My giveaway on Communicating With Your Kids has generated a lot of useful tips and comments on how parents foster good communication with their children and I thought it would be a shame to let them wallow in the comments section so here I have compiled some of those comments into categories.
The first tip in this series was to EAT TOGETHER. This time, we’ll talk about how individual, one on one time with your kids can encourage them to talk more openly. That is certainly true with my girls who vie for this ‘alone’ time as much as they can. Sometimes it is just a matter of them feeling special but other times it’s their only chance to tell you things that they wouldn’t want anyone else to hear, even their sisters.

INDIVIDUAL TIME

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We all have our own style of parenting our children and probably foremost in our method of parenting is the way we keep the lines of communication open with our children. I recently asked readers, “how you communicate with kids?” and the response has been varied and valuable. I didn’t want to keep them to myself, so I thought I would share some of them here with you.

If you’d like to enter the giveaway, there is still time. The giveaway ends on September 4 and you can win a $200 Visa Gift Card just by telling me one of the things you do to communicate with your kids. (Click on the link to enter the giveaway.)

One of the most popular responses to the thing we parents do to communicate with kids, is to eat together. I’ve always believed in eating together and we try to do it as often as we can although in this busy and hectic world we live in now, it’s not always possible.

In order for us to be able to eat together, I try to cook simple meals that the girls can help me prepare. When we work together, we can have dinner on the table in an hour. We don’t always have scintillating conversation with dinner. Sometimes it’s just inane small talk, other times it’s snappy bickering but either way sometimes it leads to topics we didn’t plan on discussing. More often though, it’s just our way of catching up with what we’ve been up to.

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Do you dare take your kids out to eat or are you one of those parents who have resigned to eating your meals at home for the next decade or so?

If you’re from the later group, you can probably relate to this funny set of photos on Jannie Funster titled Why We Usually Eat at Home.

We were blessed to have children who always seemed to behave whenever we went out to eat. But then we ate out so much when they were younger that it probably became second nature for them to sit through a restaurant meal. They’ve seen many restaurant ceilings from their baby carriers and by the time my daughters were old enough to sit in high chairs they were pros at eating out. They knew what a salad fork was and could wield a chopstick held together by rubber bands to pick up their noodles. However, by the time my third daughter came around it seemed to become more difficult to go out to restaurants. To this day we never could figure out what happened there (we could have just gotten burnt out and tired) but that doesn’t mean we curtailed out eating out. We just amended our procedures a bit.

Here are a few tips we’ve learned:

TIPS ON DINING OUT WITH YOUNG CHILDREN

1. Start at home. Set the pattern early. As important as food is to me, we established early on that food is not to be played with and that as we are thankful for the blessings we receive, we must also accord it some respect for keeping us healthy and giving us the pleasure of taste. This didn’t mean that we always ate fancy, God forbid! I couldn’t have lasted long. LOL! What this means is that we taught them that the dining table is for eating. When you eat, you eat at the table. Not under it, not while you’re running around and not anywhere else. They learned early that some foods you can eat with your hands but most foods you need to use a fork or a spoon or chopsticks. Take your weapon of choice. Little lessons such as using a napkin instead of your shirtsleeve, for instance, should start at home. There are plenty. But when they see you put the paper down or turn the tv off so you can eat dinner together, they will understand that food and eating is important. Not only for our body but for our soul.

2. Keep it short. Children have a short attention span. Any parent knows that. So keep dinner time short. When taking kids out to dinner, it doesn’t have to be fast food all the time or at all for that matter. Just make sure that the restaurant you go to doesn’t have a slow service that you end up having to sit a long time waiting to be served. Multiple course dinners are out; you’d be better off getting a sitter on days when you want to savor your soup and salad before your entree comes.

