Creating the Best Family Night
Creating the Best Family Night
There are great things that can happen when you take the time to plan a special day with your family. When real life becomes too fast and everyone is so preoccupied with their own activities, it is nice to bring everyone together to reconnect. Having family night helps parents continue to bond with their children. When parents have a good relationship with their children not only does it help their development but creates a feeling of unity and safety for them. Research has also show that children who have family night do better in school. Choose a day, once a week to plan a family night – even when your kids are teenagers. They may grunt about it now but when they are older the will appreciate the time you spent together. Before you know it, kids will be older and having opportunities to spend time together won’t be as frequent. To make the best family night, follow these tips:
- Have each kid choose an activity- By planning in advance, each child can choose an activity that they want to do. This helps for any future fights about what to do because each sibling knows that their night will come soon enough. Give them a list of appropriate and fun activities to choose from. The list can contain fun things like movie night, bowling or even have some fun in the backyard with a game called Rollors. Rollors is a game that combines Bocce and Horseshoes. It is great fun and has simple rules so that everyone in the family can enjoy playing.
- Have a different child choose what to eat – If one child gets to choose what to do have another choose what to eat. When children help plan the event, the chances of them enjoying it are far greater. You can also make making the meal another part of the activity for the night. Kids love to make their own pizza by choosing their own toppings or taco night is always fun too.
- Don’t Stress – Remember not to stress about family night and that everything is not going to go perfectly. Tantrums will happen and small kids are known to throw fits. If you have to cut family night short, it’s okay! You can try again next week. Remember that this is about having fun.
- Take the opportunity – Now that you have some one-on-one time with your family take the opportunity to ask questions about their life. Ask them about their friends or what they are enjoying about school. This is the time to get to really know your kids, which can be hard to do when everyone is running around from activity to activity during the week.
- Recap the Night – You can wait till the next day but be sure to talk about how the night went with your family. Ask them what their favorite part of the night was and what their least favorite part. Ask for input of what they would like to do next time.