What is your mealtime conversation starters with your kids?

Experts at Goodfella’s have taken 1,000 children aged 6 – 16 kids’ suggestions and recommendations about what they like to talk about at mealtimes to create a fun guide for parents, including 10 conversation starters that are guaranteed (more or less) to get kids talking at the dinner table.

The research show that there are 31% of parents don’t know what to talk to their kids about and 58% of mums and dads admit that their kids are bored of their tired chat.  My husband and I must admit that we always ask the most common but ‘boring’ question: “How was your day at school?”.

Last week, we spent some family time eating delicious Goodfella’s pepperoni pizza.  These are the five question most interesting questions to ask children aged 6 to 12 year old.

1. I heard you playing Justin Bieber’s new song earlier – are you and your friends all Beiliebers?
2. We can’t wait to watch the new LEGO film…
3. We heard that Match Attax cards are really cool – what are they all about..?
4. What’s your favourite video game at the moment, we heard Skylanders is really good…
5. If you could be any footballer, which one would you be?

Mr K is not into music so the first question was not applicable to him.  But he was excited when we chatted about the new LEGO film as we are going to watch it this weekend!  He had talked non-stop about his Skylanders and wanted Mr C to play with him after dinner.  Skylanders is his favourite video game and he has over 10 Skylanders Swap Force characters.  We had just recently bought him a couple more characters to add on his ever growing collection.  So after food, both children and Mr C had 30 minutes of bonding time playing Skylanders together.

Then afterwards we watched the Dancing on Ice final.  Mr K really wanted Ray Quinn to win and so he made a banner!  He just walked off halfway through the show and returned a moment later with “Ray” written on the yellow coloured paper!  I was so surprised!  He had been watching the audience hold a board up so wanted to make a banner too to show his support!  Bless him!  My boy has grown up so quickly.

Thanks to Goodfella for this research and now I have more insight on how to open an interesting conversation with children and be more “down with the kids”.  They also cite the poor quality of conversation as the main reason that 43% are entertaining themselves by watching TV whilst they eat, over a quarter (27%) are texting and playing games on their phones and 5% are even listening to music on their headphones.  So now Mr C has banned me from using my iPad when eating.

If you have children aged 12 to 15 year olds, you might like to start your conversation with these five questions:

1. So, Harry Styles and Kendall Jenner, are they on or off?
2. I love Perry’s dress in the new Little Mix video, would you like one like that?
3. What are your favourite Vine videos at the moment, we love…
4. What do you think about Flappy Birds being banned?
5. Who are the best people to follow on Instagram/ twitter? We started following xx last week…

Now we aim to have sociable and fun mealtimes together!  Thanks to GoodFella’s for this fun time.

Disclosure: We have received a voucher to purchase the pizzas.