Besides the “techno free” zones and “sitting in your house” that I described in earlier posts, drive time has come to be a meaningful talk time for our family. (See Who’s Got Their Shoes On? for more one-on-one vehicle talking tips.) In this drive time post, I just want to encourage families in general to reduce the “independent” times in the vehicle and make drive time more “community” time.

We could never afford newer vehicles, complete with game systems or televisions. Thus, our drive time for many years included reading aloud, listening to audios, playing road games, and, of course, talking. (Now with computers, the kids sometimes write papers, watch movies, or play games while we drive.) As is the case with most things that families cannot afford, not being able to afford newer vehicles with electronics built in has had an immensely positive result: community time in the vehicle vs alone time.

We have had literally hundreds of hours of teaching and talking time with our kids in our van through the years. We talk one-on-one if it is just Dad and child or Mom and child, but the majority of our times in the van have been community—times to read aloud and discuss what we are reading; listen to an audio and share in stories and teachings together; and talk about family history, our beliefs, current events, church sermons, family standards, personal goals, ministry goals, relationship issues, and much more.

If your family drive times are more like “islands in the stream” than “group hugs,” we would encourage you to declare certain drive times as family times. Just announce that on Sundays, for example, no games or independent activities will be allowed but instead family time will be instituted. Buy some new audio series’ that will interest everybody. Get some “Ungame” cards out of an old “Ungame” in your closet or from Goodwill and read these allowed and discuss them. Do whatever it takes to make drive time more family time—and more talk time.

What are your favorite ways to utilize drive time? Do you like to unplug while you drive? If so, how do you make that happen?

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What is a techno-free zone today? I remember when we would have our nightly living room meetings with our teens and pre-teens before they went to bed at night. We only had a television on a cart in our bedroom closet that we would pull out to watch things together as a family. We had one desk top computer in the dining room—an open room between the kitchen and living room. And that was it. Period.

Techno-free zones were easy to come by for us.

It got harder as the kids got older. We eventually had to declare techno free talks—phones off, etc.

But it is so worth it to set aside some times to talk as a family (or one-on-one) with no technology vying for everyone’s attention.

Of course, we have all seen the memes: put all the phones in a basket until the timer goes off then everybody gets theirs back; stack them upside down in the middle of the table and the first one to check theirs pays for dinner; hide the log in until a certain time, etc.

And those would probably work, but here are a few other tips to get you thinking about how you can talk to your kids without technology:

(1) Declare it…call it by a formal name, put it on the calendar, and make it happen: Don’t forget—tonight at 9….

(2) Have food! Especially with teens! Food keeps hands busy (so they won’t miss their phones!). And it makes teens very happy…chips and queso from your favorite Mexican place; breadsticks and cheese sauce from the wholesale club; caramel corn; cookies and milk; fruit and dip….doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, but the more unique to your family, the better. (We like to do cheese fondues! They take a while, and we talk and talk!)

(3) Have it some place special—around the fire pit, with a fireplace going and the lights dimmed, on the deck or front porch…some place where there are fewer things inside calling for them.

(4) Have it at a restaurant….even if it is fast food….once you are all seated, restaurants are great atmospheres for just talking. And teens love food…have I mentioned that?

(5) Make it short….if your kids (and parents!) check their phones every ten minutes, don’t expect to have three or four hour techno-free talks. It is better to have them more frequently but for less duration to ensure that kids don’t get bored. Also, if you set it from 9 to 10, you might easily find it going longer as the talking proceeds.

How have you established techno-free talks in your home? I would love to hear your ideas!

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The scene was the same for our three girls and Mom and Dad—time to gather in the living room with calendars in hand, ready to go over the upcoming weeks and months to be sure we have everything down on the schedule—and to be sure that we have plenty of time set aside for each other and our family. What wasn’t the same was the addition of our future son-in-law—a sweet, amazing young man who has no need for meetings, sitting for long periods of time listening to three teenage/young adult girls and their parents gab. His response to our “calendar meeting” was hilarious as he put a pillow over his head and kept coming up periodically to ask if it was almost over!

As our kids turned sixteen to eighteen (depending on gender, maturity, and where they were in their education), their involvement in outside activities increased exponentially—from doing school at home with Mom and Dad full time and spending most free time with family and close friends to college, more ministry activities, etc. It was extremely important to me and Ray that we stay close to our young adults. Calendar meetings helped make that happen.

If you have kids who are not yet teens, do not believe the falsehoods about how older teens and young adults do not need their parents. It has been our experience that they still need us greatly—but the roles change drastically. They still need our continual input in their lives—but in the role of counselor, mentor, help, and sounding board. But they still need us! And calendar meetings helped make all of that talking, time together, and counseling more of a reality in our young adults’ lives.

