Family time is precious and watching your children grow up goes quick. We can get lost in other commitments and before we know it our children are young adults! However, by adjusting your schedule, you can spend lots of time with your children and your personal activities.
Here are few suggestions to create quality family times…
- Working bees: Doing things together as a family promotes teamwork and a shared sense of achievement. For example, prior to having guests over to our house, it is usually a really busy time preparing and tidying. From when our children were very young, everyone would have an age-appropriate job. My son might set the table, my eldest daughter would help make the dessert and my youngest daughter would get the cold drinks ready. When all the guests have left, we feel united, knowing we helped to create a great experience for our friends together. We know that, as a family, we can create something more special than we could alone.
- Creating things: As a family, we like to create things together to share the joy of making things collectively. For example, we love doing crafts, making family paintings, and every year we make a gingerbread house together.
- Having family meals together: at least three times a week. Family meals provide a regular, shared experience that offers a sense of belonging. Research has shown that frequent family meals create benefits such as:
- Allowing parents to know who their children are with, and where and when their activities are taking place. It also gives them an opportunity to monitor their children’s moods and behaviors.
- Giving children regular structure and routine to their day, increasing their sense of security and well-being.
- A positive influence on children’s language and literacy development. Mealtime conversations can help them to learn words, understand language and build discussion.
- Decreased risk of substance use, delinquency, as well as heightened personal and social well-being and better academic performance (North Dakota State University).
Fun is also a part of the recipe for a happy family meal. Parents, ideally, should try to avoid making mealtimes a place for disciplinary action. Addressing any issues is best done away from the dinner table. This will better enable your children to associate mealtimes with good times.
Ideally, meal times are where the family gets to relax with each other and be themselves. They provide a forum for children to express any concerns they may have as a result of their day and get their trusted family members’ perspective on things. Ever since our children could sit at the table, with our youngest in her highchair, our family has loved family meal times.
This time has helped to give our family stability and tradition. When the children were very young, the meal times would often end up in raucous laughter. This could be due to an impromptu song, a dance, a joke told in a funny accent or my husband pretending to be the tickle monster, or that the children were “a sack of potatoes” as he threw them over his shoulder and carried them to bed.
Every Sunday evening, signifying the end of our weekend and the beginning of a new week, is celebrated with a family barbeque. We all look forward to this, as it is a relaxed segway from the weekend to the week ahead.
A family that dines together stays together.
- Exciting holidays: As a family, we love to learn about different cultures. The children embrace learning and trying out new words from different languages. Travelling has given us wonderful chances to spend time with animals, like elephants or dolphins, enriching our respect for the beauty of all creatures. Travelling has given us many magical shared adventures.
- Appreciating the small things: Big trips can be a wonderful, but equally as important are our day-to-day experiences, where we can experience the wonder and joy of life. Of equal value and importance are:
- A funny family joke;
- sharing a TV comedy show;
- supporting each other with kind words and empathy as we overcome our fears; and
- caring for another when they are not well.
- The way we do things and the intent behind our actions, is the most vital thing that shapes our family culture. Do we get things for others grudgingly or with grace? Is there an edge of aggression to our words, or do we speak to our family members with respect?
It is natural to have times when we don’t do things as well as we’d like, falling back on old patterns. Sometimes we are tired or just having a bad day. A healthy family environment is one where love is not the exception, but a way of being.
