This week’s challenge for my 52 Weeks of Wonder Challenge was to have more purposeful discussions at dinner. Turns out the real challenge was being able to all have dinner together! However, I have a few resources I used that I would highly suggest that kept us talking and learning about each other at the dinner table. We were able to step it up from the typical, “So, how was your day?” conversation!

This picture is of all of us at Mario’s Italian Kitchen in Watertown, MN. We are good about always traveling with a deck of cards to play games together but this week I added in a few discussion questions before we played. More quality family time and less time on devices!!

Resources for Good Quality Questions

I highly suggest 101 Questions for Family Dinner on the Families Alive website and 44 Creative Dinner Conversation Starters from Popsugar. Both provide open-ended questions that drive great discussion at the table.

I also bought Family Gatherings TableTopics from Amazon. It had great questions but would be really fun to do with grandparents. There are also other discussion topics beyond family gatherings. Some of them include couples, what would you do, kids, and many more!

What did I learn?

I am just like Jennifer Garner! Ok, not really, but the question was if a famous actor had to play your role in the family who would you be? My family decided I was Jennifer Graner, my husband was Paul Rudd, Addie was Shailene Woodley, and Joey was Aidan Gallagher. I have to admit, this conversation was so fun. We talked about all kinds of movies and qualities of different actors that made them like us.

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Also, what quality do you love most about your family? We all agreed that the best part about our family is that we enjoy being together and we laugh a lot. I LOVED hearing this from my kids.

We also had fun conversations around if we had to switch roles, favorites and least favorites, and things we wanted to try.

Why is this important?

There is lots of research around this topic that is linked within the two sites above. However, for me, it is just about keeping conversations open with my family. The more we discuss the more we laugh. I believe the more we talk at dinner the easier the “tough” conversations may be in the future. We put a value on family time and learning about each other and laughing together. I have never once regretted making my kids sit at the table and taking turns answering these types of questions!