Making Meal Time Fun

In my personal experience, it seems like babies, toddlers, and their parents get hungry all. the. time. That means that I’ve always got some Puffs or Cheerios with me for us to snack on. But when we’re not on the go and desperate for some Teddy Grahams, we try to always eat family meals together.

Research shows that families who eat together stay together. And meal time also serves as a great platform for engagement. While I’m not encouraging you to speak with your mouth full (we have to set good examples in the manners department!), meals are a great opportunity to teach your child about food and engage the entire family in conversation.

Before my daughters could talk, I would tell them about the food we were eating and how yummy it was. I’m also a fan of the “airplane” technique: when spoonfeeding, I’ll pretend that the spoon is an airplane on its way into the hanger (my daughter’s mouth). Sometimes we’ll change it up so that the spoon is a train on its way to the station, or a car pulling into the driveway. Of course, sound effects are required — choo choo! — and would make my babies laugh and accept the food.

When Olivia became a toddler, our speech turned more into conversations. I talked to her about basic stuff, like asking about her day, our plans for tomorrow, and telling her to eat her dinner. (Sometimes, I had to pull out a bribe. If she refused to eat, I’d tell her that if she eats her dinner we can go play afterwards — sneaky, but also leading to more engagement after she eats!)

Sometimes, we play a bit of music during dinner or we talk about what the dog is doing. When the weather is nice, we like to sit outside on our porch, where we can sometimes see wildlife behind our house. We’ll point out the birds and rabbits that go by, and talk about what dinner they are having. We also cover temperature (Olivia, is it hot?) and colors (Caroline, do you want some of the yellow banana?).

What are your favorite ways to engage during meal time? Do you have any tricks that work well for your kids? Let me know in the comments — I’m always looking for new ways to make meal time more fun!

This piece was originally posted at VersaMe.com. VersaMe created the Starling the world’s first wearable engagement tracker that helps encourage and reinforce positive parenting behaviors.