Have you ever noticed that some of the most meaningful conversations with your kids happen when you least expect them, like during a car ride? 

For many busy parents, the car is simply a place to manage logistics. You're getting kids from school to activities and back home again. But what if those ordinary drives could become one of the most powerful opportunities for intentional parenting and connection?

In this episode of Parents Making Time, Anthony and Jennifer Craiker explore how simple moments in the car can turn into meaningful conversations that strengthen your relationship with your child. They share a personal story, the common mistakes parents make during car rides, and practical strategies to help parents turn everyday driving time into powerful connection time.

Because sometimes the moments that seem small, like a quiet ride, a shared song, or an open-ended question, become the ones your kids remember most.

By the time you finish listening, you’ll discover:

• Why the car is one of the safest places for kids to open up and talk
 • The common mistakes busy parents make during car rides that quietly weaken connection
 • Five simple habits that can turn everyday driving into meaningful conversations with your kids

If you’re a parent who feels stretched thin by the demands of busy parenting, this episode will help you see that connection with your kids doesn’t always require more time - sometimes it simply requires more intention in the time you already have.

Because the goal of intentional parenting isn’t perfection, it’s learning to recognize the moments that matter and making the most of them.

Easily improve your intentional parenting efforts at mealtime with our FREE resource, Dinner Conversation Starters.

Download our FREE resource, 30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids, created for busy parents like you who need easy, actionable ways to have daily meaningful connections with their kids in less than a minute!

Parenting Questions? Email us at [email protected] (Please note, your question may be featured on the show).

For parenting inspiration, time management ideas, and encouragement for families, follow the hosts' individual accounts:

Anthony Craiker: Instagram | LinkedIn

Jennifer Craiker: Instagram

Interested in joining our free online parenting community? Send us a DM to receive an invite!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.parentsmakingtime.com/

Enjoy the show? Leave a rating & review: Apple | Spotify

 

Transcript

Parents Making Time Ep. 26

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before we get started, we wanted to invite you to check out our website parents making time.com. There you'll find our full library of podcast episodes, blog posts that expand on the ideas that we talk about here on the show, and free resources designed to help busy parents. Connect more intentionally with their kids.

It's also a place where you can learn more about me and Jennifer and reach out to connect directly with us. We're continuing to add more content and resources, so we'd love for you to stop by and take a look. 

Jennifer: Have you ever noticed that some of the most unexpected conversations with your kids happen in the car?

Not sitting across from each other at the dinner table? Not during a planned talk, but sitting side by side driving. There's something about the car that's different. There's no pressure, no eye contact required, and it's not a formal setting. It's just. Presence for busy parents, the car is often seen as a logistical space.

It gets us from point A to point B, [00:01:00] but we think it could be something more. What if it could become one of the most consistent places of connection in your child's life? Today we're talking about how to transform. Ordinary car rides into meaningful connection moments and why these small conversations can have a lasting impact.

Anthony: This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

Jennifer: I can remember a very specific car ride from about three years ago. It was Thanksgiving night, and I have a brother who lives about three hours away from us, and we'd gone for the day to celebrate with him. On our way back, we got into some pretty severe traffic and we were tired and we were all just ready to be home.

Nobody was really talking. In fact, I think we were all a little crabby, but Anthony suggested that we start to sing Christmas songs, so stuck in traffic for the [00:02:00] next hour and a half. We sang Christmas songs at the top of our lungs. We sang hymns, we sang fun songs, even funny ones. The mood changed and we laughed, and we enjoyed each other's company for the rest of the ride, despite the late hour and the traffic.

It was great. 

Anthony: Yeah, sometimes we don't take advantage of the car rides that we have with our kids. We treat the car as a functional thing and we focus on just getting to where we need to go on time or the logistics of what we need to do. Whenever we get there, the car becomes a place of management and not connection.

We also are too quick to fill the silence in the car oftentimes. We'll turn on the radio immediately when we get in the car, or we listen to podcasts constantly, which is fine if you're listening to this podcast. But no, seriously we. Try to fill the silence. We take phone calls, and even if [00:03:00] we don't fill the silence, we're mentally somewhere else.

We're thinking about what we have to do that day, what's on our task list, et cetera. Silence feels uncomfortable, and so we eliminate it, but often silence is the doorway to conversation. Especially with our kids, and we also only talk when there's a problem, and so the car becomes this thing that kids associate with.

Talks with mom and dad that they don't really want to have, right. We're focused on correction or discipline or lectures, and that makes our kids less likely to open up voluntarily. 

