Catching Up With Your Children
A busy family with time constraints and a crazy schedule can provide little opportunity for children and their parents to talk and communicate effectively. Through speaking and listening parents are able to learn the wants and needs of their kids and are able to diffuse arguments and problems quickly. Parents can get to grips with what is going on in their childrens lives and keep up with their emotional and behavioural changes as well as their interests. The only solution for busy lives is to make time.
If you don’t family communication will not happen. It may not always be easy to sit down for dinner and have a ‘how was your day?’ chat. It may be that you can find other opportunities to talk to your children. Perhaps in the car on a journey, or when you are making dinner together, doing homework or you might talk while watching television together. There is less pressure on you both to have a conversation which seems forced and more relaxed. And more relaxed means your children may want to share more information with you and listen to what you have to say.
What time do you find most effective to communicate and have a good chat with your children?
14 Comments for this entry
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We always have dinner together and have a time that we talk about our day and our news. So we find ou what each of us has been up too
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Naomi
January 31st, 2011 on 4:47 pmWe do the same. I really like having group conversations as well as the 1-2-1s and getting everyone to pitch in their two penneth worth. Thank you Jen for your comment.
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Thank you for the reminder, this is where I am at right now…I have a couple of specific convo’s I am needing to have w/ my kiddos. I just need to sit down and make it happen!
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Naomi
February 1st, 2011 on 2:46 pmChris, thank you for the comment. I find my serious conversations tend to happen at the dinner table and leave my less serious ones for other times.
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Pippy
February 1st, 2011 on 5:00 pmHi we always eat together, I’m not sure though that the males in the house like to talk and eat. (Eyes down & GO!). We do some side by side talking in the car and walking too but Dragon does like cues, visual, tangible or auditory, it helps a lot.
I’ve found photo diaries and scrapbooks work well. Although not immediate and not in every day use, in the holidays/weekends they are fab. Dragon has his own camera (often he doesn’t print out the images) we just all look at them and chat about them, either from the camera or on the PC screen. Some of the things that are photographed are very ….. erm ….. interesting and sometimes an easy way for him to start a difficult conversation.
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Naomi
February 1st, 2011 on 5:42 pmThank you Pippy. In our house its the opposite. Too much talk not enough eating. I love your idea about using photographs and scrapbooks to get the dragon to talk. Am going to try it out.
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Absolutely right Naomi, communication and a catch up are so important and I think this is true of relationships that are child free too. I tell my clients ‘Take the time, you’ll appreciate the difference!’
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Naomi Richards
February 2nd, 2011 on 6:57 amAm with you there Jayne. Time – we don’t seem to have enough of it but it is crucial when we need to really talk about issues that matter and just general chit chat with our family. Thank you
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I always used to *attempt* to have meal times together but it got more difficult as my fids got older. Once they were older teenagers I found the car was the ideal place for Conversations (the capital C denotes THOSE kinds of conversations). And for some reason they always wanted to talk about stuff that was REALLY important to them when I was in the bath…
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Naomi Richards
February 2nd, 2011 on 4:26 pmCathy, I also remember having the best conversations when my mum was in the bath. My children at the moment like to chat before they go to sleep. Thanks so much for your comment.
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Great post Naomi and I couldn’t agree more – as a psychologist and a parent. Communication skills are so critical to children’s skills in life and they learn them at home.
A tip: If asking ‘How was your day?’ gets a monosyllabic response (“OK” or, worse still, “grunt”) try asking more specific questions, like “What was the best thing that happened to you today?”. Younger children especially find this type of question easier to answer than an abstract one. -
Naomi Richards
February 4th, 2011 on 2:37 pmThank you Karen for your comment. I agree getting information out of a young child can be difficult – a bit like blood from a stone!
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We sit down and eat dinner together immediately after school…I know it sounds weird..but it works for us and it is a great way to connect about the day. We got away from it for a bit and my daughter said she missed it and requested we get back to it…so glad we did. Precious moments.
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Naomi
February 6th, 2011 on 11:50 amI love to sit down and eat with my children regardless if I am actually eating or not. I like to sit at their level and have a good chat about our days. Thanks Lori.
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The Mad House
January 31st, 2011 on 3:48 pm