How to pivot a conversation to the subject you want.

A 5-year old boy trudges home after running an archaeological excavation in the wild.

Speaking of that…(How to pivot a conversation: it works for any subject at any time).

The important thing is the beginning. You need to start the sentence with ‘…speaking of that.’ It doesn’t matter what you were speaking of previous. Start trying this. Segue to whatever you want by using this simple hack. I learned it from the maestro of this technique. He’s five.

Speaking of that, shall I watch Word Girl on PBS Kids?

How to troll someone IRL.

I do not condone this interaction below. It is, however, a fascinating example of how to quietly, viciously go to war with someone in a way that offers a passive-aggressive plausible deniability.

This is the situation: there was some sort of conflict between a 5- and a 3-year old; this conflict was not entirely and satisfactorily resolved, but due to parental pressure, and the unfortunate distracted nature of a parent’s response (me), then it carried out to the front porch. I walked out in time to hear the older casually remarking, in a conversational, neutral-toned observation that couldn’t be targeted directly as being…mean, and it was this:

He’s holding an adorable tiny kitten in his arms, and as his younger brother stands a few feet away, he muses out loud:

‘…our kittens seem to like everyone except you,’

as he looks over to his brother with an innocent expression, face filled with the full knowledge that he’s conveying something aggressive that he can possibly and plausibly pass off as ‘a factual observation.’

Unfortunately, he has the father he does (me), so this tactic earned him not much more than a nice conversation about the meaning of The Golden Rule. Or as I like to think of it, The Golden Principle.

Etsy shop.

A 15-year old carefully assembles jewelry while watching the teen drama The Outer Banks. I peek in every now and then, and I just love that girl.

Meetup.

One sits on the toilet, the other hangs around and chats. A two-person meetup that rides a crest of conversation ranging from kittens to poop to existential questions about the universe (such as pondering the nature of gravity, and why it works that way, and what if gravity didn’t work on poop?).

It’s become a ritual, their ritual, and though I can’t say it’s my preferred environment for sharing good dialog, it is also impossible not to smile at the laughters and gigglings emitted from there as they discuss life.

Shortly thereafter, the two-year old climbs on the couch and closes his eyes. I forgot to ensure he washed his hands after the bathroom hangout. Ech.

Moments.

An 11-year old loads the dishwasher after lunch. I observe his methodology, and it is different than mine, and one of the hardest things sometimes is figuring out the right amount to instruct by showing and the the right amount to instruct by stepping back.

Maybe the instruction I’m happiest about is that he’s taking initiative.

Moments.

We read through an illustrated adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream on the front porch.

A boy climbs over an old fence after playing with our goat. He’s wearing rubber boats on a hot day.
He brings over some sort of specimen, floating in dirty water, in a jar. He’s holding a garden shovel and inexplicably wearing a different pair of rubber boots. There’s evidence trailing behind him that leads me to believe he has been running a large-scale archaeological dig in our yard. I hope I’m wrong. I’m not though.

A girl waters our trees; trees we are trying to keep alive through this scorching summer. She peeks over the ridge line, holding a hose and wearing a blue sweatshirt. I leap a decade into the future and miss her already.

We have an old orange-and-blue slide that feels like it’s a hundred years old (it’s not). It’s faded and structurally sound-ish, and boys arrange it in various configurations in the front yard and leap off it in seemingly-infinite arrays of acrobatic aerial contortions. Their clothes slowly become filthy again.

We watch, post-Younger slumber, one of my favorite Shyamalan films with the Olders: Unbreakable. One of the more underrated superhero origin stories.

Speaking of that, I’m going to go now.