Dinner Time Conversation

If your house is anything like ours then you know dinnertime can be CRAZY!!!! Our conversations frequently consist of: "PLEASE, sit in you seat the right way!!! Please eat your dinner!!" "Stop messing around at the table!"
Sound familiar??

To put it lightly, dinnertime is one of the most stressful parts of the day for me. Partly because I spend all this time cooking and preparing dinner that may or may not be eaten but more than that is the chaos that ensues when we actually sit down to eat it. It would get so crazy some evenings that our kids would actually have to get up from the kitchen table and run the stairs. Yes, you read that correctly, we would make our kids run the stairs to get out all of their extra energy so that hopefully they could sit and eat!

Don't think that this is some inhumane punishment that we inflict on our kids they actually really like it and there's laughter and craziness the whole time, so in other words it totally backfired! Nuts, I know! Clearly it became a game the very first time we did it because the next night they actually asked if they could run the steps in the middle of dinner. Brings new meaning to the term "the witching hour."

So the other night, I tried something new. Instead of trying to get them to settle down and eat, I began to ask them questions. The key was that they couldn't answer unless they were eating and they had to wait their turn. A friend had given me a book of questions called "Love Talks for Families" by Gary Chapman and Ramon Presson. It had been sitting in the top of my closet for years waiting for the perfect opportunity to make it's appearance. To be perfectly honest, I think it moved with us from Atlanta to Dothan and then from Dothan to Franklin. The copyright is 2002 so I have clearly had this treasure for quite some time!

So last week it made it's debut at the Brady dinner table and it was quite the success. It was such a success that they have asked for it each night. We ask two questions a night and everyone has a turn to answer each question. The questions have for sure sparked our creativity and imaginations and have made for GREAT conversations that all six of us can participate in.

Everyone is sitting in their seats, no one is getting in trouble and everyone is eating their dinner. It's total dinner bliss to say the least! Who knew something like this could restore such order?! Amazing!!!

Here's just a sample of what you'll find in this little book:
"If you had to give up sight, hearing, the ability to speak, or the ability to walk, which would you choose?"

"If at the end of every day you were granted an extra hour to do anything you wanted, how would you regularly spend that hour?"

There are so many more questions, 101 to be exact, these are just a few that we have talked about so far. The answers have been anything from funny to totally creative in explaining why they would give up the ability to speak (shocking because they are constantly talking ALL the TIME!).

If you can get your hands on this book, I highly recommend it! It could be just what your family needs to make it through the chaos of dinner and who knows what you might learn from your kids in the process. They're sure to blow you away with the things they say and this book has the questions to make sure they do!