Sometimes it’s difficult to find things to talk about with kids, especially being a step parent… I don’t get to see them every day, so when I’m with them and we’ve exhausted the usual ‘how’s-school-how’s-everything-else’ line of conversation, sometimes I’m lost as to what to talk about.

It’s not because I don’t want to talk more, but in the ages from 10-14 I’m finding that the eyes start to glaze over when I talk about adult stuff, or if I talk about things and I give my adult (aka boring) perspective. Or they clam up when I ask them questions about themselves… normal teen stuff.

So now I’ve discovered two things that seem to reach our pre-teens:

1. Board games. We have Star Wars Monopoly and Scrabble topping the list at the moment (although Chess goes in and out of favour as well), and conversations seem to happen easier when we’re focusing on a game instead of directly on our dear ones

2. Word games - particularly good if you’re in the car. Eg. List 10 ways that X is like Y (a dog is like a house, a glass of coke is like a day in school, etc), and ‘four things’ (eg. Four TV shows I watch over and over, Four people I talk on the phone to the most, Four colours I would paint my bedroom, etc). Everyone in the car (or in the vicinity) has to respond.

These often spark off conversations of their own, and helps them get to know us as people, not just us asking them a bunch of nosy questions