FAMILY TALK TIME.

Daily rituals are things we find ourselves doing every day that makes our days feel complete.
One of my daily rituals is family time. This is the last thing I do with my boys every school day of the week but on weekends we go out either individually or as a family.

We call it family talk time. The name was given by my last child who is eight years old even though we started the tradition before he was born.

My boys always look forward to each night to share what might have happened in their school and what they might have experienced during the day with us.

To creat an enabling environment, each person is given ten minutes of uninterrupted talk time after which we might chose to or not ask questions.

This ritual has helped me in a lot of ways but I will mention few....

#1. It is an opportunity for me to spend quality time with my boys after each day.

#2. It is helping me to develop speaking skills in the children because often times, they speak incorrect English which I take my time to correct them when they are done talking.

#3. It helps them to be observant of their immediate environment.

#4. It makes them to be accountable because though we do not judge ourselves but anyone amongst us can ask you an unexpected question.

.Lastly, as it is common amongst teenagers to keep secrets, it makes it difficult for my boys to keep secrets about themselves.

If I am to point out a lot of things I have come to find out through this our daily rituals, you will be surprised. Take for an example, during one of our daily family time that I found out that one of the students in my eldest son's class brings weed to school to smoke it.

According to my son, he said this particular boy brings weed to school every Thursday of the week and he stays behind in the class with some other boys to smoke it.

They have a sweeping roster and it was his turn to sweep on Thursday but one of his friends who usually swept in his place was absent from school.

The boys absence made my boy to wait behind after school so he could sweep along with others of his class mates. He said after sweeping he went to return the sweeping materials when he smelled something funny and he asked his class mates about it.
He said they showed it to him and made him promise not to tell anyone about it.

He told me he gave them his word but he does not think it is safe to hide such thing away from me so he told me about it that night.
I was afraid for my son and I called the school administrator in confidence to inform him about what I heard, I also told him to be diplomatic while questioning the students in question to avoid suspicion.
The issue was resolved and the students in question were punished making my boys school a safe place again.

Had it been that we do not usually have this ritual, my son's classmates would have lured him into tasting the weed with them and he would have introduced it to his siblings by extension.

I'm not a perfect parent but I value this family time very much.

Thank you all for reading till the end.

Images used are mine.