Planning for Those Festive Family Times
The most frustrating aspect of modern living is that busy families rarely see their nearest and dearest, never mind spend enjoyable time together.
Mrs. Sharp has learned that living together under the same roof does not guarantee either domestic tranquillity or togetherness.
You must decide this week to set aside some special time for “family night.†It does not matter what night you choose, but it must be inviolate; something that can be planned and counted on. Schedule it on your calendar just as you would any other important event. If there is one thing Mrs. Sharp has learned over this last century, it is that special family times don’t just happen, they must be planned.
Setting the climate is very important to the successful integration of family night into your lives. Fun is the most important ingredient to ensure enthusiastic cooperation and participation. Make the evening festive, like a party. Plan on serving favorite family refreshments. Do they crave ice cream sundaes? Pizza? Popcorn? Then this is the evening to have it and only on family night. Yes, it is a bribe.
Keep the mood of the evening lighthearted: no discussion of business or discipline problems. Above all, at least in the very beginning, keep family night short. For your first assembly, just an hour or less.
Because coming together for pure enjoyment might come as a shock, ease the family into togetherness gently. Give everybody two weeks’ notice so they can arrange their schedules. Then a week’s notice. Count the days down: “Three more days until our first family night. We’re going to have so much fun!â€
Spread the enthusiasm. It’s catching. Suspend your disbelief: This plan works. In fact, it works miraculously, but only if you make it work.
“Family night sounds wonderful, Mrs. Sharp, but now that we’re all gathered around the popcorn bowl, what is it exactly that we’re supposed to do?â€
Well, here are just a few ideas to prime the pump of your imagination: Work on the family photograph album; play board and parlor games; learn new ones, such as chess; browse through the gardening catalogues and plan the family garden; work on seasonal handicrafts together, such as creating Valentines, decorating an Easter egg tree, carving pumpkins. In fact, almost any activity Mrs. Sharp suggests in her column can easily be a family night pastime.
For your first family night, why not hold a “Getting to Know You†party? Ask each member to share their favorite family memories and see if there is a common thread. Next invite everyone to contribute suggestions for good times yet to come. What would they like to do? Write down these suggestions on index cards for future family night fun.
It is very important if you want family night to succeed (and of course, dears, you do) that mother and father come prepared each week with an activity. Mrs. Sharp knows you would not dream of attending a staff meeting unprepared. But you might think you can “wing it†with the family.
You cannot.
So please, do not even try. The results will be disastrous and then you will fault Mrs. Sharp. Take my word for it, do not gather the family together without a plan. Remember all those suggestions everyone made for activities written down on index cards a few paragraphs back? Well, one of the first family night activities could be making a family night fun box to hold the raw materials for memory making, including those suggestions.
Mrs. Sharp uses a sturdy cardboard storage box that the family helped decorate using photographs, scraps of wrapping and wallpaper and pictures cut from magazines.
Inside we keep an index-card file box which organizes your family’s seasonal suggestions for future family nights, separated with monthly dividers. For example, “try candle-making first week of February for Candlemas Day (Feb. 2),†along with the name of the resource for candle-making supplies.
Also in our storage box is a letter-sized accordion file folder. Inside are newspaper and magazine clippings (such as this column) with ideas you want to try. Finally, there is a calendar so that we can schedule our fun.
The first week of each month we check the folder and the file box to integrate seasonal delights into our family repertoire of activities. Decide at the end of each family night what you will do the following week. Then, each Monday check the supplies you’ll need.
If you have never held a weekly family night before, introducing one into your busy lives will call for a lot of rearranging. Many preparations will be handled by mother and father at first. But be patient and persevere: The children will all begin to contribute their share. The harvest of memories your family will reap is beyond measure.
