Our approaches to changing any habits tend to fall into a quite predictable cycle or series of steps. The first step is called “pre-contemplation”. This is the stage at which you may not even consider that change is necessary. In your case it may be that you quite like TV dinners, or you just don’t see any point in trying to gather your family together.
The next step is “contemplation”. This is where you start to think about the fact that change might be necessary or that you would like things to be different. It may be that hearing about some of the facts about the benefits of family mealtimes, for example, has caught your imagination and led you to think about how your family operates its mealtimes.
The next stage of change is to make a “decision” to do something different. This is the point at which, having thought about how things are and how things could be, you decide to take some kind of action to change the habit.
Following your decision to change you then embark on the next step, which is to “act” upon your decision. With family mealtimes it may be that you have logged on here to get ideas to get your family back around the table. If so, then hopefully you will be able to make use of my 10 tips for family mealtimes.
These actions then lead to the all important change, which hopefully, in your case means trying to eat at least two more meals a week with your family. Once you have made a change the key thing is to try to maintain it, or to keep the change going.
This is harder than it sounds. Old habits die hard, as the saying goes, and this means that it is always tempting to go back to old ways of behaving (perhaps eating in front of the telly, or letting the children eat first and parents eating separately). In fact research shows that on average we will try to make any new change seven times, before we will successfully maintain it. In other words, don’t be put off if you seem to have relapsed into old ways of behaving. This is very normal.
The important thing is to simply try again. Re-affirm your decision to eat family meals. Clear off the kitchen table, bring out the place settings, set the time for dinner, insist on everyone turning up and choose a quick recipe from this website to maximise the time you will have to sit and eat while minimising your workload.
Change is difficult to achieve but, especially with family meals, it is very worthwhile. So even if things don’t work out first time around keep at it. Your family is worth it.