How to connect with your kids

It can be hard to really talk and connect with your family when the kids want to play with their electronics. I find it to be a struggle on weekends and holidays, the days when they have “relaxation” in their minds.  Since we don’t allow the kids to have electronics during the weeks, they want to ‘use their time’ on the weekends, but we have to limit it and find fun ways to encourage them to do other things. Today I am partnering with Sister Schubert’s® to talk about family meals and making time to connect to one another.

As our kids are getting older, I am hearing more and more stories from friends about how the kids are using their phones, tablets and iPods at the table.  It isn’t much different for the grown ups with more of us working from home, checking e-mails and texts at all hours of the day.

So, what do you do?   How do you connect?   Set up a no-electronics at the table rule. Dinnertime is important and electronics shouldn’t be interrupting important moments that should be shared with family.

Using our Sister Schubert’s® Basket of Warmth is an easy reminder for our family to turn off the world to turn on our conversation.
This bread warming basket has a place to charge electronics, so it literally won’t warm the rolls until you have plugged in your electronics.   How neat is that?  Disconnect from technology & reconnect with your family.

Sister Schubert’s yeast rolls have a buttery taste, so the kids love when I make them.  I even put cinnamon sugar butter on them and serve them with breakfast in the mornings. 🙂    When I put them out at dinner time, in the warming basket, they are always a hit.   Everyone plugs in their electronics and we watch as the basket warms the rolls while we eat & talk about our day… and everything else that comes up when you have four kids.

Once you have plugged everything in & you have disconnected from everything else, it is time to really connect with each other.

There are a lot of ways to grow as a family, but talking is always the best.   You can learn so much from one another when you just sit and talk.  Ask your kids questions, go around the table and talk about things that happened during the day, or even let your kids ask you questions about when you were younger.   Our kids love that.

You will find that you are surprised by your children’s answers and it will be even better when they hear you answer these things, too.   Just last night, I told our kids how I failed at something that I tried to do.  The look on their faces was priceless because it was a memorable teaching moment for them: yes, we all fail, but at least we tried.    They love hearing Mickey and I talk about ourselves and things that we have learned because we all learn something new about each other when we share things.   With six people in our family, we need to be sure that we are connecting in a deeper way every day, so good conversation is an easy way to do just that.

Whatever you decide, you will find that when you disconnect to everything else and start connecting to each other, you will grow as a family.  You will learn things about one another that you didn’t know and you will feel closer to one another.   Creating memories and lasting bonds is important to our family and I’m sure that it is important to yours, too… it all starts at home.