As my kids were growing up, one thing we were able to do really well with them was to connect over dinner. We decided long before we ever had kids, that having family dinners were important to us. As our kids grew, we tried various ideas along the way to incorporate conversations and take advantage of times to connect with each other and with our kids. Conversation starters have been one of our favorites. During the teenage years, it can be challenging due to schedules, homework expectations, and social calendars but we all got to eat!

Over the years, we talked about all kinds of things at dinner from complete randomness, music, movies, superheroes, scripture, and we even did a nightly family devotional. On many occasions, we shared the worst part of our day and the best part of our day together. I loved that conversation because it gave me a glimpse of a part of their world that they may not have shared with me otherwise.

Conversation starters are useful because they show us a different side of each other. Often times the questions are very random or insignificant, but they can give you a peek into personality and thoughts like nothing else can.

I think our teens enjoyed them so much because their responses were never right or wrong. They didn’t have to seek approval from us or worry about their response so much. As a parent, I loved the relaxed openness of my kids sharing their thoughts with me … even if it was about what kind of animal they would want to be and why. Haha!

As a family, we spent some time coming up with 100 Conversation Starter questions together. You can get ours to download and print!

*It’s important to know that I do use affiliate links on my page. When you click on a link that takes you to another website. If you make a purchase, I will get a tiny payment for referring you. No worries though, it doesn’t change your great price. That stays the same whether you click my link or not. You can find out more on my disclosure policy. 🙂

After we made up all of the questions, my 8-year-old, Zoe and I spent some time printing them out, cutting them up (I really cheated here and used a paper-cutter … thank goodness I found a cheap one a few weeks ago). We folded them up and put them all in a pretty vase I had in my stash. 

This little project literally took us about 15 minutes from start to finish. It’s our new breakfast table centerpiece! I think it’s cute, however, I need to replace the ribbon. Orange is a little too Fall-like for this time of year. We recently moved and I haven’t found the box with all the ribbon in it yet. So I used what I had. Haha!

Here is a sampling of  10 of our questions:

• If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go and what is the first thing you would do when you get there?
• If you had one million dollars ($1,000,000), what would you do with it?
• If you were an animal, what kind would you be and why?
• Where is your favorite place to be? What makes that place your favorite?
• What are 3 words that other people might use to describe you?
• What do you imagine Heaven is like?
• What is your top 3 favorite movies? What do you love most about them?
• If you were able to choose your name when you were born, what would you choose and why?
• What is your most favorite quality about yourself?
• What was the last thing someone did for you that showed you they cared for you? Who did it?

Now, you don’t really have to go through the effort of cutting them up and finding a pretty vase to put them in, if you don’t want to. You can simply print the list out and keep it near where you have dinner and then assign someone to grab a question or 2 or 3 each night.  The point is to start the conversation.

Just a little something to ponder …

Zoe asked me what we will do with the questions when we are done with them and I thought a great idea would be to keep a mason jar handy to put the used questions in and then put a pretty ribbon on it and pass it to another family as a little gift! That is what we are going to do with ours!

Now, click on the picture to the right and get your 100 Conversation Starters, or subscribe to my Sincerely Christi Resource Library below and connect with each other tonight. After all, tomorrow is not promised. Enjoy!

 Sincerely, Christi

Get your copy of my entire Sincerely Christi Resource Library,

including the countdown calendar below!