WHO NEEDS FAMILY TIMES?
- Children: it is very important to spend time with your children. Be present in their lives and activities that concerns them. Children never forget moment spent with their parents. They love to talk about their lives and spending time with them creates an avenue for that. Children love to fix broken items; join them when they are doing that and talk to them. Read together, this helps build your reading habits and also improves the language skills. Making the home comfortable for your teenage children will have them desiring to spend more time at home than with their friends. Make time to talk and listen, listen without jumping in with answers, criticizing or giving your own viewpoint.
- Parents: Elderly parents feel lonely. It is very important to find time in your busy schedule to pay them a visit and spend quality time with them talking about your life, cooking special meals and eating together. Parents always love their children around them as it makes them feel remembered and appreciated. Create time for phone calls; it is special for parents to get a call from a child.
- Spouse: your spouse is the most important person in your life. Always keep in touch with yourself throughout the day. Technology has provided us with gadgets that make this very easy, start the day together and end the day together. Create time to talk about the events of the day. During quality time, turn off phone and give maximum attention to each other. Spend time doing fun activities like going to the movies, going for a run or a jog in the park.
- Relatives: it is important to keep in touch with your extended family, keeping tracks of special events like birthdays and anniversaries. Whenever a relative is celebrating, create time to travel down and celebrate with them. It will foster unity and growth among the family members.
IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY TIME.
Build Self esteem: family time makes everyone feels valued and needed in some aspects. This gives them a positive self worth and help them through the tough times in life. Children who spend time with their loved ones have self confidence and are very sociable as they find it very easy to build relationships.
It creates bonds: spending time with family helps grow stronger emotional bond. Family is something you can always fall back on when you're struggling with other relationships because you know they will always be there to support and pull you through. Spending time together strenghtens family ties. During group activities, stronger relationships are developed and this gives everyone a sense of belonging and security. Not having a sense of belonging is why kids join fraternities because they believe there they will find a family they seek.
It helps inculcate family rituals and traditions: family that spend time together observing family rituals and traditions raise children who grow up never to abandon these rituals. It gives them a sense of belonging and inner security within the family. A family that celebrates birthday together will discover that even when apart cannot do without calling on the birthday of a particular family member and feel like being with them. A family that has inculcated the habit of praying into the kids raises kids that even when away from home will always find a moment to pray to God. It brings up children with positive behaviours and they are less likely to be associated with crimes prevalent in the society.
Helps reconnect: Children tend to share more information about their lives while enjoying an activity with you rather than when you ask them. It helps to catch up with all the happenings in your children's lives and gives you an avenue to address issues and also dig deep into their private lives. Teenagers are very secretive and want to be left alone most times. Spending quality time with them gets them to be more trusting of you understanding that you were once like them and may have a better understanding of what they are going through.
Create memories: family time helps create memories. These memories will be forever cherished. Remember they will not always be with you, the children will grow up and leave to go have their own families, parents will grow old and die and all you have of them are the memories created during the quality time spent together.
Relieves stress: family time helps you go through a stressfree event and worries. It helps you to be present in the moment and be less focused on the past events or worry about what the future holds. Being in the present is good for mental well-being as well as physical well-being.
Healthy lifestyle: spending time with family helps you to eat right as you are reminded of the importance of nutritious meals. Family time also goes with so much laughter and laughter is a good medicine and therapy. It helps you feel better and burns calories. Science has it that above 50 calories are burnt by 5 minutes of laughter (you don't get this at work or at school).
Family is important! No matter how busy we are, we should always find time for family because at the end of the day they are the ones we fall back to.
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Images used were gotten from PIXABAY