Those of you who know me personally know that I’m an introvert. I enjoy being social with small groups, but I find large crowds very draining. You can imagine how I feel when we have six boisterous children around the house. The volume level increases by several orders of magnitude when everyone is home. I sometimes have to escape to my bedroom…and more often than not, am sitting on my phone. It’s so easy to get engrossed in our electronic devices, but I wanted to share a little today about putting down the phone and taking the time to listen to your kiddos.
I’ll admit, I’m on my phone too much! It’s easy to justify it because of all the hats I wear and things I’m trying to juggle, many of which are managed straight from my phone. I was called out earlier this week by my 11-year old about it as he got frustrated that I was on my phone (handling marketing for the business) while he was trying to talk to me. And rightly so. He was very justified in his frustration. (I did put down my phone to listen to what he wanted to tell me.)
It’s really kind of funny some of the things you can overhear if you take the time to listen. We were in our way home from church last night, and Little Miss and Little Dude were chatting up a storm in the back seat. DJ was driving and I was…you guessed it – on my phone. I heard them start talking about college and where they were going to live, so I put down my phone and just started listening in. Can I tell you how much good it did to my heart to hear Little Miss say that she and two of DJ’s girls were going to live together when they were in college? And THEN she said, “because they’re my sisters.” It made my heart do a little skip. There was no “step” in that word and I LOVED it. Now I know things can change and they’re not always going to like each other. That already happens. But I do believe they LOVE each other.
This was just another reminder for me of why I need to disconnect sometimes and just listen. I even took some time tonight for a mommy-son date at his school. We walked through to book fair and he picked out a couple of things. Then we ate dinner together while listening to the school orchestra play. He went to watch Moana while I went to a few educational sessions for parents (cyber security, Google – they’re part of a research program with google, and how to pay for college). He needed that one-on-one time with me, and we had a great night just chatting and teasing each other. He just needed me to listen and focus on him for a bit. 
Share your stories of things you’ve overheard your kids talking about!!