My son and I tried to think of safe subjects to talk about so as not to offend anyone before going to our family's Christmas dinner. Subjects that were definitely off limits were politics, movies, music and video games with our extended strict Southern Baptist family. We can only talk about my son's involvement in musical theater with one or two family members when the others are not listening. I get the feeling that other family members think musical theater is somehow bad, maybe because it requires dancing with the opposite sex or it might be that my son had to "kiss the princess" in one of his shows. I don't see anything wrong with any of that.
My son doesn't want to listen to people talk about sports or all the fun things that their kids get to do that he can't do because he has to wear a painful scoliosis brace. His cousins don't talk to him at all and I sometimes wonder if they have been told not to because he plays video games and watches movies they think are evil.
The only safe subject we could find to talk about was pets so he talked to some family members about a cat we are watching for another relative. The cat had been abused and we are trying to get it to the point where it is more comfortable with people. After a short conversation about abused animals, and about an article in our local small town paper about a cat that had to be put to sleep because of the abuse of two local high school boys, the other family members started talking about subjects we couldn't really talk about. We just don't have anything in common.
I wish I hadn't asked an uncle about what worked for his migraine headaches. He said he hadn't had any migraines since the people at church "prayed over him" ten years ago. We constantly hear family members saying things that make us wonder if they think they think the reason my son and I have migraines and my son has to wear a painful scoliosis brace is because we are more sinful than they are, but one of their kids posted something on facebook recently that seemed to make fun of people who are gay. They don't have a problem with that.
We wanted to socialize with my family. We tried to talk to them, but my son and I just couldn't take it. We took out our cell phones and read and talked to each other about what we read. Is it really that bad to look at cell phones at family dinners?
