All Hail the Talking Spoon
quality time
moments that matter
If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that dinner time is a pain point in my household. It typically involves me spending a LOT of time making a dinner that we spend less than ten minutes eating. That is, if my children deign to eat it in the first place. I have resolved myself to this fate. My role as a parent, I’ve decided, is to provide healthy choices (and sometimes, honestly, not very healthy choices…these are the more popular dinners) and offer them without expectation. One day, one day. One day my children will appreciate the deliciousness of asparagus and beets and fish and other healthy expensive organic things. Until then, they’ll just (metaphorically) spit all over the food I’ve just prepared, shout “I don’t like that,” and I’ll just go to my happy place for a little while. (In my happy place, other people make dinner and serve it to me, and toddlers eat at a separate table...in a land far, far away.)
The other major pain point is a little tougher to solve because it requires my attention…all of it, times three people, talking at once. There is an ongoing battle at my dinner table between three warring factions: my daughter, my son, and my husband. The prize? Mama’s attention. This is particularly draining at the end of a long day when I, frankly, don’t want to pay attention to anyone, much less three people at the same time.
Enter the talking spoon…
Dinner in my happy place is kind of like this. Photo by Stefan Johnson on Unsplash
The Conch Reimagined
If you’ve read Lord of the Flies you might recall The Conch. The Conch was a shell that brought order to the Darwinian tribe of children isolated on an island. Whoever held the Conch also got the right to speak and be heard. We have a Conch in our house now, except it’s a big wooden spoon we call “The Talking Spoon.”
The rules of the Talking Spoon are simple. The Talking Spoon rotates to each family member before making it’s way around the table again. When someone has the Talking Spoon everyone else has to listen. When holding the Talking Spoon you must speak in a language everyone at the table can understand. This rule derives from the night my son used one of his Talking Spoon turns to speak in gibberish for the full turn. My daughter thought this was a great idea and attempted to repeat it on her turn. Things rapidly got out of hand. We experimented with different time spans for each turn: 2 minutes was too long; 30 seconds was too short. We’ve now settled on a minute-and-a-half. You can ask for some silence at the beginning of your turn to gather your thoughts and you can end your turn early if you run out of things to say.
Dinner at MY PLACE is kind of like this.
What Works About the Talking Spoon
Since I’m a busy working mom, I’m just going to make you a bulleted list. Here’s how the Talking Spoon works for us:
Mom’s head doesn’t spontaneously split into tiny parts
Less yelling
Less pouting (on part of unheard husband)
We hear more about our children’s days and thoughts
The women at the table get to speak. (Seriously, for a while dinner was a classic man vs. man conflict, or the man-versus-his-mini-self version of man-vs-man.)
Manners: We’re working on the very important skills of making conversation, listening, not interrupting, not dominating the conversation, and thinking of interesting things to say.
What Still Doesn’t Work
Nothing’s perfect right? Here are some things we’re still struggling with.
I’m not much of a talker at dinnertime, apparently. Sometimes I struggle to find things to say.
It’s hard for some family members to rapidly gather and articulate their thoughts. However, we also think this is a positive, as it’s training all members to be more articulate.
Things devolve after about 3 turns apiece. That seems to be our kids’ attention span for…anything.
The kids fight about who gets the spoon first (see earlier Lord of the Flies reference)
My son, in particular, has to be drawn out…guiding questions are the only thing that keeps him talking during his turn. Talking in other people’s turns, however, he has no problem with.
My daughter, in particular, is a bit of a despot. She spends the first few seconds of every turn bragging about how she has the talking spoon and demanding silence from everyone at the table.
Manners: We’re still working on the very important skill of making conversation, listening, not interrupting, not dominating the conversation, and thinking of interesting things to say.
Do you have a trick for working on manners with your kids or making dinnertime a pleasant time? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
All Hail The Talking Spoon
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