Joking with and irritating your kids

The tendency these days is to sit there at the table and if not stare blankly and quietly at your children, look down and play with your phone while your son/daughter does the same thing. There is a lack of communication these days between parents and offspring and I think this is troubling - we are bringing up a generation of people who do not know how to talk to each other face to face, who lack the ability of conversation, who need to be constantly staring into a screen of some sort. I am occasionally guilty of this too, and this must come to a stop.

Here are some tips to get a conversation going with your child:

• Ask them how their day in school was. Find out what they ate for recess, who they sat with and if there was a long queue for the Japanese buffet. Also find out if they use tissue-paper to reserve their seats.
• Inquire if any of their friends got married recently and if they were invited to attend the ceremony.
• Tell them you can't pick them up from school/lessons the next day and that they would have to drive themselves home. Then proceed to pass them the car keys.

I could give you more examples - but the aim is to get them laughing, engaged or just looking at you in a strange way. Amber gets irritated when I keep asking her how old her teacher is (because the teacher is still attending kindergarten) but I push it to the point where she puts on a really angry face and threatens to slap my backside.

I'm ok for a bit of physical abuse from the kids in the name of having a fun chat.