HelloFresh releases top tips on how to get kids to open up at mealtimes, in partnership with Professor Sam Wass

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With 97% of parents claiming that family dinnertime is important to them and one in five saying their child is uncommunicative when they come home from school, HelloFresh and Prof. Sam have released a series of easy-to-follow games for families to play, expertly designed to encourage conversation, engagement and fun around mealtimes.

Not only this, Prof. Sam has also shared his top tips and conversation starters for encouraging open family discussion around the table, after 88% of parents say it drives them mad when they just get one-word answers from their kids.

Here are some tips for how to encourage your children to open up to you when asking about their day at school:

Play helps encourage conversation and engagement.

Name that Food

In this game, the youngest member of the family is in charge. Everybody else – elder siblings, and parents – tie a school tie or eye mask across their eyes – and the youngest member of the family takes an edible raw vegetable like carrot, cucumber, salad leaves or a side dish like coleslaw and feeds it to the other family members, who have to guess what it is

What was your weird

As you’re sat around the dinner table, everyone has to ‘make a picture out of their food’ of something from their day. Ask prompting questions like:

‘Who was your favourite, or your least favourite, person who you met at school today? Can you draw their portrait?’

‘What did you learn at school today - can you make a picture about it with your food?’

Food match

While parents are prepping the family meal, they take their HelloFresh box and put it on the table, using 3-5 included ingredients and line it up in a particular order, and put the same number of ingredients on the top of the box

Kids must guess the exact order of the food items behind the box

Gratitude/Challenge Jar

Just before everyone sits down to enjoy their meal, get a masonry jar or similar, a pen, and small squares of paper, and ask everyone - parents and kids - to write a challenge and a gratitude moment they experienced today. Each family member takes it in turns to pick a note out from the jar, and reads it aloud

To help start the conversation initially, ask specific questions to start the conversation flowing – focusing on things that you know that they’re excited about already, so they’re likely to want to talk about.

How was history today? (Or whatever their favourite subject is)

What was the favourite or most interesting thing you learned at school today?

What was the hardest thing that you had to do today?

Use questions that build on things that you’ve talked about together before, to show that you were listening the last time you talked.

‘What did (friend’s name) do today after nobody wanted to sit next to her at lunch yesterday?’

You’re much more likely to get a detailed response, and importantly, get to really know what’s going on for them at school.

Use short words of encouragement, and nonverbal cues to show that you’re listening while they talk.

Some children find sitting still, and direct eye contact to be intimidating. Rather than looking directly at your child as they speak at table, try to use other types of verbal and nonverbal cues to reassure them that you’re listening while they talk. That’s where games can come in too.

For example, short phrases such as ‘uhuh’ and ‘oh wow!’ and nodding along as they’re talking can help a child to keep talking by reassuring them that you’re listening.

Summarise, using similar vocabulary to theirs

It can help just to summarise what they’ve been saying. So: ‘OK, so Marta’s been funny with you all day, but you’re not sure whether it’s because of X, or Y.’

This helps to show that you’ve been listening, and that you’re interested. Using the same specific words that they used back to them, and matching their speech rhythms and tone of voice, can also help to make them feel understood.