30 Day Mom Challenge Day 24: Do not interrupt when your child is talking.
Remember when we talked about patience? This one fits in that category.
My kids are verbal ramblers. They never met a story that didn’t need to take multiple tries and embellishments. They like to talk and their favorite after-school activity is to take turns in the “mama!?” game, asking me questions with machine-gun-like rapid fire speed. It can be hard not to interrupt that train. But again, if I don’t want them to interrupt me I have to show them how that works, right?
Besides, the kids come up with some crazy stuff when you let them ramble. Which leads into the next day (yup, today’s a two-fer):
30 Day Mom Challenge Day 25: Ask your child’s opinion sometime today.
When my kids were small and would get on to the “why?” wagon, I started to turn it back around to them and ask “why do you think?” It’s amazing some of the things they come up with. It’s also a good way to learn what’s really ticking in those tiny heads of theirs. And they get right in and ask the deep-thought, meaty issue questions (“do you think that man is guilty?” “where do babies come from?”) and it’s a good way to find out if they’re ready to talk about issues.
Asking my child’s opinion tells them that I care about what they have to say, that I’m plugged into what they’re thinking. And maybe, just maybe, that’ll stick with them from this age into their teen years when, if they’re like I was as a teen, they’ll begin to believe that their opinion is the only one that matters. I hope that this open communication leads to stronger connections.
