Sitdown Comedy at the Dinner Table
Conversation at the table is important. To connect as a family and have those few moments of peace from our busy lives promotes health and wellbeing. Families who regularly eat together enjoy many other benefits; such as better healthy habits, better performance in school and greater self-esteem. To spice up your dinnertime and bring smiles and laughter to the family is also an important ingredient. Here are just a few ideas to try at your next meal time for a little more fun and giggles.
- Tell a funny story about yourself.
Place a deck of cards on the table and have each member of the family cut the deck to see who goes first. The one with the lowest card wins the prize of being first to tell on themselves. The idea is to tell a short story about something a time when you actually laughed at yourself. Come on, we’ve all done it. We have all made a mistake, cooked something too long, dropped something twice, forgot something important and so on and the act itself made us laugh just a little.
Learning to have a healthy chuckle about our self helps us to take life and criticism a little more lightly. In fact, those who learn to laugh at themselves often are more compassionate to those who also have blunders through out the day. Healthy laughter can begin when we are able to not take ourselves too seriously or the mishaps that happen to all of us.
- Exploding cell phones.
Have each family member place his or her cell phones on the table face down with the volume on. The owner of the first phone to light up or give a tone has clear off the table. Once a phone lights up or makes a tone, the owner has to completely shut down the phone until after dinner. If someone’s phone rings and gets picked up, the owner must agree to do dishes.
This game will help all family members get used to not having their phones or at least not having their phones on during family dinnertime. As we all know, phones can be a big distraction from talking and connecting as a family. This game is fun because of the unknown and helps train families to put away the distractions.
- Superhero Sleuth
Use any superhero character you can think of to tag them to something really funny. Let your kids name the superhero after you ask the question. Here are a few questions you could ask to incite pinning the caper on a superhero. What superhero was responsible for eating an elephant in one bite? What superhero clogged up the largest toilet in the world? What superhero has the worst body odor? What superhero stole your homework? What superhero secretly likes jelly donuts? What superhero is the most handsome or cutest?
These are just a few ideas. Encourage your kids to be a little goofy and ask their own questions to get the conversation started.
©C2GenFamily
