{"id":2367,"date":"2012-01-31T21:43:08","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T02:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=2367"},"modified":"2012-01-31T21:50:43","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T02:50:43","slug":"how-i-talk-to-my-sons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/how-i-talk-to-my-sons\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Talk To My Sons"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned how to talk to my boys first from my middle son, Max. This is because most of my training took place when Nat was still fairly non-verbal, and Benj was a wee babe.\u00a0 I remember the moment I first discovered how to do it; it was during the five minute drive to the school in the morning. Max was still young, but he was in the front seat because he was already big enough to be there by the age of 9. He had been talking about Animorphs, a book series where characters can shift into certain animals. Max was telling me about one character who was becoming an animorph, perhaps against his will — something like that. But the real thing he was telling me was that this boy’s situation was incredibly poignant to Max.<\/p>\n

As I braked to let him out at the circle, I realized — by his tone of voice, or because the words crystallized differently in the air around us just then — he had revealed something precious to me.\u00a0 The door opened and Max heaved himself out, and I realized that the way to get him to talk to me about important things was by riding together and talking side-by-side in the car.<\/p>\n

With Nat, I’ve learned to apply this in a way unique to him: by pretending not to listen, especially sitting in front of him in the car. While I drive him around, he gets more and more animated, talking to himself about whatever is on his mind. He doesn’t know how I am listening intently, waiting for clues into his day, his thoughts. Hey, or maybe he does!\u00a0 Anyway, I always love finding out what is important to him, like that time he was saying, “Bay-ag, bay-ag,” and it turned out he was upset that I’d used cloth bags instead of plastic. I don’t think this would have worked out as well if I had been looking at him. My eyes really throw him off.<\/p>\n

Ben talks to me directly across the table. There is often some thing between us when we talk. We don’t sit side-by-side anywhere, but we do sit at the table a lot, me drinking coffee or chocolate and him, eating chips and salsa and doing homework. Another way we talk is when he calls me into the playroom to come see something cute on the computer — usually an impossibly tiny baby animal caught innocently eating. And of course with a great caption. He and I never grow tired of Dr. Tinycat<\/a> or the hamster that says, “I has a corm<\/a>.”\u00a0 You’d be surprised how many heated political discussions come up after a look at Good Cat Craig.<\/p>\n

Last night at dinner I was up at the counter emptying leftover pasta into Tupperware. Ben and Nat remained at the table, eating the last bits of their noodles. Nat said, “May have salt pepper please.”
\nAnd Ben answered, “But of course, my good man.”<\/p>\n

So maybe now my sons have finally learned to talk to each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned how to talk to my boys first from my middle son, Max. This is because most of my training took place when Nat was still fairly non-verbal, and Benj was a wee babe.\u00a0 I remember the moment I first discovered how to do it; it was during the five minute drive to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-Cb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}