3. Do your research. Make sure that the restaurant you are going to will have food that are suitable for kids. I love sushi bars myself, but if the only thing served at a restaurant is raw fish, then you may have problems with little kids. Thank goodness mine loved edamame and that the restaurant we frequented made excellent tempura. They had something the kids could eat until they developed their palates for sushi, that is Choose restaurants that will appeal to kids or will cater to their needs and you’ll be less likely to be disappointed. And no, it doesn’t have to be Chuckie Cheese all the time. For instance, my girls love aquariums. One of the restaurants we frequented had a huge aquariums with lots of colorful fish. We always requested a table next to the aquarium and the girls were so fascinated watching the fish that sometimes my husband and I even had time to sit for after dinner coffee!

4. Stuff happens. Accidents and little kids go hand and hand. Try to take spills and mishaps in stride and don’t let it ruin your dining experience. That is unless one of your kids has the stomach flu and ends up vomiting all over your front shirt. You should have never gone out in the first place. However, an upturned water glass or a bowl of rice accidentally tipped onto the floor should not be a big deal. Apologize to the wait staff for the extra work and leave an extra tip. Clean up your child and keep going. I remember feeling so bad for one child who spilled his drink while reaching for it. The dad went on and on about how he should have been more careful and what a klutz he is. These things happen and are soon forgotten by everyone. Your child will remember a public chastisement for a long time.

5. Have Fun and Know Your Limits. Make the outing fun for the kids rather than torture and they will be apt to behave better. Learn to gauge when your children are nearing their limit. When the whining and restlessness start escalating, be ready to get out of there. If you’ve followed the previous steps this stage will come much later. Hopefully, closer to the end of the meal than the beginning.

Most of all, always carry with you not only extra napkins but also lots of PATIENCE. They do grow up to be very pleasant dinner companions, I promise.

There are tons of videos on YouTube and other sources on the web made by teenagers. Some are funny, a lot of them are stupid, others downright dangerous, a few not fit for the public and more that are so creative they verge on genius. There are few however, that can be called ‘touching’. Most teens just aren’t into showing their emotions much, well not in the sappy ‘touchy feely’ kind of way anyway. It’s not that they don’t feel them or appreciate having those feelings, sometimes they are just too embarrassed to show them. Yeah, in the twisted mentality of teens, it’s cooler to look stupid than to look like you care about something.

Teens do so many things that are so sweet and thoughtful, it would make you cry. The stories that my daughter tell me of their friends, the acts that I see them do, it makes me really proud. But if you look in their facebook profiles or their blogs, they don’t brag about the sweet things they do. They talk of inane stuff like music they like, what they’re wearing, who’s going out with whom, who broke up, who went to the party, etc. They don’t ever talk about how someone stayed with a sick senior citizen at the mall until help arrived, how they volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House cooking for families with sick children, how one boy sells flowers on valentine’s day and donates to the cancer center to honor his mother who died, or how they help each other with homework and the never ending dramas in their lives.

When my girls were younger, they wouldn’t get out of the car without giving us kisses first and telling us they love us. Now they are a little grumpier. They’re moody and sullen in the mornings and sometimes forget to even say ‘bye’ when they get out of the car much less ‘thanks for dropping me off’. We as parents sigh and just accept that it’s just a phase they must go through. And yet, we can’t help but feel a little neglected and unappreciated, but we all know they love us and we are important to them just as much as they are to us. Which makes the times when they do snuggle back up to us (and they do) as they did when they were toddlers even more special. I tell my girls all the time, even though they’re bigger than me now, that they will always be my babies even when they have their own. They just giggle and snuggle even closer. Those are the best times…. because tomorrow, they could be back to their silent, sullen self again.

Today, I heard about the video that a 14 year old boy made to help his father who had just been laid off work to get a job. It’s a very sweet video, a little sappy and almost made me cry. Which is what makes it hard to believe that a teenager made the movie. But I believe it because I have seen how much teens really do pay attention and they really do care about the things going on around them. Most of all, they do appreciate the things we as parents do for them even though they don’t often show it.