Parenting Win of the Week: Table Talk
These resources help make tough discussions easier.
10'000 Hours
My family sits down for dinner most nights together. I have written about that in a previous column. But this week, our school asked us to specifically sit down with our kids to discuss the inevitable transition that will happen eventually: making masks optional. They provided us with talking points, articles, and information about the social-emotional learning aspects of the school discussion.
We spoke to both of our boys about how they were feeling and although I am sure this will be a tumultuous change in some ways, they were able to express their feelings quite well and it was a productive conversation.
Ironically on the same day, a friend of mine introduced me to a whole host of free resources from the ADL. If you aren’t familiar with the ADL, it is an anti-hate organization that fights antisemitism, discrimination, extremism, and hate.
They have developed a suite of resources called Table Talk that help families address current events that may be tricky to talk about. They provide background information with links to other resources and relevant articles as well as a guide to a productive, age-appropriate conversation (it notes the age level) and questions to dig deeper.
Even if you aren’t well versed in a topic yourself, it gives you great resources to prepare for a conversation.
It also provides suggestions for actions you can take to make a difference. Some of the topics include banning books, teens and technology, danger of disinformation, and voting.
They also offer a collection of resources for parents that tackle things like bullying and technology, along with resources for early childhood age– because it’s never too young to start tackling hate.
As a parent, I know the more resources like this I can have at my fingertips, the better. There are a lot of complicated topics these days and I know that we can all use the help!
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