Is it almost impossible to get your family together anymore? Let alone try to communicate with each other and have any sort of family life! Or is your battle to get your kids, or partner, to do anything around the house?
Life is so incredibly busy these days that family life gets put on the back burner! There’s always someone needing to go to sports training, while someone else is at music lessons (insert your child’s activities!).
Add to that the things that you are trying to do as well during the week and it’s no wonder your head starts spinning trying to keep up with everyone – and that’s just the immediate family!
When it comes to trying to find a “suitable” time to get together, it feels like we’re trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with some very odd-shaped pieces!
The easiest and most effective way that we’ve found to make sure there are times that we all get together is to “create regular events” that all the family know about and need to be a part of.
It’s a given in our house, that you can always come and negotiate. If there’s a clash with something important or if you need to get out of wash-up or cooking; the onus is on you to negotiate a swap.
We’ve always felt that negotiating is a good tool for our kids to have in their tool kit. They know it doesn’t mean an automatic “free pass”. They need to come and discuss what’s happening for them and see if it’s appropriate to miss out on a family get together, etc.
It might sound like all we ever do is negotiate, but in fact, the truth is different. The times I’ve been most annoyed with this process, has been with myself, when I haven’t been clear enough about what we’re doing, why and what everybody’s role is. When that is clear, everyone knows their part and the significance of it.
One of the best things we did was to establish certain “traditions” or “norms” within our family so that we stay in touch with each other and ensure that one person doesn’t get left with doing all the work! This is of course, is relative to the kids ages and their ability to do things, but we found our kids mostly, enjoyed the responsibility of having their jobs to do. (They all go through stages where “everything is a drag” – but persevere and you’ll all reap the rewards).
There were some days when one of the kids might not be having a great time! Instead of letting them have a pass on their job, I’d sometimes just come and work alongside of them – making sure that I didn’t take over. I’d sometimes ask them “would it be good if I did ….?” – I don’t think they ever said no! But by asking, I was respecting them as the one responsible for doing the job but offering to lend a hand.
This often turned into a great opportunity to ask a gentle question or two about how they’re going. If there was something specific happening for them, I’d ask while we worked together and give them the space to answer when, and if, they were ready. This way it wasn’t a big deal and it often surprised me how they would open up once they got started talking!
Investing in our kids and family life in this way has proven to be invaluable and even though it was “work” to get it all set up, it’s been worth every minute of it!!