Feb. 2020, Week 4: Family Culture

by Soren and Ever Johnson
 
“Average Parent Spends Just 5 Hours Face-To-Face With Their Kids Per Week!” screamed the recent headline. Over half of the same parents surveyed felt “distant” from their kids. Studies and reports like this keep coming almost daily. 

In their essay, “The Power of Conversation: A Lesson from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien,” Brett and Kate McKay summarize the state of affairs when it comes to old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation, “We hide behind screens, and communicate as much as possible through email and text. We justify these moves on the basis of efficiency, and the fact that in having the ability to edit our messages, we can be more ‘ourselves’ and make sure we say things ‘just right.'”

So well said. As we turn in the fourth week of the month to Level 4, Family Culture, we recall that the cornerstone activity is Family Dinner — the gateway to real face-to-face conversation that is so needed in our era of screens, efficiency, and curated appearances. Those who have attended our Heaven in Your Home Workshop will recall the Trinity icon with the three angels who represent the persons of the Trinity seated around the table and inviting us to join in the meal. Remember how their welcoming, listening to, and serving each other and us leads to intimate bonding and explosive creativity and blessing?

Sure, you might be thinking. You can praise the family meal and point to the stunning metrics of success which it brings to children. You can even compare the dinner table to the Eucharistic table in how it serves as the focal point for the domestic church…but my family dinner with young kids, tweens and teens is chaos!

But rather than be discouraged – you’re not alone! – we need to leverage the stunning opportunity we have each evening with our children to start turning things around. As we linger together at the table and move past the 11-min. average for family dinners, we will find new horizons of family culture opening for us, as our children learn not from their screens, but from their loved ones’ faces.

It seems obvious, but it needs to be said. Your family’s spiritual and emotional health is reflected at the dinner table. Your dinner table doesn’t lie. If you doubt its power to mold, inspire, and coax your children toward better, more human conversations and relationships, just pull out a calculator. Even if you only manage four family dinners per week at 20 minutes per dinner, that’s the equivalent of nine workdays per year that you have to work with your kids on the art of conversation. If you move into the major leagues with seven 30-minute dinners per week, you’ll have about 23 workdays to set the tone.  

Like most parents today, we are alarmed about the time our kids are spending with screens. But simply saying “no screens” or setting this or that limit is only half the solution. The other half is to fill that time with your leadership, presence, attentiveness, and creativity. Start small, but as you do, consider a long-term investment in forming your children at the dinner table. 

To raise the “art of conversation” at your dinner table, here are some practical strategies we’ve found to be effective (please email us with others, so we can feature them in a future e-letter):  

• “Highs and Lows”: Offer a chance for everyone at the table to share a ‘high’ of the day as well as a ‘low.’ 
• Gratitude: Allow everyone a chance to share one thing for which they’re grateful today. Instill an “attitude of gratitude” at your table. 
• Family History: Share a story and a lesson from the life of a family member — perhaps a departed great aunt or uncle whom your children never had the chance to meet. 
• News: Bring up the day’s news, and try to steer it into a teaching moment about Jesus, a virtue, the life of a saint. 
• Give the Sanguine the Mic: Many families have one member who is the life of the party, a “sanguine” personality who loves to entertain. Give this member of the family room to lead, and enjoy the ride!

With any of the above strategies, keep a long view. There will be fights, frustrations, even entire seasons when good dinner table conversation is elusive, but stick with it! As social scientist Sherry Turkle writes in Reclaiming Conversation, “You really don’t know when you are going to have an important conversation. You have to show up for many conversations that feel inefficient or boring to be there for the conversation that changes your mind.”

Keeping showing up, and by God’s grace, your family’s face-to-face conversations in your Trinity House will more and more reflect the communion of persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — in whose image you are made.  

Heaven In Your Home Toolkit  

Soren discussed the Trinity House Community vision with Chris Campbell, whose current Resolutions podcast features the conversation.

Don’t Miss…
 
Heaven In Your Home Workshops: Coming to Fredericksburg on the evening of Wed. March 18th! Registration for in-person or via livestream will open later this week here. 

If you live in the Diocese of Arlington, check out events and opportunities to go deeper in faith, including the upcoming annual diocesan Men’s Conference and annual diocesan Women’s Conference.
 
What Others Are Saying
 
“Heaven in Your Home was a beautiful opportunity to refocus ourselves on how we can bring our family to holiness by drawing them into the life of the Trinity. The ideas were so helpful but also needed as our family continues to grow, so that we don’t lose sight of the main point, to help them get to Heaven!” –Ian Masson, Heaven in Your Home Workshop Participant

Please Join Us In Prayer  
 
We invite you to keep the following needs in prayer and thanksgiving: 

• For all the participants of the upcoming Heaven in Your Home Workshops, that they would be strengthened in their vocations.
• For all parents, as they look at ways to strengthen and encourage their family dinner table traditions.