Balanced dinner conversation
April 11th, 2008 / 4 Comments
“I feel left out when you guys talk. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
As the third and youngest child, my daughter is 6 years behind our second child and 7 1/2 years behind her older brother. At the dinner table, we would be talking about getting ready for college when she is barely learning fractions.
I admit, “adult” talk with my older children is more stimulating than 4th grade playground politics. We do get carried away with discussions that excluded my youngest one from the dinner conversation. She couldn’t get a word in about her world.
Now for dinner conversation, the rule is, we take turns sharing. We go around the table and each person share one thing about their day. When we begin to get off on a topic, one of us will say, “Whose turn is it to share?”
Now my daughter has a chance to talk about what’s important to her. It also gets my usually-quiet husband to tell us about his day.
Comments
I like this one, couple with “High/Low.” Too bad the hubby usually misses dinner with us, though…
We do this alot too but our is we start with the oldest child 15 and ask what was one good thing about today and one bad thing about today. That way we get the just of there day in a nutshell. This way everyone is in on the converation. From the 6 year old, to the 12 year old, then the 15 year old and even mom and dad talk about the good and the bad of their day.
We even do this when friends are over and you should see some of the children look at us even when we just sit down for dinner together.
Tricia: It is a surprise how few families sit down to dinner together!
I tried this last night: Tell us one thing we don’t know about you. I wasn’t expecting any deep dark secrets…our 7th graders told us where she and her friends eat lunch at school…that was good. Now I know where to find her at lunch time.
Dette: I hope hubby gets an extra dessert when he gets home. That’s hard to miss dinner with the family.
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