Having a feeling my high-energy, extremely visual child would end up homeschooled, I started following a number of homeschool groups. It was on one of these, I found my new favorite tradition: Coffee and Books.
On weekend days, our mornings used to be filled with cartoons, snuggled under a blanket… for about thirty minutes. Child one would begin a Netflix binge of Fuller House for the third time. Kiddo number two’s “motor” would start going at such an intense speed, a mommy-meltdown/time-out/lecture was guaranteed to take place. To get him to now be able to maintain any sort of continued thought was pretty much shot. After repeating where to put his socks for the tenth time and listening to what sounded like a bowling ball being dropped from his ceiling (“I was just jumping off my bed…”), I was done. Anything of any value the rest of the day was out the window without a fight.
Around this time, one of the homeschool groups posted “Coffee and Books” and said this was their favorite tradition.
They stopped it over the holiday break. As they rounded the corner toward routine, they started with Coffee and Books and the whole family welcomed it. Seeing that I couldn’t face another insane cartoon morning, we decided to implement it.
Basically, weekend mornings the coffee pot is on, each family member takes a book and we read for a designated amount of time. Ideally, the kids read something with a slight educational value. At breakfast, they tell us about what they read. Day one was met with groans until they started to give in and read. At breakfast, recapping, they came alive.
We continued this for a few weekends until one morning we got off the routine. My older child asked, “Aren’t we doing Coffee and Books?” Another morning, I was sitting in bed with my youngest and went to get up and he said, “No, don’t go. We need to do Coffee and Books!”
Suddenly, this quiet ease into our mornings where words danced through our minds and enlightened us with new ideas and curiosity became our tradition. And every member craved it.
You see, our world flies at a fast pace. Now with homeschooling one kiddo and being responsible to ensure his educational needs are met mixed with the other who is in nearly every club and sport we can manage, we miss out on each other often.
This intentional pause is necessary.
It’s not perfect. Some days one kid seems to be strung a bit tight and other times, my phone is buzzing trying to pull me away. Through it all, we still maintain Coffee and Books.
Today we missed it. Instead, we blended fruit and dehydrated apple chips. The kids played with spin art and read for an hour out loud until our oldest’s throat couldn’t read anymore. I can guarantee if we woke up with Netflix on and two-hours of Bunked episodes, we would have missed this memory. Had we not already started Coffee and Books, they would have come to the kitchen with an attitude about helping.
Our weekend morning experiences are changing. The grown-ups can actually finish a hot cup of coffee (sometimes two!) while they read and the kiddos sit happily under a blanket, letting their minds create pictures for them. One simple change made all the difference in the start of our day.
