To get younger (and older) kids to talk about meaningful things during dinner, we often do a round of best thing/worst thing.

Everybody at the table takes a turn – young and old.

And you say one of the best things of your day and also one of the worst things of your day.

Resist the urge to gravitate toward “positive” talk by only sharing positive things – real conversations will come out of both and both are important. We all need to be able to talk about challenges as well as successes.

It usually turns out to be a conversation starter that goes off on tangents. Highly recommend!