As these days get longer (thank goodness, I hate the early darkness), it’s so easy to let dinner time wander later and later. And what happens then are two things:
1) We start later, keep our normal bedtime routine and kids just get less sleep, or
2) We cram the routine into a much shorter time, resulting in a frenzied final hour that leaves our children in a state of stress just before they try to fall asleep. Either way, our kids, and we as parents, suffer. So, with daylight savings having come and gone , we really need to focus on our dinner time as the start of all things sleep related.
I’ll leave the menu to others for now and focus on the routine (but if you are interested in being reminded of the need for healthy eating, also check out The Delicious Truth’s Blog, and it all starts with dinner.
For starters, with so many families juggling so many schedules, dinner time needs to be given sacred-cow treatment. And if there are nights where you know you will not be getting the entire family together because of conflicts, it is imperative to make those other nights, when everyone is at home, a priority to have a relaxed dinner time. There are a litany of reasons why family dinners are critical to healthy development. I won’t touch on them all, but here are some highlights!
Dinner time also allows for the opportunity to empower your children with simple tasks. Setting the table is an easy one (maybe you should hold off on your expensive china!) for a child as young as three years old. Once everyone is seated, don’t just eat, but engage in conversation. I’m a firm believer that the importance of conversation is an acquired skill—like many other things in life, kids who are engaged in something at an early age are more likely to become adept at that action. In our home, we love to highlight each others’ days, focusing on positive accomplishments for not just our kids, but for the adults also (big self -esteem builder). We play games some times that involve all of us, or tell an old story like the day one of our kids were born. And we stick to one rule—no one gets up unless they are excused. We don’t engage in the food battles, but this one is vital to our family time. Bode would love to disappear as early as possible and get back to his cars or his trains, and again, I don’t force him to eat, but encouraging him to stay at the table and engage in conversation almost always results in him taking a few more bites.
From the dinner table, the bedtime routine begins to take shape. We still might go for a family bike ride around the block, or throw some pitches in the yard to burn off a little more steam. By no means do we simply head directly to bath and bed. The key for us, though, is that the dinner time is kept to a normal schedule, and it triggers the shift from daytime to evening so our minds and bodies can begin to prepare for sleep. Whatever extra activities we might engage in now come with a sense of calm attached to them. So instead of pushing back dinner time as the summer nights begin to kick in, try keeping them early, and enjoying all the benefits after, including a peaceful night’s sleep.
