Making dinner table conversations fun with your teenager

Dinner table conversations are energy-boosters, family binders and learning encounters. It’s that time of the day when all the members come for the same plate (not literally though 😉), enjoy the same food and share their day-long endeavours. 

In the early childhood days, the dinner table conversations and etiquettes work towards soft skill development and mould the little ones. On reaching the age of early adolescence the conversations of academics, social life and daily encounters help the kids understand the value of a healthy discussion. Sometimes it is the mother sharing the woes of a neighbour that instils compassion in everyone and at other times the father talking about some funny incident at the workplace induces a laughter riot. With all the fun and novelty element in it, a fascination towards adult life surges in the kids, but beyond that, they do not have access to it. 

Eventually, with the coming of the later years of the teenage, kids tend to become secluded, with changing interests and biological maturity. He/she is too small to be an adult and too grown to behave like the little siblings. With friends being their world and academics seeming dislike, they turn silent and withdrawn. In those crucial years, they struggle to find the right space for themselves, at the dinner table to be specific and in life as a whole.

How to resolve this, one may ask! A quick answer is; ‘exploration’. With maximum energy and grasping ability, this age group is best suited for exploring new skills and interests. As their understanding expands, they enjoy belonging to the growing world outside academics. Involving them in activities that go beyond textbooks and mobile gaming works wonders and boosts their confidence. In the stereotypical society children are offered this opportunity only when they enter college life. But to offer the teens the right kind of exposure we need something of a special design, something atypical.

How to be atypical, we might wonder! Let’s understand this with an example; To experience the goodness of nature, beauty and its diversity we take vacations into enchanting wild-life safaris and stay in resorts amidst forests. Since we cannot keep living in the wild forever, we take short-duration visits and rejuvenate ourselves. Similarly, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we can provide our teens with freedom of youthful life and access to the professional world at this growing age?

Doing an MBA and getting internship experience in an MNC would definitely sound like a good opportunity, isn’t it? But, alas! MBA being a post-graduation course it is hardly viewed as an option for teens. But, in the teenage years minds are booming with innovative thoughts and once they find a field of interest, they might do wonders. Clever Harvey JuniorMBA opens up this possibility for teenagers. Read more about it here.

The child is able to gather the first-hand experience about; turning an idea into reality, a group of people into a team and know the backend work that goes into running a business or doing a job. Communication skills, personality grooming, positive discipline and leadership attitude get passively ingrained in them from a young age, giving a head-start for life. Such an experience would culminate into self-realisation and hunting a direction that resonates with the child’s interest leading to skill development and career building. 

One cannot help but wonder, the fun JuniorMBA can add to the dinner table conversations. A whole new world of experiences of real-world exposure will be taking over the discussions. The teenager of the family goes from being isolated to motivated and is the new hero in the dinner table stories. 

#HappyDinner #HappyParenting