6 Tips for Family Time that Teaches Life’s Most Important Lessons

We want our children to learn life’s most important lessons. Whether those lessons are how to clean the toilet or how to have compassion for others, we want our children to be truly prepared for life. We want our kids armed for success in every meaning of the word.

But, how can we possibly do this when day after day we’re swamped with the essential busyness of living? How do we teach important lessons amid meals, diapers, carpools, and exhaustion?

There are two specific things we can do in order to teach life’s most important lessons to our kids. One, we can schedule dedicated family time each week. Two, we can utilize meaningful moments.

This post will focus on scheduled family time. An upcoming post will dive into how to make the most of our moments throughout each day.

Dedicated Weekly Family Time

Growing up in a family with six kids was not always a calm and quiet affair. One of my favorite family home videos shows me and my younger siblings noisily doing somersaults and tricks, while our older siblings and parents watch. It is a joyful chaos.

It is also our Family Night.

We had Family Night almost every week growing up. This family time consisted of a lesson, singing, praying, playing, and eating as a family. While I don’t remember too many specific nights, I remember the consistency.

I also remember the fruits of those family nights. Like the family video showed, I remember having fun with my family. I felt like my family members were my friends. My parents were my first and best teachers, but we all learned together. These Family Nights were where I learned and first practiced teaching.

Like an intricate and beautiful tapestry that is woven thread by thread, our family relationships and my personal knowledge were developed week after week, one simple night at a time.

How This Family Night is Different

I love family time of any kind and creating traditions that bring our family together is important. For example, we have Friday Night Movie Night as a family each week. We also try to eat meals together and do things as a family when we can.

However, this dedicated family time that we’re talking about today is a little different than outings or movie night because we include specific time for teaching and learning. This assures us the opportunity to share important lessons regularly.

We have used such family nights to talk about bullying, setting goals, or pornography. Often, the messages are about service, love, or spiritual ideas. This really is the chance you crave to connect with your kids and help them understand everything you know (or wish you knew) about life. This is intentional parenting.

But We Don’t Have Time!

Here is some honest, loving truth: of course you have time. We all have the same amount of time. 🙂

In seriousness, we really do have to decide how we actually, really want to use that time. I know there is so much expected of us as parents these days. So I am giving you permission today.

I am giving you permission to say no to anything you don’t feel is most important for your family. Overscheduling happens so fast. It might be too many afterschool activities, playdates, or work responsibilities. Be bold. Be intentional. Say no when your calendar, energy, or gut say so. Maybe it’s not for this stage of life, or maybe it’s not for your family.

Consciously align your time with your true priorities and you will recognize you are doing the best for your family. Embrace first what matters most. While the lesser activities may not happen, you will feel confident and comfortable with all the good that does.

6 Tips for Your Own Meaningful Scheduled Family Time

1. Schedule Consistently

• Life is busy, and as the kids get older, it will only get busier! (Sounds impossible, right?) If we don’t put this family time on our calendar, it won’t happen.
• We have found the easiest way to make this happen weekly is to have it the same time every week. So at our house, Sunday evening everyone is home and together.
• Plan on about an hour, but you’ll find what works best for your family.

2. Set a Routine

• I absolutely love routine! In fact, I believe that implementing powerful routines that align with our true priorities is something that sets apart exceptional parents. Routine allows hard and important things to become easier. I love this quote that my friend often shares:
  • “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do-not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do is increased.”
• So set a routine for your dedicated family time. Start by giving it a name or tell the kids what the plan is and let them name the time. We call it Family Night. It could be Family Hour, Family Home Evening, or WATCHET (We Are the Coolest Household Ever Time).
• Here is our current routine to give you ideas.
  • Sing a song
  • Pray
  • Each person shares business if they want to (calendar items, a quick experience from the day, a question, etc.)
  • Child shares a Devotional (We assign a topic to one child each week. The child can say or do whatever they want with the topic, but they are encouraged to share what they think our family needs most. It’s typically about three minutes.)
  • Lesson or Message led by parents
  • Song
  • Pray
  • Game or activity (Simple like Ring Around the Rosie for young kids, card games, shooting hoops, or watching comedy clips together)
  • Snack or Treat

3. Be Flexible

• I know I just talked about routine, but an important part of making this time successful is being flexible. If you’ve planned an involved lesson about an intense topic but gather and realize that everyone is already uptight about breathing each other’s air, save your lesson for next week. Instead, pass a ball around the room and whoever has the ball shares a compliment.
• Be flexible when children ask questions. The goal is to teach, not talk. Pay attention to what feels important to your kids and strive to meet their needs. If the discussion takes an unexpected turn with involved kids, count it a major success.

4. Involve Kids

• Invite your children to provide topics of interest or questions, teach a message, or choose a game.
• Consider how your kids can share or develop their individual talents.
• Aim for discussion and involvement, rather than the oftentimes easier lecture mode.

5. Maintain Realistic Expectations

• Determine your expectations for this time and make them clear to all family members. Our chief expectations include that all are present and participate. This means we are here and we pay attention. Cell phones are put away.
• Plan lessons that are age appropriate in time and content. For young kids, this might be one story and a coloring page. If you don’t know what is age appropriate (I sure didn’t with my first child!), ask parents who have been there before.
• This dedicated family time will not be flawless. It doesn’t need to be. Like the family video of my childhood Family Night, the time may be chaotic. But you can expect that simply by doing it consistently, you will help your kids learn life’s most important lessons. Among those are the messages that family will always be there for them, we’re in this together, and they are infinitely loved.

6. Plan in Advance

• This is the bonus tip that will take your family time to the next level: Prepare in advance. Brainstorm a list of topics that meet your family needs. Choose one topic to focus on at a time and learn how best to teach it.
• Reflect on how past family time has gone. What went well and what was not so good? Apply those thoughts as you prepare for your next family time.
• If you can’t imagine how to have the time for this preparation, check out this post for ideas about how to give yourself daily, personal quiet time. Use some of that quiet time to plan what your family needs and how best you can teach them those things.
• If you don’t plan in advance, absolutely just go for it anyway! Don’t let this be the excuse that holds you back.

How to Start

Start right now by confronting those voices telling you that you don’t have time, your kids can’t sit for a lesson, or you couldn’t possibly contain the chaos. Family Night is not always pretty. In fact, some evenings are really messy.

One such evening, our two-year-old was throwing a tantrum. After settling her into her bed to calm down, our newborn woke early from his nap. On my way to his crib, I passed the family room where everyone else was gathered and continuing with Family Night. My husband carried on with the lesson, and between all the commotion, I didn’t hear much of it.

That’s not all that unusual.

But when I hear my nine-year-old teach the family about forgiveness, or I watch my two-year-old smile and sing as she leads a song, when I feel like maybe our family was a bit kinder to each other this week, I remember our big why.

Dedicated family time is a concrete way to slow down long enough to build connections with our kids and learn together about life’s most important lessons.

Obviously, I didn’t come up with this idea. I am simply one of many who has committed to it, put it to the test, and found it 100% worth our time. So I invite you to do the same. Commit to the intention, try it out, and see what happens with your family.

Start right now by putting it on the calendar. When that time comes, gather the family, and embrace the meaningful, joyful chaos in all its glory.

What questions or challenges do you have with this type of family time? What successes have you seen, and how did they come about? Please share in the comments.

Was this post helpful for you? If so, please share it on Pinterest!