Family Dinner Conversation Starters

Has your conversation around the dinner table ever sounded like this?

“How was your day?” “Fine.”
“Did you have fun in gym class today?” Answer: “Yep!”
“Did you play with Sully at recess?” “Naww.”

The infamous one word answer. It happens at different ages for different kids, but it happens. And you may think your kid is incapable of saying more than one word at a time! But, they actually are able to answer if full, thought-provoking sentences if we ask questions in a different manner.

Dinner Conversation Starters

With 3 teenage boys in the house we get a lot of one word answers! Apparently it’s quite different than those of you with girls (or so my friends tell me!). Over the years I have learned the answers I get are based on the questions I ask and how I ask them. Take for example one of the questions I asked above: “Did you have fun in gym class today?” It’s a simple yes or no question. Most often, we set our kids up to only give us a one word answer!

Simply restating the question will allow us to get a much more detailed answer. For example, “What was the most fun thing you did in gym class today?” or “Tell me the activities you did during gym today.” This will get you at least a short explanation (or possibly even a long one!) which can then typically lead to you finding out some details so that you can ask more questions!

Of course, dinner time is a great time to have conversation about how every person’s day went..but you might also want o chat about some other fun things!  These Dinner Conversation Starters often provoke interesting and funny conversation! You can download the free Conversation Starters by clicking on the button at the bottom of this post.

I suggest that your family take turns picking a Dinner Conversation Topic out of the jar each night. The person who picks the topic can answer first and then go around the table so that everyone gets a chance to answer.