Parenting Cheat Sheet: The Easy Way to Create Family Memories

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s wrong to cheat when it comes to your kids and creating family memories, but if you’re a non planner like me, then you need all the help you can get. And even if you’re a to do monster like my Classic sister Kelly, then I think even you can get in on today’s two step family memory making tip.

Time Is Different For Kids

First step is easy. All you need to do is remember that kids experience time differently than adults. Something that you only do once or twice a couple of times a year, they will remember as happening all the time. Yes, this is one of the cheating parts. And it works. I employ it for family dinners. We’re lucky if we get one sit down meal a week, but I guarantee that when they’re grown and asked if they had family dinners growing up, my kids will enthusiastically respond, yes!

You Need A Few Easy Crutches

It wasn’t always this way. It took another cheat to even get to our once a week meal. I don’t cook and have a chronic illness, so making family dinners was hard enough, let alone getting a speech impaired five year old who doesn’t stop talking and a prickly 14 year old to break bread together. So here’s a few more cheats: rotisserie chicken, Swenson’s family drive in and Table Topic cards.

Forget having to slave over a stove. Who has time for it? Ready made food at the grocery store is an economical way to still have a sit down meal. Taco Tuesday is another easy meal, and what’s wrong with sitting down and the table for pizza. No shame, no blame here people! It’s not about the food, it’s about the conversation.

Don’t Give Up

Ooh, the conversation of a grumpy 14 year old and the loud and talkative speech-impaired 5 year old; the quiet steaming of our introverted daughter and their Dad yelling at everyone. It’s safe to say our first family dinner was a disaster. But I persevered. Dad, who had been inspired by my attempt to even have family dinner in the first place got a frozen lasagna at Costco. I, buttressed with my Table Topic cards endeavored to sit down as a family once again. Some of the questions were easy like “What’s your favorite color?” Others prompted a longer response, like “What is your favorite childhood memory?” While it wasn’t a flying colors success, we did at least get through it with everyone still seated.

Then came a last minute meal at Swensons, a local drive-in place. Maybe it was the connection with Dad’s childhood as his family used to do a similar thing at Five Points in Union, NJ on Saturday nights. Maybe it was being stuck in the car together. I suspect it was the Table Topics and a bit of a third time’s a charm that finally gave us our family groove.

We didn’t have the cards with us on this trip because it was impromptu. (A personality strength of Organic Freedoms like me and Smart Freedoms like my husband!) But the minute I brought up forgetting the cards, the five year old piped up and started asking everyone what their favorite color was. Or maybe it was that the grumpy 14 year old who asked a question that I thought was a table topic, but that she’d made up off the top of her head. Whatever it was, it got us laughing and it got us to enjoy family dinners.

We still use the cards from time to time when the conversation flags, but by and large we get on pretty well without them. And while we only average about one or two dinners a month, when they’re grown, in the warm glow of nostalgia, I guarantee they will attest to having them every week.