This post on Talking To Boys is part of my 21 Challenge. I am taking The 21 Challenge to raise money to support homeless and at-risk young people in Australia. There are more than 32,000 young people who sleep on our streets every night and I blogging a kids activity daily to raise funds to go to Open Family Australia who support these youths.
My challenge is to blog daily an activity I do each day with my kids, using only things we have at home or use what we have on hand when we are out. You can see all the children’s activities I have posted as part of the 21 Challenge by clicking on the tag 21 Challenge here.
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Today was a busy day, I left the house in the wee hours of the morning and didn’t return home until 9pm. Being a stickler for the rules, I still wanted to do an activity with my kids and what I had planned to do was with a younger child who was asleep.
I asked the 13 year old who was the only one up, what he would like to do and he gave me that look that told me, I really just want to play my computer game. He has one game that he likes to play a lot and I just don’t understand it. I am probably a bit negative about it to be honest as I don’t really like computer games.
I saw this as an opportunity to take a different approach and take an interest in something that he obviously likes a lot. I asked him if I could watch and he could tell me about the game. He took me through the basics of the game, the strategy he had his in his head for this session of play.
I asked him lots of questions, which he answered well, but I still don’t really get it. But I did work out he does put a fair bit of thought into what he was doing.
Then after awhile, I changed my questions to things at school. He gave lengthy responses to many of the questions and I received an insight into some areas of his school life, which I didn’t know much about.
It was quite a lovely conversation and I am comforted to know that he is very happy at school. There were some little things, like coping a bit of flack over his name (he has a gorgeous family name, which is more unusual than most).
Last year he told me he wished he was called Jack or Lachlan, so his name didn’t attract so much attention. I asked him tonight did he really dislike his name so much and he said “Not really. Everyone has something different about them. Mine is just more noticeable.”
Talking to him while he played his computer game, took some of the intensity out of the conversation, as there was not direct eye contact. I think he also really liked that I was showing genuine interest in his game.
It was such a reminder to me to be less judgemental about things he likes but I am not so keen on. A reminder that I don’t always need to comment on things and most importantly a reminder that when talking to boys if you can remove some of the directness of the conversation, they feel more comfortable and can open up quite a bit.
Additional resources:
- Book Review – He’ll Be Ok: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men – a four part series where I share what I learned from this fantastic book by Celia Lashlie.
How do you find ways to talk to your boys?
If you enjoyed this post, you are welcome to sponsor me in my 21 Challenge. Donations are tax deductible and can be made securely online here. Thanks!