Did you know that researchers have found that for young children, both cooking time and dinnertime conversation boosts vocabulary even more than being read aloud to. The researchers counted the number of rare words – those not found on a list of 3,000 most common words – that the families used during dinner conversation. Young kids learned 1,000 rare words at the dinner table, compared to only 143 from parents reading storybooks aloud.

For my own family, we used every opportunity the family dinner table offered with our interactions to build on our son’s communication that was challenged by his autism. Good healthy GAPS  food and taking the time to connect with the family on every level is priceless.