*This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Barilla, but opinions are my own.*
I will be quite honest and say that up until recently my family ate dinner at various times. We would feed the kids and then once they went to bed, we would eat. It took my husband sitting me down and telling me that we were not creating healthy habits for our kids. After all, with both of us working, our true family time was the time we ate dinner. We missed out on those conversations about school, what happened at their sports lessons, and how their overall day went! My husband sat me down and told me that we need to make sure we cherish our family dinner times and in response to that, we now have family dinner time every night at 6 pm. No matter where we are or what needs to be done, we make sure our shared dinner time takes precedence over everything else that could wait. After dinner time, we make sure to spend some more quality time playing family games. It is a real chance for us to bond!
Unfortunately, I am not the only one who was not making family dinner time important. One in four families say they feel like disconnected individuals living under one roof. One important way we could change this is by making sure we share the table every night and encourage talk from our kids. Tell them how important it is to relay how their days went and really pay attention to what they have to say. I try my hardest to no longer rush dinner because I know it is the one time we can all reconnect again after a long and arduous day. Bringing together healthy meals such as incorporating Barilla into our meals, will make a great dinner conversation start and everyone will of course love their food. After all, food is love!
By eating meaningful meals together, it will be sure to bring positive energy and any necessary change to your family. Both parents and kids alike experience overall life satisfaction and increased emotional benefits when they share the table together. Kids benefit from better grades (49% report mostly A’s) and healthier habits (such as eating nutritious foods, 33%) and describe themselves as respectful (75%), happy (70%), rule followers (66%), confident (58%), independent (56%) and hardworking (52%). Adults have more feelings of happiness (65%), and are less likely to have feelings of stress (65%). Isn’t this enough to realize how important it is to Share the Table?!
When you share a meal together, you are fostering unity, happiness, and family importance. This helps bring healthy and strong family strengths. Barilla sees the importance of this and for this reason, Barilla wants to inspire, empower and support all families to share more meaningful meals together. They are doing this through the Barilla #ShareTheTable initiative. For every post using #ShareTheTable, Barilla will help provide the monetary equivalent of ten meals ($1.11) to Feeding America, up to one million meals. One dollar helps provide 9 meals secured by Feeding America on behalf of local member food banks. Feeding America is the nation’s largest organization dedicated to fighting domestic hunger through a network of food banks, and Barilla supports that goal. This is only valid through 4/30/14 so make sure to participate today!
This initiative is so dear and near to my heart! I realized after many years how important sharing the table at dinner is. We no longer eat dinner separate and I am so grateful for that! Won’t you participate and help post about #ShareTheTable?! Simply share your own mealtime stories using the #ShareTheTable hashtag today!
Be sure to check out the video below to learn about the importance of meal time!
So tell me, do you share a nightly dinner together and if you do, why did you start doing it???
*This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Barilla. For every post using #ShareTheTable from now until 4/30/14, Barilla will donate a monetary equivalent of ten meals ($1.11) to Feeding America®, up to 1 million meals. Barilla will donate a maximum of $110,000. One dollar helps provide 9 meals secured by Feeding America® on behalf of local member food banks.*
Growing up, we always had a family dinner, but these days I can only manage to pull them off a few times a week.
I try very hard to get everyone to the table at the same time, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t. I think its important to at least try. My family is a little difficult to manage right now, 9 month old twins and a 4 and 5 year old on the Autism spectrum. But we get by,
Barilla is the pasta of choice in this house, and,.. we always eat together. That is one of the rules here.
My kids love when my husband and I eat with them as a family. Some nights I am toast though and prefer to eat when they are sleeping so that I can relax!
I hate to admit it, but more often than not my boys eat something different than us. I am one of those nuts who makes two separate meals pretty much every night. We have a ranch style house with open concept kitchen living room. We may not all eat at the table, but at least we eat together in the same room. We all sit down together to eat on the weekends.
It is SO important to eat together! I eat with my girls, seriously, about 29 nights of each month. I think it’s part of why we’re so close!!
Great program!
Pasta I love pasta so good and I share a table with the coolest kid in town my son.
When our oldest daughter was 3 we started sitting at our dining room table and having dinner together as a family. Now that we’re a family of 4, this is a nightly tradition we haven’t given up on.
We always had family dinner growing up. And we always have family dinner now. But, my kids are only 4 and 6, so maybe it will be harder in a few years.
We always try to have dinner together whenever possible. It is not always feasible, but it is a great time to bond.
We definitely don’t eat enough at the table, as a family. We need to start spending more time eating meals together while we catch up on our days.
I think sharing at least one meal together as a family is very important. We always ate dinner and breakfast together as a family growing up.
I always had a nightly dinner as a kid it was nice actually to sit around the table and talk about what the day had brought everyone. x
My family used to have dinner between 5-6PM all the time. We’d all just hangout for the next hour or so as well
Sharing meals with those who you love is definitely one of the priorities in most families. We try to eat together at least once a day.
We have dinner at the same time every night but don’t always eat the same things as we have some picky eaters.
We have family dinner at least 4 nights a week. Having one teenager in the house makes it impossible for it to be every night. When we are together, the tv and all electronics are off and we all share about our days, I love that part of my day.
I grew up with family dinners and conversation so it’s important to me. I know my husband had to adjust to that because they didn’t do it that way. He grew to love it though.
I grew up with family diners and loved them. In our busy lives I’ve noticed they take a back seat and I need to change that. Due to various activities we may not be able to sit together every night but we can most nights
We have a family dinner most nights, I would say 5 or 6 nights out of 7. The way everyone’s schedules are we can’t do it more, but I also have breakfast with my kids every morning so I hope that balances it out.
My parents made a big deal about us all sitting down together for dinner. That really stuck with me. I try to do it every night though we do sometimes miss a night here and there.
LOVE Barilla! We sit down together for dinner. It’s my time to try to pry out as much info from my son on his day at school! (Usually I get answers like ‘yes’ ‘no’ ‘uh huh’ ‘yeah’ and my favorite, ‘I don’t remember’.)
Yes, we have always shared a nightly dinner together starting from when my kids were toddlers. My sons are grown but they still come over to our house one night a week so that we can have a family dinner together. We love it and it gives us a chance to stay connected.
Barilla is one of our favorites. We try to have family meals all the time.
Yes, we do dinner together almost every night. It’s kind of our thing
Eating together is a great time to spend with family. Good job making the switch!
I grew up eating around the table but when I moved into my own I stopped. Later when my son was born we wanted to all be able to eat as a family but our dinning room was turned into a nursery! One of the reason that I’m looking forward to moving into a bigger place is that we will finally have a dinning room so that we can have meals as a family every night!!
Family dinner time is so important, yet I am now struggling with it since I’ve gone back to work full time. I hope I can figure this all out.
What a great way to truly connect as a family.
we share nightly dinner together because were a family and were going to act like it. lol
We always eat on the table as a family, every sunday and every night for dinner; it’s a MUST in my home.. thanks for sharing, your little ones are too cute
I admit dinner is quite chaotic in my home. Eating on the run, over the sink, not at all. I have been doing one sit down a week; going to add another day because my teen is getting so old so quickly. I cannot miss anything!