Three Questions

A few months ago, our grandkids came over to spend the night. We needed to feed them dinner (evening meal, though some might argue that). We took them to Chick-Fil-A because it is one of their favorite places. We returned to the house with our food and sat down at the dining table to eat.

I was sitting there, eating, when our granddaughter asked me, “How can you help someone without asking?”. I barely looked up but replied, “Either make them dinner or take them out to eat’, feed them. She said ‘Hmmm’ and we went back to eating.

A few moments later, she asked me “What would make the world a better place?”

At that point I was slightly intrigued. My granddaughter is asking some profound questions, which was awesome. So, I stopped eating for a moment and tried to answer the question. I said “If we could feed everybody on the planet, then perhaps there would be less fighting because everybody would be fed, instead of being so hungry that they might do anything for food, including violent acts”

Again, we went back to eating. And then she asked me, “What is something that would make your life easier?” I stopped for a moment, thinking about the questions she is asking. Has my granddaughter suddenly become a philosophical person? And then she answered, “A robot to do all my chores for me.” So I asked he, “What would you do with the time you saved, sit on the couch and watch TV, or find something useful and constructive to do with the time?” And she just went “Oh”, so I knew which option she had chosen.

But I was curious where these questions had come from, so I asked. And she produced a deck of cards that was the ‘toy’ in her kid’s meal. It turned out it was a ‘game’ called ‘Chatter Time’ and it consists of 20 questions you can use to start a conversation.

What surprised me initially was that the box said it was for children 4 and older. I thought, ‘you are having 4-year-olds ask and answer these questions?’ But then I thought, ‘Why not?’ It is never too early to start teaching our children important life lessons about helping each other out. We do it at church when we send our kids to bible study.

So, I went back to the deck of cards to read the next question. The next 3 questions were:

                1 – If you were famous for something, what would it be?

                2 – If you started a new collection, what would it be?

                3 – How many days in a row could you eat your favorite food?

Not the same level of questions but still thought provoking.

So, we are going to start a new ‘tradition’ in our house. We are going to grab one of these questions when we sit down to eat and have a discussion around one of the questions. Because it is never too early to start a child’s mind on a path of thoughtfulness.