Here is Lisa talking about what is currently going on with Fink cards and the importance of family mealtime’s.

Find out more about family mealtimes and the importance of eating meals as family.

For many busy parents the words ‘Quality Time’ instantly conjure up feelings of guilt! Juggling home and work is hard enough but finding time to fit in a magical hour of quality time every day seems a near impossibility to many time stressed parents.

Well, after a bit of creative thinking I think I have found the solution and it’s been sitting under our noses all the time!

Family mealtimes can offer so much more than just food, it’s a time where your family can reconnect, listen and focus on each other – in a nut shell it is prime quality time, and it’s available everyday!

Public Health Nutritionist, Yvonne Wake explains “Regular meal times give children the opportunity to discuss problems with family members; it relaxes and encourages them to wind down. Research shows that families that eat together more than twice a week are more likely to have closer relationships.”

The research makes interesting reading but doesn’t really come as a surprise, I have always been a big fan of family mealtimes and over the years I have found that my children have come to love the time we spend together at the dinner table. We talk about important events, people moving away, new jobs, new schools, and precious anniversaries.  Our conversations build a rich family history, my children seem to soak it all in, they never tire about hearing stories of when they were younger, when me and my husband met and where we lived.  It all fits together and helps to build their identity, sharing our stories keeps family lore strong!

The regularity of dinner time, the comfort and security it seems to offer at the end of a long day is reassuring to us all. Our mealtimes have evolved in to something more than just routine, I would say it has become a ritual. I think Miriam Weinstein author of The Surprising Power of Family Meals puts it perfectly when she says “Sitting down to a meal together draws a line around us, it encloses us and, for a brief time, strengthens the bonds that connect us with other members of our self-defined clan, shutting out the rest of the world.”

Eating is a social activity and the benefits for your child’s confidence and social skills are massive. The dinner table is an excellent place to learn about conversation and gain confidence in communicating. If you need any further agreement just ask a primary school teacher what a boost regular family mealtimes can be to a child’s language development!

I know that you may be thinking this is a recipe for indigestion and is just another demand on your time, I do understand it is difficult juggling after school clubs and husbands who come home late but it can be done, follow these tips and with very little effort you can create an oasis of quality time for your family every day!

If after school activities or long work hours make it difficult to eat together every night, try building at least two family mealtimes into your weekly routine. If it’s really impossible to set a regular family mealtime try a late evening dessert get together or a weekend breakfast instead!

Plan your meals in advance, not only will this save you time and money but will save your sanity when the “what’s for dinner” chants start at 4pm each afternoon.

Keep the conversation enjoyable, steer clear of any nagging!  Talk about an upcoming family event, holiday or use conversation cards, questions like ‘Would you like to be famous?’ or Would you rather be an adult or child?’ is usually enough to get conversation started.  Make sure everyone is included and has the opportunity to speak and be listened to!

One of the most important things you can do is turn the TV off and let the phone ring!

I have often let phone calls interrupt our dinner; I find it difficult not to succumb to a ringing phone. However last week, when the telephone rang in the middle of our meal I found myself saying those magic words “if it’s important they will ring back.”   Something amazing happened – there was a shift in everyone’s attention, everything seemed to freeze for a millisecond whilst my children registered what I had just done. In that moment they knew they were my number one priority, I was focused on them and nothing else was more important. For me this was a revelation –   right there round our table was the ever elusive quality time!

Yvonne Wake (BSc. MSc), a Public Health Nutritionist at Roehampton University, London,   has written a paper on nutrition and the role a family plays, she agrees that it’s important to eat meals together as a family.

“Talking to children over dinner is a great way of gaining trust and they are more likely to talk about things that could sometimes feel uncomfortable. Regular meal times altogether give children the opportunity to discuss problems with family members; it relaxes and encourages them to wind down. From an emotional standpoint, research shows that children who frequently eat with their families have better results at school, are less depressed, less likely to drink alcohol, smoke, or use marijuana than children who eat with their families less than twice a week,” says Wake.

