Welcome to speed round Sunday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a
mini episode from our past for your weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow
with a brand new episode. I was thinking the other day. It was
a Sunday morning and I was having coffee, my husband's having coffee. And
one of my fondest memories of growing up is Sunday mornings, I would my
family would get together in the living room, and we rarely sat in the
living room. The living room was like really for only special occasions, you
know, the living room versus the family room. So Sunday morning we would
convene in in the living room, and we had lots of conversations in that
living room, just chatting with one another, and you know, lots of
big life decisions were made and lots of Yeah, so those that family conversation
time was super important, and I feel like I didn't really do a good
job of establishing that in my family. I mean, we talk, but
it's as needed. It's not this, let's sit down and have a conversation.
It's not planned, it's not a not a tradition. Yeah, So
I don't know what's what's better, like, how how do you have a
time where you I mean as it around the dinner table? Is it?
You know? How do you have these conversations with your family that you know
may not be necessarily important life decisions, but still our opportunity to connect,
checking in with each other and such. Yeah, we sort of do.
I mean, we have dinner together pretty much every night, and on we
used to on Sunday mornings. My husband will go out and get either donuts
or bagels, and then we would eat breakfast together on Sunday mornings. But
now he's working on Sundays and we haven't really figured out another day to do
that. I would like to say, let's do it. He's off on
Friday and Saturday. Now let's do it on Friday morning. But that hasn't
quite happened yet. But still we do have these times where we all sit
down together. Do we converse? I don't know. We're not really conversing
people. I mean, my husband's a pretty quiet guy. My kids generally
have things to say, but they have their language difficulties, so sometimes it's
not it doesn't flow really easily, or it's sort of the same thing over
and over again. And I feel like we should, and sometimes I will
try to instigate, but it's usually not a full dinner sort of discussion.
It's fits and starts. So and then my husband and I have started up
this habit which is sort of anti conversation. I feel bad because it shuts
the kids out pretty entirely. But at dinner time, we go through the
birthdays in the newspaper and on IMDb, the celebrity birthdays, and I read
out the name and my husband has to guess how old they are. So
that's our dinner table discussion. So it's fun for him and me. But
unless it's like somebody that my kids have heard of, it's not so much
fun for them. So they just kind of equickly and look. But so
we found a way to stamp stamp out that nasty conversation. Anybody has something
to say, they still generally do and can. Yeah, we filled the
time from there. Yeah, I guess it's what your family is also able
to do and has the time for an interest in. Yeah, do you
get a lot of a lot of conversations going in the car driving back and
forth from places that's that can be a good place for it sometimes. Yeah,
Yeah, we sometimes that happens or but you know, also we like
to listen to music or the radio or whatever in the car too, and
sometimes dinner times will be that kind of thing. Um. I still remember
once years ago we were for some reason, the whole family was we were
having a business dinner with my husband and I think my son was like he
was maybe seven or eight, and he just said, well, and this
was us and one other family with like one kid and a bunch of business
assuan, and he said, let's go around the table and everyone say what
your dream job would be? Oh, no, perf was very funny,
perfect. Everyone actually kind of enjoyed that. So, yeah, we'll we'll
sometimes have the dinner table conversation or the or the in the car conversation.
And maybe more so if we go out to dinner I guess than at home.
That's a good point. There's more time, I guess to to do
that. Yeah, And people can't just get off the table, up from
the table and leave on their own. They're kind of stuffed there for a
exactly period of time. That's right. We do have big conversations then and
periodically my one of my kids will just come up and start talking to me
about something. So we have one on one conversations, but the whole family
sometimes maybe less comment less comment. We just don't have that much to say.
We just we text each other. Yeah, that's what we're being.
My husband does enjoy texting my daughter from a different part of the house and
then listening for her feet. It is revolutionized shouting for a kid to come
do something. You can just rest them and they come, Oh, I
know, it's great. Well, I don't know. I feel like I
feel guilty for not I don't know why I have it in my head that
I have to have this sit down time with my kids, and I feel
tremendously guilty for not establishing it. But yeah, there are other ways of
communicating which are perfectly acceptable. So on each other's Facebook posts, that's the
way we did it these days. Like like their post, it's all going
down on its growth. Yeah,