal, and everybody sings instead of speaking, even to ask, “Please, pass the butter.” Being in tune isn’t a requirement, and they all get pretty silly. An alternative is to try a silent meal and see if everyone can communicate entirely with hand signals.

Finger Food Only

Once a week, serve a meal that requires absolutely no utensils and let the kids eat with their hands. Even salad and vegetables taste better that way. This could be an all-appetizer meal (be sure to include veggies and dip as one way to keep it nutritious), or an ethnic dinner, for instance, Chinese dumplings and ribs.

Friday Night Special

When her three kids were younger, Patricia Gray had a Friday night ritual of “pizza with a video on a picnic blanket with all the junk food I won’t serve at all during the week—chips, soda, topped off by hot-fudge sundaes. My kids looked forward to that every week for years.”

Making It Special

Seat of Honor

Some families have a special plate that a person gets to use to celebrate a major triumph or their birthday. Sue Eaves has something different, a way to dress up the chair itself when someone is celebrated. She saw a blog post about making a simple fabric slipcover for a chair and embellishing it, so she added the words “My Special Day” to the slipcover she made. It gets used on big days like birthdays, but also, Sue says, “It’s a great way to recognize the smaller things that often go unnoticed, like the first day our son put his head under the water in swimming class, and the day my husband signed a contract for a new job. It has become very important to us. Everybody asks if they can have it when they feel that something significant is going on.”

Spotlight Dinners

Sydney Gines has these surprise dinners once or twice a year for each of her four kids. Some dinners celebrate an accomplishment such as “learning a complicated piano piece or breaking a bad habit,” whereas others are scheduled for “a self-esteem boost.” Sydney pretends company is coming, so the kids dress up a bit and expect a special dinner. When the kids come to the table, Sydney and her husband announce that the “special guest” is one of the children and throw confetti at him or her. A small gift is given, and the whole family lauds the spotlighted child.

Sunday Kids’ Choice

Teacher Anne Hodge wanted her kids to share the kitchen chores and make Sunday dinners special. She started Kids’ Choice, and though her three children have to take turns cooking and cleaning up on that night, they also take turns making up funny rules for the meal. On Lego Night, the table was decorated with Legos, and then there was Changing Seats Night, and another time they could eat only with spoons.

Toast Night

Barb Brock, a professor in Spokane, Washington, decided to make one dinner a week special, so on Thursdays, the family uses fancy dishes even for carryout. Also on that night, each member of the family makes a toast. Making a toast is something kids love, as it seems like such a grown-up gesture. Eating by candlelight once a week is also a treat for kids.

Soup Nights

Children’s book author Martha Freeman and her family host Soup Night every Thursday from October through March. Every September, Martha sends out a standing invitation to about sixty people, friends and neighbors, to come any Thursday they want after 5:30 PM, provided they bring bread or wine, or both. Martha makes huge pots of soup and provides paper bowls and spoons, plus apple juice for the kids. Her three children love the casual party atmosphere and seeing all their friends.

Family Dinner Rules

An Excerpt from
The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time,
by Laurie David, with recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt (Grand Central, 2010)

This book is a treasure box for any parent who ever wanted to get the most mileage out of family dinners. In addition to clever and doable recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt, a young Danish woman hired to help cook meals for the David household in Los Angeles, there is a great deal of practical information about getting family members to truly connect around the dinner table. An essential element of what has made family dinners so satisfying for Laurie David’s family is the list of ten rules by which everyone abides. Here is a streamlined version of that list from her book. I was already doing many of these, but I have adopted her suggestion to always have a pitcher of water on the table and am delighted to see my son reaching for that rather than pulling juice or milk from the fridge.