Some key reasons why family mealtimes are important

• Strengthen the family by providing opportunities for communications and building relationships.

• Enable children to have longer conversations with parents, which can increase their linguistic abilities giving them an edge in the classroom.

• Are seen as a marker for other positive family attributes and play an important role in helping teens cope with the stresses of adolescence.

• Lead to better nutrition as you have more control over quality and quantity of the family’s food choices.

• Enable children to adopt their parent’s attitudes to food and acceptable table manners.

• Foster family traditions and help shape and give meaning to cultural heritage.

• Children value the contact time. When Oprah Winfrey conducted a ‘Family Dinner Experiment’ in 1993, five families volunteered to eat dinner together every night for a month, staying at the table for a half-hour each time. At first, sharing meals was a chore for many families and the time dragged on. But, by the end of the month, the families were happy and planned to continue dining together most evenings, if not every night. The greatest surprise for parents was how much their children treasured the dependable time with their parents at the table.

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2012 is going to be pretty special

I have a feeling that 2012 is going to be pretty special, I think it’s going to be a year where people, communities and society as a whole, come together to connect, talk and celebrate.

I believe that both the Queens Jubilee and the Olympics will be tremendously positive occasions that will bring out the best in people and give communities an opportunity to unite.

I know some people may scoff at the fuss and pour scorn on my optimistic outlook but I really do believe that something very special is going to happen this year!

Fink are planning a pretty spectacular year

Here at Fink we are planning a pretty spectacular year too – as you may know, Fink won £50,000 of investment from Village Capital just before Christmas and boy, are we excited about that!

This money will enable us to do great things; we want to get many, many people talking!

I know I have said it before but it’s worth saying again – conversation has a lot to offer, we can learn, grow, connect and strengthen relationships – all from a simply talking!

In 2012 we want to get communities talking

In 2012 we want to get communities talking, we want to get people, especially young people, talking about the communities they live in – what works, what doesn’t, what needs to happen – and more importantly – what can they do to make the place they live better!

Community Conversations Project

Throughout January we are going to be talking about communities in more detail with a project called Community Conversations – we are going to be talking to lots of people including politicians, police, business and religious leaders and asking questions about how we improve our communities.

Get young people talking about their future

We also want to get young people talking about their future, I am sure you were as shocked as me to see the rise in youth unemployment. We want to start conversations about employment and enterprise!

These are substantial projects for us, we know they are important conversations, but whilst we focus on getting people talking on a bigger scale we are not forgetting that FINK stands for Family Interaction Nurtures Kids.

Three new editions launching this year just for families

We have 3 new editions launching this year just for families – we plan to start some amazing conversations with mums, dads and grandparents. I am so excited about the questions we have written– and even more excited about conversation and memories they are going to create.

As you can see, 2012 is going to be a spectacular year and I am eager to get going.

Please join us

Please join us, we have lots to talk about, you can get involved in the conversation and follow our adventure on Twitter or Facebook

Wishing you all the best for 2012

Lisa

Being a great communicator is not a gift, it is a skill – what makes us great is practice. Fink Cards are a range of conversation cards that help people become more confident communicators.  

I am delighted to introduce you to Fiona Marshall, founder of www.notmassproduced.com and www.tastia.com AND Village Capital winner!

In addition to being a thoroughly lovely person and a worthy winner Fiona’s business is making a real impact. Her two websites showcase the work of amazing artisans.  She is passionate about connecting talented producers and artisans with consumers.

Here is Fiona talking about why she started her business

“I originally trained as an Intellectual Property Lawyer specialising in Trade Marks before taking time out to have a family. Over the years I became more concerned and interested in the effects of globalisation and the damaging impact on the environment.

These concerns prompted me to begin a mission to promote and support small-scale producers which I believe benefits more people than mass production by the few and will benefit society as a whole.

