Family dinner chat cards for creating meaningful and heartfelt conversations.
Meaningful and sincere conversations in the family circle can be thought of as a source of true well-being. Starting such conversations is not easy though, especially when there are children involved. You ask the teenager: “How was school today?” to get a short answer “Good”. The person asking finds out absolutely nothing and the person responding will not be sharing their true thoughts and feelings.
This was often true in the family who created these chat cards in a joint effort. For parents with children of different ages, getting the conversation flowing was just like gambling. It seemed to be going differently depending on the levels of exhaustion of family members or sometimes even the state of the Moon. One night the 8-year-old son of the family asked a unique question “What made you smile today?” and it created a lively interaction. This led to a lovely evening of open and sincere sharing of thoughts regarding the day. Then the mother realized – the whole trick is asking the right questions! These types of questions which cannot be responded to with a single syllable and without thought. She inspired all family members to come up with such questions in joint conversations, wrote down the best, and created chat cards. Those cards became a playful daily helper of conversation starters and sharing their days with family members. Now those questions have been turned into cards with fun pictures on them that can be used by other Estonian families to get the conversation flowing! Every question makes the person answering really think back about their day, look at it from a new angle, or notice nuances that would possibly slip by otherwise.
The game has been designed by the internationally acclaimed design agency BOND, illustrations are made by Alíz Stocker. The game is for ages 7+, and the number of players is 2-8.
