Building bonds online
I love my younger brother. He’s a cool guy. But he did a very UNcool thing 14 years ago. He moved to England… with a wife and 1 child (now 3).
It has been hard to watch the kids grow up via face time chats and video shares, and now, as they are getting older, I think it’s less exciting for them to chat online with their overseas family.
Enter my facilitation skills! Yes, you read that right. I wanted to do something that they would look forward to as a way to stay connected. I wanted to move past the shouts of ‘your aunty’s on the phone, come and say hi!' and into something they genuinely were excited about.
I wanted a way to build memories… virtually.
And I remembered that I am a professional Speaker, Facilitator and Trainer, and I do this live, and online. And when I’m online, I work hard to bring a high level of fun and engagement. It’s literally my job to keep audiences engaged. So why not my own family?
So for Christmas I bought a ‘Super Skills’ game - one for the Aus household and one for the UK household. It’s a set of activities, challenges and tasks that are fun and interesting and can be done by most kids and adults. It uses props like ping pong balls, plastic cups, dice, pipe cleaners etc.
The activities are things like:
blowing a ping pong ball across the table the fastest
stacking the cups into a pyramid blindfolded
throwing the ball into a wall behind your back and catching it
balancing the dice on a chopstick
We split into teams and let the games begin!
It was fast, fun and highly competitive (as it turns out).
But, the best thing about it was the engagement. No one on their phones, no one asking to do something else, everyone either participating or cheering on their team mates.
And of course, the greatest testament to my intention of trying to build bonds and create memories was the response from the kids when it ended, “That was soooo much fun.” “For our next games night we should do this game I learned at school!” “No, we should do the one from telly.” “Why don’t we just do both?”
And the ongoing family tournament begins…