Back To School: Plan for Family Meals

With school coming up, we’re looking at various back to school tips, organizing tricks, and time management tactics this month. Later in the month I’ll round all the back to school posts up, so you can read through them all at your leisure.

Today let’s look at family meals. It’s hard enough (or so it seems with the families I know) to sit down to dinner together during the summer. Add in busy school schedules and family meals can get even harder. Following are some tips.

Make family meals a number one priority. If you have time for TV, extra shopping, golf, or any other extra curricular activities, then you have time for a family meal. This is something you shouldn’t skimp on. Families that eat together, stay together, connect better, and learn the importance of family time. Also studies show that kids who eat with their parents tend to eat healthier meals overall.

Try a different meal: Personally, if you work at it, you can have two meals a day together with your family. However, if that’s stretching it, aim for one, and it doesn’t matter which. If it’s easier to rustle up the gang at breakfast time, then join together in the morning.

Make weekend meals non-negotiable: If weekdays are stressed, you can make family meals on the weekends a must attend event.

Eating not required, but table time should be: If you have young children, or a partner who gets home later (like 8pm), make sure that everyone still sits together. If the kids eat at 6 and the adults eat at 8, give the kids dessert, a coloring book, or a puzzle, and have them attend the adult dinner, this way everyone still gets to connect, whether or not eating is happening.

Find meals that cook up fast: To ease family mealtime routine, try take out two nights a week, sandwiches and soup another night, and locate some fast cooking ideas for the other nights. It’s honestly not the food that matters so much as the time you spend together. Check out the following for fast recipes:

• Dinner Tonight
• Quick, fast, and easy recipes
• Quick & Easy from Cooking Light
• FamilyFun’s Month of Meals

What do you do to maintain family meals once the school year sets in?

[image via stock.xchng]