The Game

My two kids, who is about five and seven, and I wanted to strengthened my relationship with them in a more meaningful way before we sleep during our end year overseas trip in 2012. I remembered that with human interaction – communication was the key. So I thought, “What can we, as a family do in ten to fifteen minutes we have together before sleep to make us think positively about and feel warmly towards each other?” You know, this took a bit of courage. By the age of seven, my elder kid has pretty much a good idea of the kind of behavior expected from each parent. I am not much talker before sleep during normal days. I might say “Good night”, “Sweet dreams”, “How was your day?” and that was all the “talk”.  So I was a bit nervous to suggest the game I came up with.

As we lay down in our beds, I said, “.... why don’t we play a game? What we want to do is to say ‘I feel good about you because…” or “I liked what you did because ….” The because is important so that we then know the reason the other person like about us. Okay? I will start.”

So, I began and said something about each of my family members. Then each of us in turn said something about each other. After one completed round, we went to sleep. In fact, that was because I could not think of anything else. That night, I felt good in one hand but discouraged at the other. Good that we shared one round of good things about each other, discouraged that I could not find more. However, we continued this for the next few days, with each day, increasing on the number of things we will say about each other. What was quite shocking to me was that I realized that I had to really think of what to say about my kids. I love my kids very much, but at that moment I was having difficulty thinking of specific actions that I love of my kids. I was really searching for things to say to them.

This game made me wonder about how I was seeing my kids as they grow up. After that, I began to really see what they did every day in our family. I see their hugs, their words, their thank-yous. And then, I will tell them how well they did – that I love their actions and behaviors. Now that I have started digging, I hope that we will not stop. I think the game has started a conversation that I now extend to building meaningful bond among my family.