Welcome to speed round Sunday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a mini episode from our past for your weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow with a brand new episode. I was thinking the other day. It was a Sunday morning and I was having coffee, my husband's having coffee. And one of my fondest memories of growing up is Sunday mornings, I would my family would get together in the living room, and we rarely sat in the
living room. The living room was like really for only special occasions, you know, the living room versus the family room. So Sunday morning we would convene in in the living room, and we had lots of conversations in that living room, just chatting with one another, and you know, lots of big life decisions were made and lots of Yeah, so those that family conversation time was super important, and I feel like I didn't really do a good job of establishing that in my family. I mean, we talk, but
it's as needed. It's not this, let's sit down and have a conversation. It's not planned, it's not a not a tradition. Yeah, So I don't know what's what's better, like, how how do you have a time where you I mean as it around the dinner table? Is it? You know? How do you have these conversations with your family that you know may not be necessarily important life decisions, but still our opportunity to connect, checking in with each other and such. Yeah, we sort of do.
I mean, we have dinner together pretty much every night, and on we used to on Sunday mornings. My husband will go out and get either donuts or bagels, and then we would eat breakfast together on Sunday mornings. But now he's working on Sundays and we haven't really figured out another day to do that. I would like to say, let's do it. He's off on Friday and Saturday. Now let's do it on Friday morning. But that hasn't quite happened yet. But still we do have these times where we all sit
down together. Do we converse? I don't know. We're not really conversing people. I mean, my husband's a pretty quiet guy. My kids generally have things to say, but they have their language difficulties, so sometimes it's not it doesn't flow really easily, or it's sort of the same thing over and over again. And I feel like we should, and sometimes I will try to instigate, but it's usually not a full dinner sort of discussion. It's fits and starts. So and then my husband and I have started up
this habit which is sort of anti conversation. I feel bad because it shuts the kids out pretty entirely. But at dinner time, we go through the birthdays in the newspaper and on IMDb, the celebrity birthdays, and I read out the name and my husband has to guess how old they are. So that's our dinner table discussion. So it's fun for him and me. But unless it's like somebody that my kids have heard of, it's not so much fun for them. So they just kind of equickly and look. But so
we found a way to stamp stamp out that nasty conversation. Anybody has something to say, they still generally do and can. Yeah, we filled the time from there. Yeah, I guess it's what your family is also able to do and has the time for an interest in. Yeah, do you get a lot of a lot of conversations going in the car driving back and
forth from places that's that can be a good place for it sometimes. Yeah, Yeah, we sometimes that happens or but you know, also we like to listen to music or the radio or whatever in the car too, and
sometimes dinner times will be that kind of thing. Um. I still remember once years ago we were for some reason, the whole family was we were having a business dinner with my husband and I think my son was like he was maybe seven or eight, and he just said, well, and this was us and one other family with like one kid and a bunch of business assuan, and he said, let's go around the table and everyone say what your dream job would be? Oh, no, perf was very funny,
perfect. Everyone actually kind of enjoyed that. So, yeah, we'll we'll sometimes have the dinner table conversation or the or the in the car conversation. And maybe more so if we go out to dinner I guess than at home. That's a good point. There's more time, I guess to to do that. Yeah, And people can't just get off the table, up from the table and leave on their own. They're kind of stuffed there for a
exactly period of time. That's right. We do have big conversations then and periodically my one of my kids will just come up and start talking to me about something. So we have one on one conversations, but the whole family sometimes maybe less comment less comment. We just don't have that much to say. We just we text each other. Yeah, that's what we're being. My husband does enjoy texting my daughter from a different part of the house and
then listening for her feet. It is revolutionized shouting for a kid to come do something. You can just rest them and they come, Oh, I know, it's great. Well, I don't know. I feel like I feel guilty for not I don't know why I have it in my head that I have to have this sit down time with my kids, and I feel tremendously guilty for not establishing it. But yeah, there are other ways of communicating which are perfectly acceptable. So on each other's Facebook posts, that's the
way we did it these days. Like like their post, it's all going down on its growth. Yeah,