Conversation Skills

My children know how to talk, but not how to converse with another person.  Their vast vocabularies are used only for rambling monologues, peppered throughout with, "Mama, Mama, Mama?" to make sure I am 100% following along.

Often (especially at the dinner table or in the car) we get two concurrent monologues, one from each child.  When this happens, I interrupt them and tell them to stop interrupting each other.  Minh puts in ear plugs.  Frequently Quynh starts in with a soft-spoken tale of her day at school or the menu at her imaginary restaurant and then Tai (completely oblivious to the fact that his sister is speaking) starts in at more-than-full-volume about the latest antics of his friends at school.  Inevitably, Quynh pouts and announces, "Hey, I was telling a story and you ruined it!"

Other times they use their verbal skills to ask questions.  Great.  I love questions.  I encourage questions as the best way to learn things.  But they frequently ask questions to which they already know the answer.  Over and over again.  Or they ask a question and then while Minh or I are answering it they talk (loudly) over us.  And then when we are finished with our (no doubt brilliant the thoroughly informative) answer, they say "What?"

So I began wondering how to solve this issue, both for my own sanity and so that they can learn the valuable skill of self control.  Presumably, someday they are going to need to carry on a give-and-take conversation.  So I tried an idea I that read in a book and printed up a clip-art picture of a mouth and one of an ear and put them on the dinner table.  The kids were intrigued.  Minh looked on with skepticism.

The point is supposed to be that the child holding the picture of the mouth has the floor, so to speak.  And the other child holds the picture of the ear, to remind them that they are the listener and it is not their turn to talk.  And then they are supposed to trade back and forth and we are supposed to have a peaceful, enjoyable, lively dinner conversation.  

So how'd that go?  We ended up with Tai crawling across the dinner table to grab the mouth picture out of Quynh's little fist so he could talk.  Awesome.

I think maybe I just need to get me some earplugs.