Family meals have always been a priority in our household, but the Stouffer’s Blogger Roundtable that I attended last week was still an eye-opening event for me personally.

If you watched the video I linked before I left, you know that research shows that frequent family dinners are a powerful tool.

• Teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to say their parents are very proud of them.
• Teens who have frequent family dinners are likelier to say their parents are the adults they would do to if they had a serious problem.
• Teens who have frequent family dinners are likelier to say they get mostly A’s and B’s in school.
• The more often teens have dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink, or do drugs.

Now, these studies seems to be focusing on teenagers, but fostering the family meal as being a priority from early on can only be beneficial.

I know that several people commented that they were happy to hear that family mealtime is being promoted, but they felt like all of the statistics were just common sense knowledge. And in many ways they are – but what I found interesting is that just sitting around the table having dinner (or breakfast or lunch – family meals might be a better term) is not enough.

Making a concerted effort to engage your children and really learn about their lives is the number one most important thing you can do. Just asking, “How was your day?” is not the way to do that.

Luckily the experts had some great tips about how we can make mealtime a fun and engaging experience that will make your kids want to linger at the dinner table.

• Give your children a voice in what you’re having for dinner.
• Limit distractions – televisions, cell phones, computers, etc.
• Include everyone in the conversations and keep a positive tone.
• Use conversation starters and games to keep things fresh and fun.
• Model positive behaviors that you want to see your children exhibit.
• Give everyone a job in cleaning up afterward.

While I think our family has a good head start in this process, I can now see that we still have plenty of room for improvement. So I hope you’ll all join me in taking the Let’s Fix Dinner Challenge!

Getting started is easy:

• Register your family in the challenge.
• Set a weekly dinner goal and be entered into a sweepstakes.
• Update your dinner status each week to be entered to win more cool prizes.

Stouffer’s has a goal of reaching one million family dinners by 9/28/09, so let’s help them smash that goal!

Do you make a concerted effort to eat a meal together as a family every day? What kind of tips and tricks do you have for starting real conversations and making mealtime a fun experience?