Hot Tub Parenting

Hot tub therapy. That’s my new parenting trick.

When you want to talk to your kids about important things like good character, religion, doing the right thing, or the perennial question, "What’s going on with you?", I’ve come to realize lectures don’t work. Advice is unwelcome.

What’s effective involves listening. Answer questions with questions that help them think things through. Let them figure out their own solutions. This helps give kids confidence.

I’ve also learned that sitting a child down for no reason other to have a "talk" isn’t nearly as effective as having that talk while doing some other activity. It could be anything — loading the dishwasher, walking the dog, traveling in the car.

For some reason my kids talk to me a lot about things while driving. I’ve read that it’s because there’s no eye contact. It’s less intimidating for kids to talk to you when you aren’t staring at them eye to eye, putting them on the spot, making them squirm.

Some of my most interesting conversations with my kids occur in the hot tub at our apartment.

Maybe it’s the soothing rumble of the hot tub jets, the playfulness of bubbles, the dark-blue sky with its winking stars that slowly appear as we talk.

Or maybe it’s that we’ve taken the time to do something alone together that doesn’t involve TV. It’s just the three of us. Relaxing.

In a hot tub, kids can move around, dunk themselves, splash, giggle. All while debating a good topic.

"Do you believe in God, mom?" my son asked recently before puffing his cheeks full of breath to dunk himself underwater.

"Yes," I told him when he surfaced.

"Why?"

"Why do you believe?"

"I don’t know if I do."

"That’s good. That means you are questioning things, not just following what other people think and do. That’s very wise."

My son squeezed his hands together, shooting water at his sister, who screamed, "Quit it."

"I don’t know what religion I am," he said.

"You’re a tease-ologist," I told him.

"A what?"

"Never mind. You don’t have to know right now. Your job is to study many religions and see what you like and don’t like, what you believe and don’t. Then when you are older, an adult, you can decide for yourself and make a decision based on how you feel about what you learned."

I explained many religions teach similar lessons.

"Like the golden rule?" my son asked.

"Yes. The golden rule."

"He needs to go back to church to learn that one again," his sister said. A comment that earned her a major dunking.

I submerged myself but, even underwater, could hear my daughter’s piercing squeal.

Apartments all around us. Some with windows open. "Quiet," I advised. "You are disturbing all the neighbors…and all the religions of the world."

"And God?" my son asked, smiling broadly, spinning himself around in the center of the hot tub, like the agitator in a washing machine.

"Yes. Him, too."

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