It’s not a good feeling to be competing with phones for attention.
And it’s an especially bad feeling when it’s your kids whose attention you’re trying to get, and it’s your kids’ phones (which you bought for them) that you’re competing against!
This attention problem used to rear its ugly head everywhere:
At the grocery store (“Uh-Huh, I’ll grab that in one sec, Mom”), on family vacations (“Does this Museum have Wi-Fi?”), and basically anywhere else where we were together.
What hurt me the most, though, were our family dinners.
My kids (who are 11 and 13, by the way) started wanting to watch TV at dinner, and my husband and I let them because we figured that watching the same show together counted as quality time.
But then the kids would just pull out their phones while we were all watching TV…
And then they started incessantly checking their phones whenever we were sitting down at the dinner table…
And when we banned phones from the table, both kids would just scarf down their food and barely talk to us for two minutes before retreating to their rooms.
Pretty soon, we were stuck in this horrible loop where the kids were either totally zoned out on their devices, or they were in terrible moods because we “forced them” to get off their phones and talk to their parents…
My husband and I didn’t know what to do. It felt like we were trapped.
But that was when I found out about the Family Pack by Talking Point Cards…
The Family Pack has 200 conversation starter cards that were created by a team of communication experts, and it has a 4.7 star rating on Amazon (almost 3,000 reviews).
Everything else we’d tried (being ‘chill’ about their phone use, being strict about their phone use) hadn’t worked, and I figured testing out these conversation starter cards couldn’t hurt (we could just return them if they didn’t work!)
Our first conversation with the Family Pack went on for over 30 minutes…
At first, the kids were a little taken aback by our new dinnertime activity, but we ended up having a blast on that first night starting conversations with the cards.
With the box at the center of our table, we were able to go back and forth pulling out cards, giving our answers, lightly debating and discussing our opinions, and going off on little tangents about all kinds of others.
It was exactly the kind of interactive, interesting conversation I had been missing so much…
And here’s the thing: as soon as I saw the way my kids were engaging with the cards, I knew that some part of them had been missing this too.
Phones and screens were literally designed to be as addictive as possible – but they can only really give out a hollow, meaningless kind of entertainment.
Good conversation with the people you love just ‘hits different’ (as they say), because that’s what life is really all about.
So when I first heard my 11-year-old give a passionate plea for a “history of sports that goes all the way back to cavemen” in response to the question: “If you could make up a brand new school subject, what would it be?” I instantly started to think about how all of his phone-use was probably starving him of this fun, imaginative kind of conversation!
The Three Reasons Why the Family Pack Works So Well:
- These prompts are extremely good
All of the prompts in the Family Pack were written by communication experts, and when you use the cards, you can immediately feel the difference that makes.
Everything is just so creative and well-worded… but what I think really puts these cards over the top is how specific the questions are.
These questions couldn’t be more different from things like “How was your day?”
Instead, they really paint a picture in your mind and get you excited to answer.
Once you hear one, it’s hard to pull yourself away without wanting to speak your mind about it!
The cards always give you ‘something to do’
In our busy world, we can all get a little jumpy when it comes to just sitting back and relaxing.
Having the cards out on the table, or in the car, or in the living room, helps us all stay focused on the activity at hand: family-wide conversation.
The kids like holding onto the cards and kind of fidgeting with them (which fills up the spots where phones would usually be!) and the fact that you can always keep the conversation flowing by pulling another card out of the box keeps everyone excited to keep ‘playing conversation.’
Everybody likes to (hear themselves) talk!
I thought that my kids had just gotten bored of conversation, but I couldn’t have been more wrong!
It turns out that my kids actually love conversation – when it comes from the Family Pack, at least!
Having the chance to answer a unique question and give your opinion on it is something we’ve all cherished, and I think it’s a big reason why:
My Kids Always Want to Talk Now!
The Family Pack truly changed everything for us.
I went from fighting a losing attention battle to phones to enjoying countless evenings and car rides of meaningful conversation with my family.
The kids’ screen times are down, they’re way more present in conversation with my husband and me now, and our family-wide communication has improved tremendously.
I seriously can’t thank Talking Point Cards enough!
If you want to totally change your conversation-game with your family – and spend your precious time together talking instead of going on your phones – then head over to their website today and see what these amazing cards can do for you!
