Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss dinner-table topics and how they are the best way to know your children.
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Would You Rather
One of the best things you can do for your family is to make sure that every night you sit down at the dinner table and unwind after a long day. However, our modern world, with its jam-packed schedule and outside commitments, makes it almost impossible to do this.
We are in the break between sports seasons, so right now, nothing is keeping us out late at night, so the dinner table has been revitalized. And it’s the best part of my night. Sometimes it’s filled with the girls telling us what happened during the day, and my husband and I give them advice on how to work through these things. Sometimes our girls sit in silence as my husband and I talk about our days.
The girls like to listen to us work through our issues at work or praise each other over accomplishments. I don’t really know why, but I think it has something to do with seeing us love each other. It’s so important for your children to know that there is a life outside of them, including a marriage that needs tending. They want to see me get excited about some deal my husband is working on or him helping me navigate a tricky situation.
And when nothing serious needs to be discussed, our family often finds itself playing little games. We like to tease each other and joke around a lot. But the other night, we started playing “Would You Rather?” At first, it was pretty silly stuff.
“Would you rather fight 5,000 chicken-sized elephants or one elephant-sized chicken?”
“Would you rather only eat bacon for the rest of your life or only eat eggs for the rest of your life?
The girls were laughing about having to fight a chicken or elephants. The conversation was lighthearted and fun. But then I started thinking about deeper topics to see where their maturity level was and how they felt about the future. The best way to get a good idea of how your children are feeling is to turn a seemingly innocent game into something more.
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