Phew. I am back. Holy cow. It’s been two weeks or so since I’ve been able to sit down and write! I have so much to talk about… I can’t wait share with you my daughter’s horse themed birthday party! It was a challenge but ended up to be so much fun. The last two weeks were a blur between preparing for back to school, birthday celebrations and the holiday weekend.
On my daughter’s birthday we took a trip to the American Girl Bistro in Columbus, Ohio. I was inspired by a little box of cards they had on the table. They had some questions written on them that were designed to start conversation between those at the table. It made me realize that we really could use something like this at home.
Chaos ensues after school. We run home, try to start homework, then take off in different directions for sports, hobbies and other activities and sometime in there we are squeezing in preparations for the following day. I feel really strongly that even if we only get ten minutes together I want it to be at the dinner table. Those ten minutes should be about our family. No electronics. No distractions. Just us eating a meal together and talking. This time to connect is so important and I hope that it allows me to keep open communication between the kids and us parents. This isn’t likely to happen every day with our schedules. However, it really is important to me that it happens more often than not.
So today, I took 10 minutes to do this and I hope that it leads to many meaningful conversations with my family around the table. Some questions are easy, some a little more thought-provoking. I suspect that their answers may change often if we ask the questions again. I plan to make more questions and rotate them out in the future.
What questions would you ask your kids? I would love to hear some of your ideas! You can see some of mine in the picture here. I’ve also decided that if we don’t get to do family dinner one evening… these will make great bedtime conversations with the kids.