By Callum Ludwig
Fostering open, honest and healthy communication within a family can be a tough task but a dinnertime ritual might be the answer.
The Table Talk Project, a not-for-profit charity already helping families in the Yarra Ranges, is advocating for households to spend at least one night a week together having open conversations at the dinner table.
Founder and Project Manager of The Table Talk Project Neil Milton said what he wanted to do is create a space where everyone feels listened to, heard and validated.
“The Table Talk Project is about supporting families to have meaningful conversations around the dinner table, my personal story is that whilst I had dinner with my family each night when I was a kid, I didn’t feel like I had a voice,” he said.
“There was no opportunity to talk, I never got asked how my day was, I didn’t get asked about anything, we didn’t talk about anything deep, it was pretty much sit down, shut up and eat your vegetables, and I hated vegetables,”
“We have created a web app tool that supports families to have these meaningful conversations, we provide recipes, which is the entree, we provide a main, which is conversation starters with a whole bunch of topics, for different ages and those sort of things and then also on top of that, we have created a dessert which is a check-in to make sure everyone who leaves the table is going to feel listened to and heard and validated and they’re going to be OK.”
The Table Talk Project ran a 10-week pilot program with 15 families from the Cire Community Schools in 2024 and Mr Milton also recently met with Casey MP Aaron Violi to talk about the charity and how it could continue to expand its reach in the Yarra Ranges.
Mr Milton said they recommend that families come together a minimum of once per week to have those meaningful conversations that create the space for those children to feel safe, feel heard and feel listened to.
“That way they know that their parents are going to be there for them, but also that there’s nothing off of the table to talk about, that they can talk about anything,” he said.
“The evidence says that it builds better mental health, that it helps around thinking through different topics, talking about different things like mental health and suicide, body image and those sort of things,”
“Creating that space helps people feel empowered and there’s an autonomy that they feel when children can actually have a voice because often it’s not the case, News Corp did a study of 1000 families and they found seven in 10 families don’t eat at the dinner table in Australia and I’m trying to bring that back so that so that children can feel safer and supported.”
Community groups and organisations can contact The Table Talk Project to try and arrange a speaking engagement, immersive experience or 10-week program themselves at: thetabletalkproject.org/contact-us-2/.
Mr Milton said what he says to people is it’s never too late to build connections, build relationships and build better mental health.
“The truth is that what we encourage is people to commit to 10 weeks, ideally 10 weeks, of just doing it once a week, and then see the difference,” he said.
“We’ve connected with CIRE (Community Schools), where the school identifies the families and they use the web app, and we’re seeing huge results from the pilot last year, over 80 per cent of the children felt more listened to and heard and the family felt better connected,”
“A lot of parents feel like ‘Oh, the connection is too far gone’, ‘We can’t get them back to the table’ or ‘We can’t build those relationships’ but the best thing to do is just start somewhere, and it will be really powerful for the children.”
The ‘Back to the Table’ web app tool can be found at thetabletalkproject.org/at-the-table/.