Jennifer: Yeah. It makes them want to get the ride over with. Let's just get there where we're going so I can get out of this.

Anthony: Yeah. Get me out of this car. I think we do these things because we're mentally exhausted, right? We don't necessarily wanna expend the mental effort it takes for a short car ride [00:04:00] to engage in a conversation. It's easier to turn on the radio or a podcast. But we underestimate those small moments when we do that and.

Also, we don't realize how safe it is for the kids to talk to us in the car. If you think about it from your kid's perspective, it's a much less intimidating place to have a conversation. There's no eye contact. It feels like there's less pressure. There's going to be an end to the conversation because you're going to get to wherever you are going.

And so kids. Tend to feel a little safer having conversations in the car as long as it doesn't become this thing where every time they get in the car, they're getting a lecture from mom and dad. 

Jennifer: That's true. And I don't think a lot of that, what you just described is intentional. We get stressed with our day-to-day life.

We know we need to get to this place by a certain time, and our kids were just late. And so now we're gonna tell 'em, don't do that again because you are making me late. But it puts stress in the [00:05:00] car. And so. We spend so much time in the car. Gosh, I can think of times when our kids were younger and I can remember thinking, I am always in the car.

I'm gonna drive them to school, and then this one has an appointment and then I've gotta be to this school to pick up that one. We're in the car a lot and so it's, it really is a missed opportunity. And the consequences of not being intentional in the car is that. Our conversations become less frequent.

If we're not using that time intentionally, we're gonna turn into this silence, like we're just gonna get in the car and we're not gonna converse hardly at all. 'cause our kids are gonna become more internal. They're not gonna wanna share because they don't wanna hear the lecture that's gonna go along with whatever it is they share.

And. As we're in the car a lot and our kids have a lot of things because as our kids get older, that's what happens. We then become less aware of what's happening in our child's life. It's a really easy time when they pop in that car to be like, who did you talk to today? Who did you eat lunch with?

And get those names and hear those names [00:06:00] regularly and become more aware. And then being able to ask about that specific friend instead of just. Knowing nothing. And so as that happens, our connection with our kids gradually weakens. It's not a sudden thing, but the less involved we are in those day-to-day pieces because we're somewhere else in our mind, or we're filling that silence or whatever it is we're doing.

Our connection's gonna weaken and we don't want that. 

Anthony: And we found that there are five things that you can do to better connect with your kids in the car. The first one is to be fully present, be mentally available. It does take some mental effort, but. Train yourself to where you, when you get in the car with your kids, that you're gonna be fully present with them.

Recognize that this is a unique opportunity to hopefully have a conversation and not, the conversations don't always have to be serious conversations. They could be about anything but. [00:07:00] Tell yourself, train yourself that you're gonna be fully present in the car with your kids, so that when those conversations do start to happen, you can be fully engaged in the conversations.

Jennifer: When our kids were younger, I had a real habit of calling my mom when I was in the car. It was just an easy way to do it. I could put her on the speaker phone and I try to check in with my mom pretty often. And so it was this habit I had. I get in the car, I call my mom, and I started to realize that.

When I did that, if I stayed on the phone with her, when the kids got in the car after whatever it was I was picking them up from, the kids would stay quiet and we would continue our conversations. And sometimes we talked about them, but not to them. 

Anthony: Yeah. 

Jennifer: And so I started really working on, when they would get in the car, okay mom, I gotta go.

Bella's in the car, and she'd say, okay, and we'd hang up and then I could con continue or start a conversation with a child who just got in the car. 

Anthony: Yeah. So number one is be fully present. Number two is don't force the [00:08:00] conversation. You do this by asking open-ended questions and no pressure questions too.

Don't put pressure on your kids, but ask open-ended conversations. Get them to start talking if you're just asking yes or no questions, or you ask open-ended questions that they're used to responding to with one word answers, like, how was your day? Fine that's not gonna be conducive to having meaningful conversations in the car.

But if you ask open-ended questions and you're not trying to force a conversation, that's when the magic really happens. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I was just thinking as you were sharing that of a time, I did complete the opposite and I was angry for some reason and I was gonna get our son to talk and I got really mad at him in the car and I dropped him off and he was mad.

And I was mad. And later I thought. That was awful. I, 

Anthony: yeah. 

Jennifer: I should I just made him have a bad day. I'm having a bad day. Like I didn't do that. [00:09:00] Right. And I needed to go back. I needed to say I'm sorry. And I just needed to do better because I was trying, like, tell me now, why did you do that? Tell it. Tell it.

