I worked the overnight shift one summer at a restaurant and came home every (my) night to eat my dinner while my dad was eating his breakfast. It was good, though sometimes he looked a bit queasy at my burger & beer when he was having cereal & coffee….

Swing shift is definitely hard! Even if it’s not a meal, hopefully you can find a shared/common/family activity to synch schedules on…
It sounds dorky, but even folding the laundry with kids & putting it away… if the kids are small enough, you can have all sorts of fun carrying them in the laundry baskets, turning them into forts, etc. Ok, I must be a dork, because that is one of my fonder memories of random ‘family’ chore time growing up!

I have not, but I will put it on my very long to read list.

I think you are right, we have much to gain my making anything in our lives more deliberate and mindful. I tend to not be so mindful when eating, but when I take the time to pay attention it is amazing what is there.

I think you’d like it.

Anyone who has an omelette named after them, you know they’re good!

However, this past month for my Sustainably Happy Project I focused on traditions and made myself stop and eat meals (though lunch still is a tricky habit to change). This meant more meals with my husband, often outside on our deck or when I was traveling actually stopped to eat (often at a nice wooded rest stop area).

This probably added a few minutes to each day, but mentally giving myself these little breaks was huge. So while I totally agree that making the time to eat with our families is important, I also think just making the time to more mindfully eat our food is equally important. Life is made up of the small moments, so rushing through meals means that we miss daily opportunities to enjoy our lives.

Yeah, I think meals together just kinda seeps in. Even though my kids may not appreciate it now, I hope they will look back upon it as a positive thing.

I think there were fewer distractions before smart phones and wifi became more or less ubiquitous. The cereal box thing was cut-throat between me and my siblings. Initial placement was everything…

There have been studies like this one which showed a correlation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15289253/

Thanks for the article Ryan, definitely a good idea to limit technology interruptions.