Hooked on Texting, Caregivers Month, Christmas Plays and Family Traditions

Elizabeth Dorrance Hall on texting, Emilie Campbell on Caregivers Month, Lisa on creating intentional holiday traditions, and TJ Davis on Christmas plays and holiday traditions.  Hooked on Texting (00:00) Many of us are so reliant on our phones for communication, but we are actually not using our phones to call each other. Today many people prefer texting over calling. Elizabeth Dorrance Hall, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Michigan State University, and she is here to talk to us more about our dependence on texting. She is researcher, teacher, and writer, and her work focuses on how family relationships evolve over time, especially challenging family relationships. She is a contributor for Psychology Today. You can find her on twitter @edorrancehall. Caregivers Month (15:33) Emilie Campbell joins Lisa to talk about how November is Caregivers Month, and they discuss how best to deal with caregiving and how to help those who are caregivers. Intentional Holiday Traditions (49:38) We’re just days away from December, and that means you’re probably pulling out your advent calendars, dusting off decorations (if you haven’t already put them up), and thinking about holiday traditions. Some traditions create treasured memories—while others just create a lot of stress. How do you separate the traditions you do because they’re meaningful from the ones you do just because everyone else is doing it, and how can we intentionally choose traditions that reflect the values we want to remember during this time of year? Lisa reflects on these questions. Christmas Plays and Family Traditions (1:06:12) Does your family see The Nutcracker at Christmastime? Or do you maybe put on a Nativity performance? Shows and performances are an important part of the Christmas season for many people, but no one more than TJ Davis, who is the writer, director, producer, and lead actor in Juanito Bandito’s Christmas Carol. TJ Davis has been producing the Juanito Bandito series of musicals at Pickleville Playhouse for over a decade. He is a father of five from Logan, Utah, and he’s here to talk with us today about his experiences as a writer and actor, his Christmas show, and how his family celebrates Christmas. You can learn more about him on his website.