You’ve heard me talk about how important sitting down with your family over dinner is. But once dinner is served, the troops have been rallied, and you finally sit down to enjoy the warmth and fellowship of the ones you love…….what then?

Surprisingly, the very people we see and share life with every day, we can find it hardest to come up with new and meaningful conversation that will tell us something different we didn’t already know about each other and even shed new light on our spouse and our children.

What my family does quite often around the dinner table – just to get the chatter going – is ask one another questions that, at first, might seem silly, but once the answers start coming out, they oftentimes lead into interesting and even hilarious discussion.

Here are some of the quesions we ask:

What was one good thing that happened today?
What was one bad thing that happened today?
Anything exciting/embarassing/boring/funny/ scary/frustrating happen?
What would you do if you had one million dollars?
What were you thinking about at 2:00 pm?
Would you rather be/have a (fill in the blank) or a (fill in the blank)?
On a scale from 7 to 16, how would you rate today?

You can also start sentences that someone else at the table must finish, like:

I remember when……..
My favorite family vacation memory is…….
I look foward to……
One thing I hope to learn before I die is…….

One other idea is to have each person bring one item to the table – it doesn’t matter what it is, just something. Whatever you bring, you must explain why you brought it and what it means to you.

These conversation starters can be a lot of fun. The point is to get everyone talking and to maximize the quality of the time you spend with each other. These family practices pay huge dividends so I encourage you to get creative and find ways that you can enjoy and strengthen your family.