Tween New Year's Resolution: Make Family Dinners Fun

We try to eat dinner as a family most nights, but we admit that with the tweens' activity schedules, this gets tougher to do every year. As a family, we need to work hard at maintaining the family dinner ritual, so this year, we're going to make the Bowl of Treasures, a regular thing.

You may remember this idea from this blog last year - it's from Laurie David's book, "The Family Dinner". The idea is set out a large bowl at the beginning of the week and let your kids fill it up with tiny treasures they find. At the end of the week, you set the bowl in the center of the dinner table and take turns hearing about each treasure. For reticent tweens and teens whose daily response to "How was your day?" is "Fine", this tactic worked like a charm.

One of my favorite parts of this new ritual is sharing it when our family dinner table is wider than usual - when friends, neighbors, and guests visit. Everyone has gotten a kick out of it. What tips have helped you keep family dinners on track?

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