"Dinner Moments"

So, I was cooking dinner last night, and by cooking I mean I was heating up a Stouffer's frozen lasagna, and on the back of the box was part of their latest media campaign, called Dinner Moments. The message: Families should eat dinner together and parents should talk to their kids. And on the box are "conversation starters," questions you should ask your kids, while you're all sitting around the dinner table, to get them talking.


Well, yes...of course. As parents, we already know this, right? It's a lovely sentiment, in a very Ozzie and Harriet way (although Harriet would NEVER make a Stouffer's dinner).

So why does it bug me that a corporation feels the need to dole out parenting advice? Perhaps because the questions are so dorky:

• If you could star in a movie with a famous actor, who would it be?
• What singer or actor would you want as a babysitter?
• If you could be a foreign exchange student anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• What is your favorite Saturday morning TV show?

These are obviously for younger children. Now I don't know how things are in your house, but when my kids were young I couldn't shut them up...all I had to do look at them and smile and they'd babble on for hours. It wasn't until they were about 14 or 15 that my interest in their lives was met with a series of grunts.

I got online to see what kind of questions they came up with for older kids (yes, they have a website dedicated to getting families talking, which apparently will sell more frozen dinners: dinnermoments.com) but they were all for little kids, too. So I thought I'd suggest some questions to get teenagers talking:

• What's it like to play video games for 12 hours straight?
• When are you going to get a job?
• When are you going to stop asking me for money?
• When are you moving out?

Now these, my friends, are Conversation Starters.