Conversations around Children

It’s important to notice that our conversations affect our children, who are now running around the house underfoot rather than in school. It’s easy to forget little ears when having adult conversations.

I was having some pretty sophisticated discussions on the phone this last week about the pandemic while also hanging out with my grandson (who’ll be 3 in May, so very young). I realized that I was talking a lot about protection and “hunkering down” and Gabriel started wearing his toy basket on his head and then grabbed a blanket and crawled onto my lap even though he wasn’t sleepy (completely unheard of behavior for him, so unusual my daughter snapped a picture of us).

I, myself, took the photo of him with the basket on his head thinking it was cute. But look at his face. That is not the expression of a kid having fun. Only later did it dawn on me that my conversations were disturbing him. And he’s not even 3. How much more could our conversations be affecting older children? And might that be part of why some of them are acting out a lot?