Improving Communication with Conversation Starters
It’s been a couple of days since you’ve been able to sit down to dinner as a family. You’ve made everybody’s favorite and you were envisioning an evening full of laughter and talking, all Leave it to Beaver style. Instead, you’ve got a teenager on the phone and a toddler pushing her food around because she’s all of the sudden decided she doesn’t like green beans. You’re afraid the only way to salvage dinner is to tell a joke. But, you can’t think of one, and, what if no one laughs? Then dinner will be even more painful and the teenager will never want to eat with you again. Your mind jumps to all the worst-case scenarios that will befall them because you didn’t talk during family dinner. Maybe you can find a really good joke on your phone… Sound familiar?
Communication is hard. And really talking to our kids is no different. In our Effective Communication video, we teach you the six steps that will help you make that communication with your children successful.
That doesn’t mean that communication shouldn’t be fun. It should be! Want your children to open up about tough topics? Start with the not so important topics. When they know that you’ll listen to them talk about their love of boy bands or football without judgment, they’re more likely to tell you about their fears and dreams. There are multiple times daily to talk to your kids: around the dinner table, as part of the bedtime routines, or in the car.
We found that kids respond well to when “communication” feels more like a game. Introducing the Smarter Parenting Monthly Conversation Starters.
Each month we’ll be releasing a new set of questions that you can use to get the conversation flowing. The questions range from silly: “what type of donut would you be?”, to thought-provoking: “What scares you?” All you have to do is print them out and draw a new question every day.
Download the monthly conversation starters files here: JUNE, MAY, APRIL, MARCH, FEBRUARY, JANUARY