Family Night: Why You Should Have it and What You Can Do to Keep it Interesting

When my children were very small it was easy for us to have a good time together. Young children thrive on the simplest of things, and my children loved to play at my feet. I always knew where they were, and it seemed like every moment was family time. But, as they have begun to grow older I've discovered that they want to spend less and less time together as a family, and more time with their friends. This is natural and good, but family time is still very important. No matter how old your children are, they still need you in their lives. Your insight, your encouragement, and your trust just to name a few. However, if we don't make time in our busy lives to spend time together with our families then the foundation of those relationships begin to crumble. Implementing family night is a major way to keep that relationship intact and simply enjoy one another's company.

My family has chosen one night during the week as family night: Sunday. Every Sunday we know that at dinner time video games are to be put away and everyone comes together at the dinner table. Very seldom do we allow friends to come on this special night because it is just for us. My children's friends have them six days a week. We have them on Sundays. That's the policy. We try not to be overly rigid with this, though. There's been many times when we've had to move Family night to another day or incorporate it as part of something else due to church activities or other special events. In fact, we used to hold our family nights on Friday nights, but with sporting events and other school social events we ended up having to change the day entirely.

We always begin our family nights with a special dinner. Sometimes we go out and purchase food to bring home to eat, and other times we make a family favorite, or a new, never tried meal. We try to keep it interesting. Of course pizza is a favorite, but we've also come up with some really interesting dishes to try. The idea is to keep it fun and entertaining. We almost always have our meals at the table so we can talk together and catch up. Having dinner at the table is especially important on the weeks when we are especially busy and don't get to see one another much at dinner time.

After dinner, we all work together to get the dishes done and put any left overs up, then start the night's activities. Working together to get the mess cleaned up only takes about 10 minutes, and, believe it or not, that's when we've started some of the most meaningful conversations. There's something odd about washing and putting away dishes that gets the gears in the brain to moving.

For activities we do many different things. Movies are popular. We have taken turns picking a movie, get the latest movie, or find a movie that we all want to see that we've already seen a million times. The key to choosing the right movie is having something that will pique everyone's interest, or at the very least allow those who aren't really interested in "tonight's" movie the understanding that they will be able to pick the next movie. It has to be fair or the kids lose interest. One of our favorite things to do is to pick old "B" rated movies and crack jokes as we watch, like the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. I sincerely wish we had caught some of those moments on film. The memories of that are priceless to us.

We've also pulled out our video games and challenged one another. One of our favorites is Namco Museum for the PS2. Namco Museum has the old Atari games we loved so much as kids: Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position. They only allow for two player games typicallly, so we take turns and try to beat one another's score. We also love Carnival Games Minigolf for the Wii or most Wii sports games. My kids are especially good at video games and they love wooping up on good ol' mom and dad. There are many, many games like these that you can try out with your family that come for several different gaming systems. Even the older systems like Nintendo or Super Nintendo are fun.

Board and card games are fun too. Games like Risk, Monopoly, Uno, Mousetrap, and Dominoes are family favorites. Do add interest, we've gone online and looked for lesser known games to try out. One of my son's favorite is a new one we found onilne called Bughouse. It's a game of chess you play with four players utilizing two chess games going at once. You can also get creative and come up with your own games. The variety is endless, really.

As my children have entered into their teens by implementing family night we are still a very close knit family. We love our special time together on Sunday nights, and look for opportunities during the week to spend time together as well. We are thankful for family night, and as far as my husband and I are concerned it is a family tradition we intend to keep in place for a very long time.