Dinner and Discussion, January 2024, Politics Dinner Recap

It was not on purpose that we hosted a politically-themed Dinner and Discussion on January 6, 2024. But it was, perhaps, symbolic. What better day to bring a group of parents together to talk about politics? Well, not to talk about our own political beliefs, but to talk about raising kids who will one day be, hopefully, involved in and knowledgeable about our country’s political system. 

I’ll be honest, these days, it is rare for me to hear people discussing politics. No, really. It’s rare. I hear people shouting their opinions. I see people degrading others who disagree. I see leaders using logical fallacies in debate. But very rarely do I encounter two or more people discussing politics with a curious approach or with thoughtful, well-reasoned points.

Perhaps that is because these days, I tend to avoid all talk of politics all together. 

And that is, I have decided, a really bad thing. Isolating myself from political discussion does not make me a better informed or more responsible American citizen. It makes me scared. And I don’t want my kids to be like that. 

If we want to change the way our country talks about politics, we can initiate the change in our own homes.  By teaching our children to act the way we wish we did.

And that is the backstory to the inspiration for this year’s first Dinner and Discussion parenting topic. If you don’t know about our Dinner and Discussion series, here is a quick summary. Last year, Stan and I decided to invite parents of our children’s friends to our house on three separate occasions to discuss difficult parenting topics. We hosted a party on technology, a party on behavior and discipline, and we planned to do one on politics, but our kids got sick and we had to cancel. The people we invited knew that each dinner’s conversation would revolve around one particular topic. They opted in, and we had a blast! Our conversations were rich. We learned so much. And we felt more connected to the parents our kids were doing life with. So we decided to do it again this year.

For our January 2024 dinner, Stan and I invited 8 couples to join us around our dinner table to discuss the topic of parenting and politics. We wanted to explore the question: How can we teach our children to be civil, curious, strong in their beliefs but also be willing to learn when it comes to politics?  

Before the dinner, I was really nervous, because I was worried our discussion was going to fall off the rails, but I needn’t have worried. Since the topic was about teaching politics, we didn’t even delve into any political issues of the day – and in this day and age there are many. Parents of all different political party affiliations sat around the same table – hesitantly sharing at first, lest we “give away” that we leaned left or right, but by the end, our shared concern for our children and our love of our country transcended any hesitancy to share.

To break the ice, each of us told a story about how we first got exposed to politics as a child. And it turns out that members of our group mostly had their first exposure to politics at home with their families. This point was an interesting one, because it made us think about the opportunities we have as parents to introduce our own children to politics, the issues, and to model excellent political discussion behavior. 

Aside from bringing politics to the front and center of our attention, there were other salient points from our conversation that merit reflection here. 

Our Kids ARE Learning How to Discuss Tough Topics At School: We’re so glad our kids go to the school they do. Having taught there, I knew that the teachers intentionally prepare students for difficult conversations. They teach students how to be curious and open-minded during conversation. One of the tools the middle school teachers use is the 4 agreements of courageous conversation, which encourage participants to “stay engaged” in the conversation, even when it is uncomfortable. They “acknowledge that discomfort is inevitable…It is not talking about these issues that create divisiveness. The divisiveness already exists in the society and in our schools. It is through dialogue, even when uncomfortable, the healing and change begin.” They encourage students to be “open about thoughts and feelings and not just saying what you think others want to hear.” And they remind students that in difficult discussions, they should “expect and accept nonclosure.”  Some teachers also use a program called R.E.A.L. Discussion which gives kids an easy-to-understand structure for conversation and teaches them the concrete steps for robust discussion. We can be confident that English and History and Humanities teachers all over the US are working hard at teaching students how to talk with each other about difficult topics. 

We Discovered That We Want Our Children to Participate In Public Service: Another point of the evening completely took me by surprise. Our discussion turned to the power of public service. Several times we talked about the importance of building a community-minded outlook as our children’s way of looking at the world. At one point in the discussion, we talked about encouraging a gap year between high school and college as a way of promoting a wider view of the world. During this gap year, we hoped our children would participate in public service (military, teach-for-America, etc). There was a lot of thought around the “selfi” world our kids live in, and how we can help them turn the lens from themselves to others.

What Are We Teaching When We Teach Kids About Politics? Another interesting part of our discussion hinged around the question, “what is politics?” If we are supposed to be teaching our kids about politics, what parts of politics are we teaching? The parts of the system – Judicial, Executive, Legislative Branches? What our founders dreamed politics in America would be – a democratic republic by the people and for the people with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The realities of the current American political money machine? “The Dark Side” of politics – kickbacks and power struggles and cronyism? Depending on how deeply we each were immersed in political news influenced our thinking around this topic. Ultimately, the answer we came up with was to talk with our children about all, but to level our discussions depending upon their ages. All of ours are in elementary school, so we agreed a good starting place would be with the structures of our system and the importance of voting. 

We All Want Our Kids To Be Proud To Be American. To be proud of democracy and our republic. To be committed to making our country better, even as they are proud to be members of it. We thought about whether or not we are modeling this behavior and this outlook and what might be ways we could do that more than just shooting off fireworks and wearing red, white, and blue on the fourth of July. One way we do this as a family is fly an American flag outside our home. It’s an easy thing, but every time I see it I remember that I’m proud to live in the USA. 

We All Want Our Kids To Be Informed Voters. One challenge to this that we saw is the news sources we consume. We all agreed that when we were growing up, it seemed like there was one set of facts upon which you could disagree. But now, it seems like there are two or more sets of “facts” and then several more interpretations of those facts. As a country, we’re not just arguing about how to interpret one shared reality. We first are arguing about which “reality” is correct. Initially, as a group we were apt to throw our hands up and say, “it’s hopeless.” But, upon reflection, we talked about purposefully choosing to engage with several types of news – from sources that we “agree” with and also from sources we tend to “disagree” with as one way of broadening our perspective and modeling for our children open-mindedness and thoughtful engagement with current events.

We Will Travel More, As A Result Of This Discussion. One final big take-away was the power of travel as a way to help broaden your mind, bring an appreciation of being an American, to keep you curious and respectful of other cultures, and to start conversations about politics. Many of us shared stories about how our eyes were opened to the power of what a government can do for or to its people when we traveled both within the USA and outside of it. Looks like we’ll be getting those passports renewed. 

So, after this dinner, my top five tips for raising politically minded children are:

1. Travel as a family and go to places like Washington, D.C.! 
2. Consume multiple sources for your news from multiple different “biases” and subscribe to a kids news source (like The Week for Kids).
3. Serve as a family and talk with your children about public service opportunities. 
4. Talk about political ads that you see on TV or hear on the radio.

Model respectful and curious political conversation, and take your kids with you to vote–even in the primaries!

Our next Dinner and Discussion is tackling the scary topic of sex and pornography. I’ll post an update here after the dinner, so even if you can’t attend, you can learn from our take-aways.

And if you want to host a dinner like this but think you might need a little help, contact me at Bowbend Consulting!

Cheers,

Peyten