It’s good to talk as Morrisons serve up good conversation

Free food and guide to chatting with kids

Morrisons Cambuslang is offering parents a combination of free meals for their kids and inspiration for mealtime conversations.

The supermarket is serving up the free meals in its Bridge Street store café where families will also be given the ultimate guide to ‘small talk’ with kids.

Written by Dr Amanda Gummer, an expert in child development, play and parenting, the guide will help parents have a more meaningful conversation with their children.

Morrisons took up this initiative as new research reveals that 64 per cent of parents say they often struggle to get their children to give more than a one-word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to any questions and almost a quarter of parents want to make more of meal time conversations with their children.

Dr Gummer’s questions are designed to avoid one word answers and to fire the imagination of the children rather than just asking them about their recent experiences.

Her top questions to avoid monosyllabic answers are ‘if you could have a superpower, what would it be’ and ‘who is your hero and why’?

The ‘small talk’ guide will be available to families while they are waiting for their food order and will hopefully provide inspiration for other conversations at home.

Francis Parker, store manager at Morrisons Cambuslang, said: “We know that some parents are looking for help feeding and engaging their kids.

“We hope that Dr Gummer’s questions for kids will help parents create exciting conversations and we hope that our free meals will take the strain off the family budget in August.” Dr Gummer, parenting psychologist from Fundamentally Children, said: “Keeping open the lines of communication with your children is so important for their social development and confidence.

“It is especially relevant in the digital era we’re living in, where a lot of communication is remote, preventing children from learning to interpret non-verbal cues such as tone of voice, expressions and body language.

“There are lots of times during the day to chat and meal times are a perfect opportunity to engage children in conversation.”

Morrisons is offering free meals for kids throughout the summer in all 400 of its cafés.

For more information on Morrisons cafés visit https://your.morrisons.com/ Store-finder/Market-Street-Cafe/

Keeping open lines of communication with kids is so important