Sparking Conversation: The Family Dinner Project

Check out a list of "Late Night Talk Show" questions your family can use for engaging conversation. Research shows: family dinner skyrockets youth mental health and resilience.

In 2010, Family Dinner Project was launched by a collaborative team of experts and community members.

Over the past 20 years, research has shown what parents have known for a long time: sharing a fun family meal is good for the spirit, brain and health of all family members. Recent studies link regular family meals with the kinds of behaviors that parents want for their children: higher grade-point averages, resilience, and self-esteem. Additionally, family meals are linked to lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, eating disorders, and depression. We see family dinner as prime time to nourish ethical thinking and families are responding to this. From Harvard's College of Education.

Since it's local launch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Family Dinner Project has gone nationwide. It provides resources, workshops, and tips to get families to share meals and have enriching conversations. For a young person, for any person, feeling seen and heard dilutes stress and increases wellbeing in profound ways. The dinner table is a wonderful place to generate conversation.

Struggling to even get dinner on the table? See the seeds down below.

Spark dinner discussion: these around-the-table prompts are directly from the Family Dinner Project. I've grouped them by age to make them even easier to use. Feel free to be a rebel and use any of the prompts for any age.

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