8.26.2009

Hospitality With Children

What role do your children play in hospitality to others in your home?
Our boys have never met a stranger, and when we're having someone new over to our home we really like that our boys welcome everyone into our home like they've been coming over forever. The boys are great ice breakers and entertainment.

At age 1 and 2 there isn't a lot they can do to be involved with hospitality. Judah helps me set the table. They both greet people at the door. Wesley offers the guests his unwanted food - he's generous like that! And then when they head off to bed they give the company goodnight hugs and sometimes ask the guest to read them a story.

Sometimes it is easier to put the boys to bed before the guests show up - if they skipped nap and are a bit cranky or if we're planning on playing games - the evening goes smoother if we have our full bedtime routine with the boys and then the company comes over once the boys are asleep. Of course that then makes for a later evening, which can be tiring! But we often will go that route when we have planned a game night.



We want to raise our boys to be intentional with hospitality - but we're still figuring out what that means for us and our family.

4 comments:

Jaimie Kylene said...

My kids still run from anyone who comes to our house :-)

Sorry I haven't commented lately. I was out of town for awhile and then came back home to have surgery.

I've enjoyed reading all of you posts. Is the financial class you're taking called Financial Peace Univ.??

Hope you're having a great summer! Hard to believe it's just about over.

Jaimie

Jaimie Kylene said...

It was my tonsils. It's been pretty rough. My family had my kids for the first 5 days. But it was the next 5-6 days that the pain was the worse.
I'm feeling a little better now. I'm still pretty sore and can't eat but at least I can talk a little :-)

ashleigh said...

well rob and i are trying to work on table manors! i think thats a pretty big hospitality problem! they have excellent manors with please's and thank you's even excuse me's... but they eat like a tornado came through and jack is a horrible eater! he wont eat anything ever! any suggestions?

Jessica said...

Great point. I can remember times when the kids (either when I was a kid or someone else's kids when I visited their house) were kind of expected to stay out of the way and not interact with the guests, and I don't think that's right. I especially think it's WONDERFUL that you're kind of stepping across gender roles by teaching your boys about this. BRAVO!

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