Part 2: How can I create culture at home?

Continued from Part 1: How can I create culture at home?

To see better communication, the short answer is to start with communicating more. We’re not looking for Pulitzer Prize-winning letters or Oprah-caliber dialogue. We’re simply looking to start with a higher volume of verbal conversation. And this shift will come at the expense of something that is currently occupying the time of your family.

Start with the entry point of least resistance – where are members of the family consistently in the same room or place together already? At the dinner table? On a drive to school? After school for 15 minutes while kids are snacking? Right before bed when everyone is in the house? Choose one.

Now, this is the hardest part, what will you have the courage to disrupt? If the car ride to school is mom driving while your two kids sit quietly in back scrolling Tik Tok, do you have the energy to deal with the fallout of disrupting your kids’ established pattern. A pattern they probably look forward to. A pattern that you believe is worth disrupting, because better communication in your family is worth the effort.

Start with a conversation where you suggest to your kids, not to stop using their phones, but an option to give a quick update on the high point and low point of their previous day. It may not take the entire ride, it may take 2 minutes, but it’s a start. It’s a conversation with a low barrier-to-entry, because they’ve already got the answer. And, on top of that, there are no wrong answers, they’re the expert. This is about as simple as it gets for a starting point.

Establish the pattern over the course of a week and assess how it’s playing out. Is there a sense of improved communication? Probably not yet. But there may be a pattern starting to form where one morning on the way to school, you forget to ask about high points and low points, and one of your kids chimes in from the back seat asking, “Mom, are we going to do high points and low points?”

This will be the sign you’re heading in the right direction.