Question:
How can we make family meals a priority when we’re so busy? Crazy schedules are the norm in our household. I don’t get home from work until 6:00 p.m. and if my family waits for me to prepare a nutritious dinner, they’ll starve before I can get it on the table.
Answer: As a working mum with a busy family, it’s impossible to serve up the kind of family dinners your great-grandmother used to. That’s okay. Don’t throw in the towel and admit defeat just yet. Instead, change your strategy. Approach the problem from a different angle.
Remember, shared meals don’t always have to happen at dinner time or during the busy working week. Sometimes this just isn’t possible. If you can manage three family meals a week, you’ll be on the right track. And you can achieve this if you’re willing to stretch your plan to include weekends and other mealtimes. The idea is to compensate for your lack of time with a little creativity and ingenuity.
One way to do this is to prepare a large number of meals beforehand. Several cookbooks are available with lots of practical tips for planning and preparing meals on a monthly basis. You may also want to join a Mummy’s group on social media that shares simple and easy recipes.
If you don’t want to get involved in planning that far ahead, you may be able to simplify things just by changing your ideas about dinner. The evening meal doesn’t have to be a big production. The point is to have some family time around the table.
© 2018 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
