Making Your Home a Haven for Your Children and Their Friends

Our children face so many challenges in the world in which we live. Sometimes, those challenges may be at home, at school, on the playground, at the mall, or in another setting in which children or teens find themselves. As parents, we can help to provide a safe, happy place where our children and their friends can come together and spend time in an environment where they do not have to endure some of the peer pressures with which they are often bombarded. Here are a few tips on how to encourage and create such a haven for our children and their friends:

1. Let your children and their friends know that they are welcome in your home. Communicate to them that you enjoy having them around and that you feel that they are valuable people.

2. Have snacks and quick meals as well as favorite drinks on hand for those times when you children bring home friends from school or the neighborhood. Food is a wonderful way to encourage fellowship, and it is amazing how many conversations can take place over a meal or finger foods. Be sensitive to any food allergies or dietary limitations that your children's friends have, and provide foods that they can eat.

3. Have safe, fun activities available for your children and their friends to play and enjoy. Whether it is a Wii, a board game, a pool table, a ping pong table, a playground set, Legos, Barbie dolls, makeover supplies, or whatever your children and their friends enjoy, make sure that you have those on hand in your home. You could even do a mock movie theater in your living room complete with a child- or teen- friendly movie, popcorn, and drinks.

4. Make your presence in the home known, but allow your children and their friends some space to spend time together. For example if your children are in their rooms with their friends, go and check on them every so often. In this author's home, her children are to keep the doors to their rooms open when they have friends over. If there are friends of the opposite sex visiting, take special care to make sure that behaviors are appropriate. Remain at home while your children have friends visiting, because you can help to safeguard them against being tempted to partake in questionable activities.

5. Be open to discussing topics of interest and concern not only with your children but also with their friends. By building a relationship with your children and their friends, they will be more likely to come and talk to you during times of trouble and worry.

6. If you have children of the opposite sex, and one of them is having friends spend the night, make arrangements for your other child to stay with a trusted family member or friend for the night. By doing this (particularly when your children are tweens or teens), the parents of your children's friends will feel more at ease with their children staying at your home, and you will not have to stay up all night worrying about any misbehavior.

By offering your home as a haven of rest from the turmoil and troubles of the world, you` will spare your children and their friends from some of the possible difficult situations that they might have had to endure otherwise. Too, you will have the opportunity to get to know your children's friends and their families, and you will know where your children are and what they are doing.