Running a family smoothly is not easy! There are a million ways that life comes in and derails effective routines. Setting up a few weekly practices that your family truly does, makes a huge difference when creating a family culture! One of our favorites is: Family Night!
I can not overstate the power of gathering your family together in one room, face to face, planning for the week and discussing important values and principles! This done repetitively is a family tradition, but a tradition done over years becomes your family culture! This family culture helps create confident kids who learn to listen, teach and lead. It is powerful.
Here’s what a family night looks like. Imagine a busy family quickly cleaning up from dinner, some kids jumping in to help and other kids avoiding the clean up. Yep, we are a typical family! We have a chart on the wall that has the weekly family night assignments. Those get rotated every week so everyone has a chance to lead the different aspects of the evening. Mom and dad help with younger kids who are just learning.
These are the elements we use in our family night, but you can adjust to what you want in yours! Also, I will say it again as I have mentioned before in many articles: be flexible!
- Opening Song: Whoever is on the opening song is also leading the flow of the evening. That person gets to choose the song and turns the time over to the person offering the prayer.
- Opening Prayer: We start with a prayer to give thanks for all our blessings and ask help to learn and with whatever challenges we are currently facing
- Family Business/Calendaring: Now the person leading Family Night, will run through the happenings of the week. It is often here that I find out about school projects, auditions or practices that may have slipped under the radar. We add them to the calendar and discuss who can carpool. This is also the moment that we might add in about something like: please load your dishes in the morning after breakfast, or other housekeeping type items (visit of a plumber or missing soccer cleats) (This takes anywhere from 4-10 minutes, usually around 5!)
- Scripture: A person shares a scripture that they like or that they recently learned! (2 minutes)
- Lesson: This person, small child or adult shares a lesson that varies widely in topic. Sometimes we talk about a scripture story and what we can apply in our own lives from it. For example Esther, who was courageous and held true to her values. Sometimes we have watched an 8 minute ted talk about kindness or habits and discussed it afterward. My husband has taught about finances! Last night we learned to sew a button and shine shoes, which was unusual, but fit in perfectly! (10-20 minutes)
- Activity: This usually is a favorite: We play a quick game or leg wrestle or sometimes we give each member of the family a compliment! The person in charge of the activity gets to decide. (2-6 minutes)
- Closing Prayer: This is where we kneel as a family and get the opportunity to thank God once again for the abundant blessings and ask Him to help us in our strivings to be inclusive, kind and effective. Often we will mention what we learned in the lesson and ask Him to help us to be like courageous Esther.
- Treat: Yep! It’s a family tradition and the person in charge can make something special ahead of time, or just suggest ice cream cones. My kids rely on that treat! 🙂 Sometimes the thought of a treat can help a wiggly 4 year old stay still long enough for a lesson. We also sometimes combine the treat and the activity if we are running short on time.
These are the elements of a family night that is taught at home, but the great thing is sometimes in the summer we go out for family night: maybe it’s bowling, a lake trip or playing frisbee in our neighborhood park. The most important is that we do it! Sometimes there are choir concerts or volleyball practices that cut our family night down to 15 minutes, but we still do something! We for sure calendar, pray and have a scriptural or value thought. There are so many fun ideas! Here’s a fun idea to try in your family.
A perfect family night with all the elements might be around 45 minutes, but once again, we remain flexible with our growing and evolving family. Our lessons with children under age 10 were different than the lessons for a family comprised mostly of teenagers. If a 6 year old is teaching the lesson, I would help them a day ahead of time to get ready. Having the chance to teach the lesson, or lead the evening teaches life skills, confidence and builds a strong family. Every child grows into it.
I LOVE family night. It is a part of our family that I cherish. It is a powerful opportunity to connect, teach and love. Give it a try! Give it a try for several weeks, until it becomes a part of your family story! It won’t be perfect, but it will be wonderful!
Random fact of interest, we were talking with some friends about simple skills that all missionaries should know. That list included grocery shopping, budgeting, sewing on a button that has fallen off, shining shoes and the like. That’s where our idea for this week’s family night came. We figured we should cover a couple of those simple skills that sometimes are lost in the shuffle. Happy day to you friends! 🙂
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