This is a sponsored post in conjunction with Scholastic Parent & Child. As always, all opinions are my own.
As parents we’ve all been there. You ask your child what they did at school and your eyes are met with blank stares. Even better, when the response the offer is “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember”. Now we know they are learning and having fun while at school, but how do we pry out those details and inspire real conversation? I’m a big fan of sharing meal time around the family table to stay connected with my children. My kids are still young so building this into our daily routine is relatively easy, but sometimes I struggle to spark a real conversation where I am not facing a deer in the headlights. To help my family connect and spark fun dinnertime conversations I reach for my phone. Yes, my phone. It sounds funny, reaching for technology at dinner, but I recently started using the Scholastic Parent & Child KidQ app to send fun questions at dinner.
Each day at 5:00 the KidQ app random question generator sends a unique and family friendly question to my phone like the image below.
I share the question with the kids and the conversation flows from there. Some questions are silly, like “Why do feet smell?”, and others are factual to inspire further subject exploration. Baby’s always reading books on animals and nature so the question above was a great fit. The KidQ app also sends the answer and additional fun facts,so I can look like a GENIUS in the eyes of my children! Score!
Stay connected as a family in an important value I want my children to learn now before they are too busy to fit a simple dinner into their busy schedules. I want them to know how important spending time as a family is to their overall well-being. Getting your kids openly engaged in conversation is sometimes a challenge, but it’s completely necessary. The more conversations you have now, the easier it will be for your child to come to you when they are facing a challenge. Our children need our help and guidance to build them into strong adults. If there is a way to help create a clear line of communication with my kids while they are growing up, I am surely going to use it. You too can download the KidQ app from Scholastic Parent & Child for FREE by visiting http://www.scholastic.com/apps/#/kidq.
Don’t waste any more time trying to get your kiddos to chat when you can get the conversation started in a fun and relaxed way. Asking a simple question could be the jump start your child needs to describes their whole day in detail. I think that’s worth having technology at the dinner table once in a while.
How are you building strong communication lines with your children for a strong future?
