We are one of those dying breeds of families.
Every night we sit at the dinner table, at about the same time, with the t.v. and the telephone off and have our dinner meal together. Boring I know. But I'm a firm beleiver in consistency in our children's lives and this just happens to be one that they can count on.
I really am tired of our dinner conversations. They always usually somehow end up back to a certain type of food on their plate and how much they despise it. The normal, "how was your day?" answer lasts about 2.3 seconds. I was desperate.
My friend LaLa was telling me about a new game. I think it is called Conversations but don't quote me on that. She said every night her girls get to pick one card out of a hat and then they discuss that particular topic at the dinner table. LaLaa gave me some examples of the cards they have drawn so I tried it out on the kids the other night.
Silence..............
Me: "So, um kids.....uh I have a question for you."
Dumb, blank stares and more silence ensues.................
Me: "If you could choose, would you rather live in a tree house or in a house in the sea?"
Tori: "A house on top of the water or underneath the water?"
Me: "A chamber that you can walk around in and breathe in that's in the sea."
Christian: "In the sea."
Leroy: "In the sea."
Izzy: "In the sea."
Tori: "I would rather live in a tree house that's in the ocean."
Me: "Why would you do that? Then you would be stuck in the tree house with circling sharks below you in the water."
Tori: "Well then I would want to live in a boat that had a tree house in it."
Long silence....................did I mention that nobody ever gets Tori?
Anyway, I then went in to my reasoning behind wanting to live in a tree house and if I were on a deserted island, I would want to build a tree house like Tarzan did. It actually turned out to be a lovely conversation that left my mind as quickly as it entered it.
That was a couple of days ago.......................
Yesterday, Izzy (the 3 year old) and I had the following conversation:
Izzy: "Mom, do jellyfish live in the ocean?"
Mom: "Yes they do Izzy."
Izzy: "Do jellyfish STILL sting Mom?"
Mom: "Yup."
Izzy: "I'm going to move all of the jellyfish out of the ocean in to a tree house so that I can safely live in the ocean."
I guess our dinner conversations are making an impact even days later!
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4 comments:
How cute is that!
Love the idea of family dinner with no TV or other distractions. We keep saying we'll do that but have yet to.
You've inspired me!
we, too, do the family meals. To jumpstart our conversations we use the best/worst game. Every one has a turn at telling the best thing and the worst thing that happened to them during the day. It's so enlightening, as a parent, to see what makes the best and worst list, and it always gets the kids talking.
I grow up with dinners on the table so regular you could set your time by it.
I'd rather be reading my book and eat when I was hungry...at least when I was growing up.
So..I am very much ashamed to say, I only sit donw to eat with everyone one or twice a week.
We do however sit altogether at about the same time and the hungry people eat, while the not so hungry people just sit for company.
I think I am depriving my kids of something. I should sit down to dinner at least 4 times a week.
Me bad!
That's a great story! I am a firm believer in family meal times too. Spouse gets home a little later than I'd like him to so some nights I will eat alone with The Boy. But whenever we can we eat together. I didn't do that growing up b/c my brothers were never home due to work or sports, so we rarely ate together. We don't have topic issues right now per se, but I'm going to keep your idea on the back burner!
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