Easy Ways to Spend Time Talking as a Family

Families are full of busy people.  Parents and kids alike are busy, between work and school and the multitude of activities that families are involved in.  It is hard to find easy ways to spend time talking as a family.  I guess a key point is that you have to think about what the definition of time is.  Are we talking about sitting in front of the TV, no not really.  I remember I used to say let's spend some time together and watch a movie.  I guess I never really thought about the fact that you don't talk much during a movie, so is there isn't any interaction between family members.  So here are a couple of tips:

1. Eat together - we try to have dinner together as a family every evening.  This is a great time to talk about the day, school, work, activities and plans for the next day.  Another benefit is that it is a lot cheaper to at home that on the run between some activities.
2. Turn the TV off, so many times the TV is on and no one is watching it.  It is a distracting background noise that makes it difficult to have good conversations.  Turn it off and have a good conversation
3. Play a board game as a family - what a great way to get everyone involved and have fun and talk.

I am not suggesting that it is always easy to carve out time to do any of these things, however as parents we need to build strong links with our kids.  They are going to hit some heavy stuff by teenage years and it would be a shame if they didn't know how to talk to us.