Consumers have more power as buyers than they do as voters. If we support small producers we can change what is essentially, a broken system which has created massive debt, unemployment and wealth for the few.

I want to change the way things are produced – locally instead of thousands of miles away – and to change people’s spending habits. To do this I have created two websites which help artisans sell their products more easily and bring great products to consumers in a sustainable way.”

Please, please check out these two amazing sites, if your quick you even finish off your Christmas shopping!

http://www.notmassproduced.com and  
http://www.tastia.com 


I have exciting news! Fink Cards has won £50,000 of investment

It goes without saying that I am absolutely delighted. This is a really big deal for us as it means we can scale up to create a bigger, better business and more importantly make more of an impact getting children and families talking.

It wasn’t easy though; the competition was tough, I was up against 5 amazing social businesses

It has been a rigorous process and over a period of 12 weeks I have worked hard to make my business stronger. To be honest it’s not just my business that has been made stronger by the process, it has changed me too.

The Programme is called Village Capital and it uses the power of peer support to build enterprises that change the world.  It was founded by an amazing individual called Ross Baird who set out to solve the problem that too many world-changing enterprises can’t get off the ground because of the lack of investment options. The programme aims to give social entrepreneurs the skills and resources to get their businesses ready for investment.

Peer support is such an important element to this programme that not only did the entrepreneurs support each other when it came down to deciding the winners of the 2 investment prizes of £50,000 it was the peers who voted for the winner.

This is why it means so much to me!

Over the next couple of days I want to introduce you Village Capital’s other winner, Fiona Marshall, founder of www.notmassedproduced.com and to my peers and their incredible businesses, Nigel from Mdiagostica, Jules from Our Health Mobile and Maryam from www.mysupportbroker.com

I also want to introduce you to the organisations and individuals that are responsible for bringing Village Capital to London, including Merism Capital Hub Venture Labs and Hub Westminister

I have so much to tell you!

I was truly lost for words when I received notification from Janey Lee Grace that I was selected as the Winner of the Janey Loves 2011 Platinum Awards after a few people had kindly nominated me.

After detailed scrutiny by Janey and their panel of experts, and some seriously stiff competition I was chosen as a winner for the Best Innovative Family Product: “Its brillant that these encouraged conversation at our family dinner table, looking forward to using the Teen edition too !”

Well it’s great to know that my products have made a big impact on the way families are communicating and THAT is my main aim and very proud of it.

Thanks very much to Janey for the opportunity.

You can view Janey’s site at www.janeyleegrace.com.

We have always believed that communication is the key to children reaching their potential so we were delighted to support the National Year of communication in highlighting their Hello campaign.

This month we have devoted our blog and social media activity to the campaign. We have learnt so much this month about children’s speech and language development, including what is normal and what to do if there is a problem. It has been wonderful to share with you so many of the free resources available at www.hello.org.uk and we hope you have found the information useful too!

But it’s not over yet, as we mentioned yesterday there is much more to come from the campaign as they continue their mission make communication for all children and young people a priority in homes and schools across the UK so that they can live life to the full. 

Keep in touch with the campaign by signing up for their newsletter or stay tuned and we will bring you all the regular updates and news from the campaign.

Our month of activity for the Hello campaign is drawing to a close but the national year doesn’t end here, have a sneaky peek at what is to come:

September – Back to school
Speech and language skills are vital in the classroom. Language is the way that teachers teach and children learn.

October – Not just words
Some children have little or no speech. They use facial expressions, signing, symbols or computer aides to communicate with others.

November – Celebrating communication
Our ability to communicate is something to celebrate – it’s what makes humans unique!!

December – Talk to the future
Children with severe and complex communication difficulties will struggle for life, not just in 2011.

For more details of the campaign click here where you can download a handy ‘zig zag’ calendar which you can print off and fold to fit into your pocket or alternatively download an A4 calendar which you can print off, put up in your home, office or classroom and add your own events and activities.