When my kids were younger, we used to talk for what felt like hours at the dinner table.
Now that they’re a little more grown-up (10 and 12), my husband and I are getting less and less quality time with them at our weeknight dinners.
And trust me – it’s not for lack of trying!
My husband purposefully comes home early so he can be with us every night, and I changed around my work schedule to give myself enough time to cook a delicious, healthy meal that we can all enjoy together.
But still, something about this arrangement wasn’t working…
I read online that families should be sitting down and talking for at least 30 minutes a night at dinner, so I decided to track how much time we were spending together for a week:
- Monday: 21 minutes
- Tuesday: 19 minutes
- Wednesday: 24 minutes
- Thursday: 27 minutes
- Friday: 26 minutes
Yikes! I knew I had to do something, and that’s when I found out about conversation starter cards.
They’re basically… exactly what they sound like: a bunch of cards in a box that have good conversation prompts on them!
I decided to go with the highest-rated conversation starter cards for families on Amazon, the Talking Point Cards ‘Family Pack.’
The example questions in the photos seemed great, and everyone in the comments was just raving about how the Family Pack helped them keep a good conversation going and spend more time with one another!
And Guess What: The Cards Really Do Work!!!
Once I got the Family Pack, I told myself I’d use them at the dinner table for a week straight and see how much changed.
If the cards didn’t help us talk any more than usual, I’d just return them (and we’d return to our pathetic 24.4 minutes a night of dinner-table conversation…)
The only variable that changed in my little experiment was we went from starting our conversations with the usual “How was your day?” type of questions to the questions on the Family Pack cards.
Here are the results from the first week:
- Monday: 51 minutes
- Tuesday: 44 minutes
- Wednesday: 47 minutes
- Thursday: 39 minutes
- Friday: 1 hour and 22 minutes!!!
How amazing is that!
In the first week of using the Family Pack, the amount of time we spent talking at the dinner table more than doubled!!!
And it wasn’t just that the length of our conversations improved, either.
The whole vibe of our dinners shifted from “something to do” to “something to savor” (I thought that all of my extra cooking efforts would have already accomplished that… but oh well!)
The pace and format of pulling out cards and answering them together were perfect for guiding great dinner-table conversations.
All of a sudden, none of us were rushing to get back on our phones (or go upstairs to do their ‘homework’)…
We were enjoying each other’s company so much (and enjoying discussing each and every prompt!) that we just wanted to stay seated, pull one more card, and keep the conversation going!!
During that first week, we talked about a huge variety of different topics, learned new things about each other, and even brainstormed some ways we could work together better as a family unit!
And It’s All Thanks to the Family Pack!
It’s been a couple of months since that first magical week with the Family Pack, and I’m happy to report that we’re going as strong as ever!
We still talk for way longer at the table, and our conversations with the Family Pack are just so fun, interesting, and exciting!
Plus, since we started having these longer dinner-table conversations, I’ve noticed that our family communication has improved, all of our screen times have gone down, and my 10-year-old has noticeably gained confidence in speaking and expressing her opinions!
I’m so glad I recognized our family dinner conversation problem and found such a great solution in the Family Pack.
These cards have quite literally given us an extra 3-4 hours of quality time and meaningful conversation a week!!!
If that sounds like something you’d like, go to the Talking Point Cards website to get your very own Family Pack!
P.S.: If you are still on the fence (why?!)Talking Point Cards offer free shipping, free no-questions-asked returns, and have over 10,000 reviews on their products. Give it a go! (you won’t regret it)