Tell it. And that's really the complete wrong way to do it. 

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Number three is be okay with some silence. We talked before about the mistake of trying to always fill the silence in the car. Sometimes it takes a minute for your kids to have the courage to share something. Don't rush them to share.

It's okay to have some silence. It does feel uncomfortable, but you've gotta let the conversation play out. And sometimes that requires some moments of silence. And now we're not saying you never turn on the radio or you never listen to a podcast. But you wanna take advantage of these opportunities that you have with your kids in the car.

'cause like we've said it's kind of a unique situation to have a meaningful conversation. It's different than other scenarios where you might sit [00:10:00] down and try to talk to your kids and sometimes it does require some silence to make that conversation happen. 

Jennifer: Yeah. And sometimes, like you said, it is totally fine to turn on the radio or a podcast sometimes.

Those are the connecting. Things right? Like I said in the story at the beginning, we sang. We didn't actually turn on anything. We just sang. But sometimes listening and enjoying music together and laughing or whatever it is, sometimes those are the connecting things. The low pressure, just fun. Maybe that's what they need after that day, right?

Or what you need.

Anthony: Alright. Number four is listen more than you speak.

Don't rush to solve their issues, especially if they're starting to open up about a problem that they're having with a friend or something going on at school that's troubling them. Listen before you start trying to solve their problems. Stephen Covey said In the seven Habits of Highly Effective People, seek First to understand, then to be understood.

Listening is a powerful [00:11:00] tool, a powerful way to have a meaningful conversation. And if you can get your kids talking in the car. A place where they might feel a little more safe and comfortable talking. Let them talk. Don't feel like you've gotta jump in and give them the answers and solve their problems.

Take advantage of that opportunity to really listen and be present with your kids. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I think that's great. And listening is a skill and we need to work on it. We need to exercise that skill and practice it. 

Anthony: Yeah, it does take practice. It's like a muscle. You've gotta train the muscle, you've gotta strengthen it.

But work on it because it, it's worth it. If you. Take advantage of those opportunities to really listen to your kids. And number five is to be consistent in these four other things that we've talked about. Be consistent about these things over time, and your kids will come to expect these things from you, right?

If you're consistent [00:12:00] in being fully present. If you're consistent in. Not forcing the conversation, but asking open-ended questions and questions that don't make them feel pressured. If you're consistent in being okay with some silence and you're consistent in listening more than you speak, that will become the expectation for your kids, and it will open the door to some wonderful.

Engage in conversations, meaningful discussions with your kids in the car? 

Jennifer: Yeah, for sure. So we have seen this work with our children. There have been some times when I've needed to have a talk with them or had something important I wanted to say, or a question I wanted to ask. And I've purposely, been very thoughtful about that.

And. Waited till we were in the car and tried to ask questions. That led to discussion rather than me pointing something out, not because they were stuck in a space and couldn't escape, but because I knew that the car would create a relaxed environment because we were side by side. We're looking forward not at each [00:13:00] other.

There's not this intensity of sitting across from one another at the table, and instead of forcing a conversation, it just opened. Door for one it, it was maybe me bringing something up gently or asking the right kind of question, and suddenly it turned into something meaningful and memorable. Other times it doesn't, and that's okay too but over the years we found that the car can be one of the easiest places for those conversations to start because the car isn't just transportation, it's a transition space.

It's a time to decompress and think and talk. It's between school and home or activity and rest. The outside world and your home transition spaces are where processing happens, and we have the opportunity to be there and help our children through that. So in addition to what we've talked about in today's episode, we have created a resource of specific ideas of ways to connect with your kids in the car.

And you can find that in our resources tab on our website, parents Making time.com. Invite you, just like we [00:14:00] did at the beginning of this episode. We invite you to check that out. Now, if you like what you heard today, please leave a rating or review wherever you listen to this podcast, and we'd love it if you shared it with a friend who could also use this information too.

Anthony: And finally, have you ever had one of those moments as a parent where everything inside of you wants to react immediately? Where your first instinct is frustration or anger or disbelief, and in that moment you know you have a choice. You can react in a way that relieves your emotion or respond in a way that strengthens your relationship.

Next time on parents Making Time, I'm gonna be sharing a story about how I paid $2,000 to become Father of the Year. It's a funny story now, but at the time it definitely didn't feel funny. But it's a moment that revealed something powerful that some of the most defining moments in our relationship with our kids come not from what they do, but how we respond.

So until next time, make time to become the parent you want [00:15:00] to be.