She told you what?

I know the art of the conversation and just communication in general is dying out.
I'm guilty of it as much as anyone else.
I would prefer to communicate pretty much any way other than face to face or over the phone. Over the phone is the worst for me for some reason, I would rather send out freaking carrier pigeons than talk to anyone on the phone save my mother and some days I don't want to talk to her either 😁
If I can talk to you without actually talking to you that would be fantastic, email, text, IM, Snap Chat, smoke signals I'm down.

Kai had a parent/ teacher conference the other day and she has been slacking off on turning in her homework.
Her teacher was surprised to learn that Kai had willingly told me about it even though it wasn't good news and had the potential to get her grounded.
I didn't realize kids started keeping secrets in 3rd grade O.o

We keep things very open in our house, our main rules are
1. Be Respectful to everyone and to our home. (which translates into don't be an asshole and pick up after yourself. Lola the 2 year old is still learning this but Kai gets it even though she doesn't like it some days.)

2. No Secrets ( now keeping a gift a secret is one thing but we completely open about everything else to a point. Obviously we are not going to be 100% candid with our 8 and 2 year old about our sex and sneaking quickies while they play in the other room nor are we going to divulge all the details of when we go out and have a few drinks. You have to keep things age appropriate.)

3. No Lies. (We do not tell lies. Honesty is the best policy in our house and we back it completely.)

How hard is it to talk to your kids?
Answer: Not very fucking hard. All it takes is 15 minutes of your time tops. Turn off your phone or at least put it on vibrate in your pocket, shut your laptop, let the PC go to sleep for a minute, turn off the TV and ask them How their day went. If that gets you no where try asking if anything interesting happened during their day or what they learned.

I do this with Kai almost every damn day when I pick her up from school and on the 3 block walk home I ask her these questions.
Now granted I get the run down on a ton of shit I could care less about like whether Mason wore his blue shoes or not or what color the bow in her friend Mary's hair was but I also find out about how they are learning about forced perspectives in Art and how she is learning that she likes writing songs in Music class which has prompted us to look into getting her guitar lessons. I also find out when she's being bullied by little girls that are acting way older than they should be and how I find out that her teacher is working on teaching them to be responsible and take responsibility for their actions.
She tried to blame me for her not turning her work in and her teacher would hear none of that.
She informed Kai that it was KAI'S responsibility to turn in her work not mine especially when I have Lola to chase and HB works 3rd shift.
I could not have hoped for a better teacher for Kai this year.