A Smashing Good Time

Place a nice empty tea cup and saucer or any piece of china that looks valuable on the table where all can see. (These can be picked up rather inexpensively at a resale or thrift shop.) Start this activity with a discussion of what it means to take advantage of someone else. Encourage all the family members to come up with examples. Place the china in a sturdy paper bag and smash the china with hammer. When you open the bag, show the broken china to everyone (being careful that no one gets cut). For each of the previous examples given, look at it through the eyes of the person being taken advantage of. Talk about the damage that can do to a relationship and the hurt it can cause. Just like you wouldn’t want to break a beautiful piece of china, you don’t want to hurt others by being insincere in our relationships.

You can process the activity with these questions:

• What did you think when I broke the china?

• Did the visual of broken china give you insight into broken relationships?

• Can the china be repaired? How?

• Can broken relationships be repaired? How?