Calendar meetings helped us have another talk time built into our schedule. They helped our kids know that spending time talking with them was a priority to use. And they helped us be sure that we had those talk times set aside.

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When is the best time to solve problems? Before they start!

The same thing is true in parenting. If we can talk through issues and problems before they arise, we will be ahead of the game in parenting.

My husband always used the mantra that we should “talk about this during non-conflict times.”

That is, we shouldn’t try to solve a bunch of problems, make new rules, talk through too many things, etc., when we were in the middle of a conflict.

If we were trying to solve something with one of our teens and things got heated, Ray would just say, “We’re not going to solve this tonight. Let’s go to bed and talk about it tomorrow evening when we’ve had a chance to think about it more.”

This is obviously useful for potential arguments and disagreements, but it is also useful for talking.

We can talk about things, solve problems, come up with solutions to difficulties, etc., when we talk about the situation or problem during a time that it (whatever it might be) is NOT happening.

For example, we would talk about expected behavior for an event or new suggestions for getting along with each other or a new chore schedule not when things were falling apart around us—but rather completely separated from the problem or situation that needed changed.

Taking the example of the kids not getting along, we would walk through a situation with the kids and solve it for that moment (using many of the other talk techniques we will be looking at this year, such as only talking about what you did—not what the other person did; or teaching kids to talk to each other before coming to Mom and Dad). But as far as implementing strategies for the future, we would hold off on that—not talk about that at that moment.

Then during a “non-conflict time”—for example during our next family meeting or family night or drive somewhere (depending on how many people needed to be involved in the conversation), we would talk about some solutions we wanted to implement for kids getting along. We might talk about wording the kids should use with another if the person seemed hostile (“Can we talk about this in friendlier tones?”)

And during that “non-conflict time,” we would talk about what we would like to see the kids do to get along better.

Talking during non-conflict times usually means talking during peace times. It means bringing new ideas and solutions to situations that might be met with hostility or indifference if a conflict were happening at that time. It means making sure peace is reigning before trying to bring in even more to the subject.

Non-conflict times are really good times to talk with your kids!

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With the addition of another child every other year or so, we knew it was important to spend time with the older children. (We were taught by our early mentors to put as much time and energy into our first two kids as we possibly could, knowing that the “trickle down effect” of teaching would come into play.)

Note: This is another reason we have felt so strongly about not letting an eight month old, eighteen month old, or twenty-eight month old determine the entire family’s schedule [i.e. have a “toddler run home”]—it never felt right to let a toddler’s “wants” override a teen’s needs. Anyway, because of the advice we received to invest significantly in our older kids for the “trickle down effect” (which majorly works, I might add), we always looked for ways to spend more time with Joshua (now 29) and Kayla (now 26). One of the ways I did this was to implement “Terrific Tuesday” or “Wonderful Wednesday.”

One afternoon a week (either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on our schedule) a different “older” child got to have Mom to himself or herself for a few hours. We tweaked our afternoon schedule (which usually involved Mom teaching/story time/lesson planning), so that right after lunch, somebody else did story time with the littles and got them to bed for their naps (one of the olders not having her “Terrific Tuesday” that day), and I gave my undivided attention to one of the other olders.

The child got to choose what we did for our afternoon together (though it couldn’t be expensive—just a few dollars at the most). I spent many a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon at the public library, reading a chapter book aloud at Dairy Queen, playing ping pong in the basement, or challenging a tween to a Scrabble or Rummikub match. And then, of course, as the title of this series suggests, in addition to being a “terrific Tuesday,” it also became another ‘terrific time to talk.”

When kids get their parents’ undivided attention, something happens within their hearts. There is a softening that takes place that doesn’t just happen when you are gathered around the game table or watching a movie as a family. Kids (especially tweens and teens) are very astute when it comes to their parents’ priorities. Showing our kids that they are truly our priorities causes a special bond that doesn’t just happen when we only make time for their sporting events, debates, or concerts.

And yes, it was a sacrifice for me. I used to (and continue to do so today with my writing work) have to work later in the evenings and often after the kids were in bed in order to get all of the work done that is required in raising a large family and homeschooling several children. Our special times with our kids were not just “extra” time that we had waiting to be used. They took conscious efforts and sacrifices to make them happen. But now that our seven children are nearly eighteen to thirty-three, I can tell you unequivocally—it is worth it all to find as many “terrific times to talk” as you can.

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