Walk Me Through Your Day
Posted on: Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Comments: 0
Raising daughters with children’s books for girls
I was chatting with my friend, Tim, recently about ideas for raising confident children. We both agree that it’s critical to know what’s going on in our kids’ lives…every day. My question of the day, though, was how to get my 7 year-olds and 8 year-old to give me information every day. Here’s a typical “after school” discussion:
Dad: “How was your day, girls?”
One or more of my daughters: “Fine.”
Dad: “Well, what did you do today?”
Girls: “Nothing.”
Dad: “Well, you must have done something.”
Girls: “Not really.”
Dad: “Okay, tell me one great thing you did today, and one hard thing that happened today.”
Girls: “Okay, okay. A great thing I did was I went to art class. A hard thing that happened to me was the jelly made the bread all wet on my PB&J sandwich in my lunch.”
It’s a nice way to talk about nothing, but it doesn’t really tell me about their day.
So, my friend Tim told me about a better way. Every day over dinner he asks each kid to “walk me through your day.” They start with getting on the bus, through all their classes, bus ride home, homework, etc. It only takes about five minutes for each kid, but it creates an opportunity for the kids to learn to describe the important information quickly (a valuable skill in life). At the same time it enables Tim to hear seemingly boring little details that could reveal important information over time. Tim can hear about who is annoying his kids on the bus, who they’re sitting with at lunch, what classes get them excited, and all kinds of other little details that might not mean much in isolation, but mean a lot when part of the bigger story…the every day story.
I just started doing it and it works really well. It’s simple. It’s quick. And it creates a format or forum to get the information. Thanks, Tim!
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