How to eat as a family (even if it isn't dinner)

A little creativity means family meals can still happen

Lots of people say they’d like to eat family meals together. However, many families don’t have schedules where that’s easy to pull off during the week. Kids have activities, parents have work or work travel, and so people aren’t always in the same place at the same time. And there’s no one doing the somewhat thankless work of unveiling a pot roast, Norman Rockwell style, at the table at 6 p.m.

But that doesn’t mean family meals can’t happen. If dinner is tough, another great option is to look at breakfast.

The upside of mornings

Before you roll your eyes, hear me out. This probably can’t happen every day, but if your kids all leave at roughly the same time — like on a bus or in the car for school — then maybe the adults can adjust their schedules once or twice a week to sit down at the table at about the same time they do. This might be most workable on the days that the adults will be working from home, but even if they’re commuting, it might work sometimes. Everyone can eat a bowl of cereal, but everyone is eating it together. Or you have a batch of muffins and a bunch of bananas in a bowl and everyone grabs one of each.

Weekends might provide a bit more time. I can attest that older children will not want to get up early on a weekend morning, but maybe you could do family brunch on a Saturday or Sunday. People can divvy up cooking pancakes, bacon, and eggs, and maybe you have festive drinks. It’s cheaper than going out and you can linger at the table longer than a restaurant will allow.

Keep it simple

Of course, family breakfast doesn’t have to be lengthy. My guess is that you might be able to build breakfast into your regular morning routine, but if you’re worried about it, maybe everyone wakes up 5 minutes earlier. Spend 5-10 minutes at the table and compress something else.

As with most things in life, the habit of eating together is not about making every single meal incredible. It’s about doing something regularly enough that you build closeness through sheer repetition. If you eat breakfast most days, then breakfast provides an opportunity to build that habit just as much as dinner.

And hey, if your household is anything like mine, people are much more fond of breakfast food than they tend to be of dinner foods. Everyone likes waffles. Make some and that just might be enough to lure everyone to the table.