The family dinner table is where a lot of people learned who they are. Show up even when it’s tacos again.

Repeated, unremarkable time together is where people absorb how to argue, how to tell a story, how disagreement is supposed to sound. Nothing memorable happens at most dinners, and that is exactly the mechanism: those lessons arrive by volume rather than by occasion. Turning up matters a great deal more than the food being interesting.

Come to the table this week without your phone and ask one question that is not about school. If family dinners are not a thing in your house, make one evening a week the evening. Whoever cooks will notice even if nobody mentions it.