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Had an interesting family home evening that was probably the most introverted — and satisfying — family experience I’ve had in a while. We all got our favorite book, gathered in the living room, and then read silently. There wasn’t enough furniture in the living room for everyone to recline comfortably, so my daughter brought out a chair and footstool.There was a rule — no one was allowed to talk. My kids range from 10 to 14 years of age. We thought we would do it for 20 minutes. It lasted 1.5 hours as we all sat there reading our individual books — in total silence.
When we were done, everyone wanted to do it again the next evening.
We call it “The Diogenes Club” — after a men’s club in the old Sherlock Holmes stories that was exactly this concept.
At the end I asked everyone why they liked it as opposed to reading separately in our rooms, and they all said they liked the feeling of being together – the comfortableness of being together without having to say anything. So, it actually unified the family.
Comments? And do you have any introverted family home evening ideas?
Honestly, we don’t have formal FHE – largely because we spend so much time together and talk about Gospel stuff informally, anyway. We end up having a lot of times like you described (sometimes with books and computer and NetFlix going simultaneously), and it’s wonderful in its . . . comfortable-ness. Everyone in the family seems to benefit from spending time together, I think. We haven’t tried the reading thing. But my youngest kid likes to give lessons in front of the others because he can share ideas without it being corrected or interrupted. Like many other things in our house, we do better making efforts to let teaching and time together happen in many ways. The formal or agenda-based FHE is less frequent than the informal.
SilentDawning wrote:We call it “The Diogenes Club” — after a men’s club in the old Sherlock Holmes stories that was exactly this concept.
Thanks for sharing. Companionable silence is a great thing, and I think your kids will remember this fondly.
Ann wrote:SilentDawning wrote:We call it “The Diogenes Club” — after a men’s club in the old Sherlock Holmes stories that was exactly this concept.
Thanks for sharing. Companionable silence is a great thing, and I think your kids will remember this fondly.
I love that term “companionable silence!!!”
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