One of our readers shared this UK experience with me via email and gave me permission to post it here. I love this: Walk and Talk
Good morning Julie!
As always I love your blog posts and the idea of your car conversations.
I’m in the U.K. where multi-car households aren’t quite as common as they are in your neck of the woods, so we have one car for our household and my husband uses it to drive to work; the bus journey would otherwise take him twice as long; 90mins rather than 45! He’d barely get home for the youngest’s bedtime!
(Brits are deffo not more eco-conscious, not at all! - just that car ownership is more expensive here and I think more homes don’t have garages or driveways - you have to park on the street outside your home, which can make more than one car a pain.)
Anyway that’s not particularly relevant except it means we don’t tend to have many car conversations. But what we do have instead are conversations whilst walking to places. Often relatively long walks (for little legs anyway); for example it’s half an hour’s walk to our town centre; 35 mins to the library; 45m to the train station, and even the bus stop is a 20 minute walk away.
I am not sure these are quite the same as your car conversations but there are definitely some similarities. I think the difference is that the conversation is more of a mixture of some of the kinds of thing you mention, but also a bit more commentary on what’s happening around you (as it isn’t whizzing past at the same speed as a car goes). Stopping to look at a Peacock butterfly resting on buddleja that’s found a home on some waste ground. Sow’s Thistle growing through a crack in the pavement. And that perennial favourite: door numbers; with odds on one side, evens the other, both my kids really cemented their understanding of odd and even numbers whilst walking with me to various places.
(On the bus or train we tend to read, or chat to other commuters; these journeys don’t lend themselves to family conversation in quite the same way.)
In fact we love our pavement ‘walk and talk’ time so much that at the weekend my husband goes out with our daughter for a walk rather than taking the car.
Funnily enough when we do drive somewhere as a family we tend to chat less; we are more likely to listen to music and sing along. (My youngest’s current favourites are the times tables songs from Numberblocks.)
Anyway I just wanted to share. I love reading these snippets about your home ed days. Very encouraging, always, and never prescriptive.
I love this take, because I just came to comment about this! We live in NYC and don't have a car, and I REALLY feel the benefit when we travel each summer and have some car conversations. There is something different to it that, maybe for me in particular, is really helpful. Walking and talking is great too, although the subway isn't conducive to conversation. So I still miss the car opportunity, and have to be more intentional here, but it's good to be reminded not to just give in about that.
"you haven’t had practice in thinking about open-ended questions that lead to good conversation"
^I have a family member who complains every single time I try to ask an open-ended question to get to know them better! "I always hated icebreaker questions" or "I've never been good at those kinds of questions" or some other objections is the immediate response. If I am motivated to break down and rephrase the question in 1000 different ways, and reassure them that there's no wrong answer, sometimes an interesting conversation will result. But it's exhausting and not very much fun! And he's an adult! Very much looking forward to the continuation of this series both for talking with kids and adults.
One of our readers shared this UK experience with me via email and gave me permission to post it here. I love this: Walk and Talk
Good morning Julie!
As always I love your blog posts and the idea of your car conversations.
I’m in the U.K. where multi-car households aren’t quite as common as they are in your neck of the woods, so we have one car for our household and my husband uses it to drive to work; the bus journey would otherwise take him twice as long; 90mins rather than 45! He’d barely get home for the youngest’s bedtime!
(Brits are deffo not more eco-conscious, not at all! - just that car ownership is more expensive here and I think more homes don’t have garages or driveways - you have to park on the street outside your home, which can make more than one car a pain.)
Anyway that’s not particularly relevant except it means we don’t tend to have many car conversations. But what we do have instead are conversations whilst walking to places. Often relatively long walks (for little legs anyway); for example it’s half an hour’s walk to our town centre; 35 mins to the library; 45m to the train station, and even the bus stop is a 20 minute walk away.
I am not sure these are quite the same as your car conversations but there are definitely some similarities. I think the difference is that the conversation is more of a mixture of some of the kinds of thing you mention, but also a bit more commentary on what’s happening around you (as it isn’t whizzing past at the same speed as a car goes). Stopping to look at a Peacock butterfly resting on buddleja that’s found a home on some waste ground. Sow’s Thistle growing through a crack in the pavement. And that perennial favourite: door numbers; with odds on one side, evens the other, both my kids really cemented their understanding of odd and even numbers whilst walking with me to various places.
(On the bus or train we tend to read, or chat to other commuters; these journeys don’t lend themselves to family conversation in quite the same way.)
In fact we love our pavement ‘walk and talk’ time so much that at the weekend my husband goes out with our daughter for a walk rather than taking the car.
Funnily enough when we do drive somewhere as a family we tend to chat less; we are more likely to listen to music and sing along. (My youngest’s current favourites are the times tables songs from Numberblocks.)
Anyway I just wanted to share. I love reading these snippets about your home ed days. Very encouraging, always, and never prescriptive.
Kind regards
R
I love this take, because I just came to comment about this! We live in NYC and don't have a car, and I REALLY feel the benefit when we travel each summer and have some car conversations. There is something different to it that, maybe for me in particular, is really helpful. Walking and talking is great too, although the subway isn't conducive to conversation. So I still miss the car opportunity, and have to be more intentional here, but it's good to be reminded not to just give in about that.
Thank you for this! Have you read https://alisonwoodbrooks.com/conversation-book/? I really enjoyed it and I feel it has definitely improved my conversation skills!
No but it sounds wonderful!
"you haven’t had practice in thinking about open-ended questions that lead to good conversation"
^I have a family member who complains every single time I try to ask an open-ended question to get to know them better! "I always hated icebreaker questions" or "I've never been good at those kinds of questions" or some other objections is the immediate response. If I am motivated to break down and rephrase the question in 1000 different ways, and reassure them that there's no wrong answer, sometimes an interesting conversation will result. But it's exhausting and not very much fun! And he's an adult! Very much looking forward to the continuation of this series both for talking with kids and adults.