We all want to. But sometimes our “want to’s” do not become our actual “do’s.”

Keeping close to our children is something that we must plan for and put on our calendars just like appointments.

We worked hard at this by having Terrific Tuesdays, Half Birthday Celebrations, when you sit in your house, Calendar Meetings, and much more.

I’m down to the last ten weeks of “Talking to our Kids,” so you have a lot of ideas to choose from.

I want to throw out there our Keep Kids Close Coupons….they are inexpensive (and often given as a freebie to subscribers of the blog!), but they are handy….and really helped us keep our kids close!

Here are some neat ways to use these cards (or cards you make up yourself) to keep close:

(1) There are a lot of coupons for special things floating around, but we like these because their name tells the why behind them. We are going to do this or that because we want to keep close.

(2) Don’t pass them out constantly—and possibly not even once a week. (Other coupons, like affirmation ones, are good for weekly or lunch box types of coupons.)

(3) These should be used to communicate to the child that you want to do something special together so that you can be close to each other.

(4) Try to do low to no cost things so that it doesn’t become a thing where your child always has to DO something in order to be with you. (See ideas below.)

(5) Alternate with just Mom; just Dad; and Mom and Dad together with the child.

(6) The activities together do not have to be long. (Again, see ideas below.) They can be as short as an hour long card game or a walk in the neighborhood.

(7) While you don’t want these to get expensive, if you have pre-teens and teens, do plan to incorporate some food-related outings! It can be simple like an ice cream cone from McDonalds, but our experience has been that tweens and teens love to eat!

(8) Be sure that your times together are not always so activity-driven that you can’t talk and just be together. For example, while going to the movies might be fun, it would be better to go to the park and take a picnic snack and walk around the lake so that you can really connect.

(9) Take notes about what your child likes, what outings or times together meant a lot to him before, etc. Our oldest son thrived on my husband meeting him in the driveway to shoot baskets at ten every night after Ray had put the littles to bed. Some things are more special to some kids than other things are.

(10) If you are giving these to teens, you might not want to put a date on the coupon. While it is easier to schedule with an elementary child (Saturday morning breakfast sandwich at the park), teens’ schedules are often challenging to work around. You want to give him the what then determine a time together that works. (These should not feel like obligations to the teens—like time that you are taking away from other things.)

Download Yours Today!

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In the last “talking” post, I described a time in which talking isn’t needed at all. (You can read that here.) Those times are not all that frequently, however, since usually our kids have wanted our input, advice, and help. (And if they didn’t want it, they probably really needed it, so it was up to us to find a way to make it happen.)

To balance that “just listen” vs. “give too much input,” we came up with a solution that has become a popular buzzword in our home.

In this approach, we listened, listened, and listened. Here and there we would give suggestions—“What do you think would happen if you did this?” or “What do you think of this?”

The child would often find solutions herself through this “more listen than talk” approach. Sometimes just saying all of the problems, scenarios, and hurts aloud bring out the best solutions without a lot of input.

Regardless of whether we listened ninety percent and talked ten percent. Or listened fifty percent and talked fifty percent. Or somewhere in between….

There came a point (even if it wasn’t until two or three in the morning), when the child would dry her tears, sigh fretfully, and stare into space.

And this is when we said the words that the child was ready for: “What are you going to do now?”

And this is where the child said the magic words (which used to be please and thank-you but now were much deeper and more important than those): “I’m going to do the next right thing.”

She knew what that was. She knew that getting back at those who had wronged her would never work. She knew that harboring bitterness wouldn’t solve anything. She knew that recounting the offense over and over wouldn’t help. (We had talked enough for the previous sixteen years that she had already learned all of those lessons.)

And then, once again, it was confirmed to us that all of those years of talking—in various places, at all hours, for however long it took, about whatever the child needed or wanted to talk about—was worth it….because the child knew exactly what to do in the current situation: “the next right thing.”

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