It is a part of our societal norms to teach our kids about the basics of life from a very young age like manners, behavior, socialization, education, etc. But unfortunately, we never talk about the health factor. No, it is not about making your kid do exercise or pushups; I am talking about a healthy lifestyle and healthy habits. And the question is that, how can we incorporate these activities into family fun?
It can be really challenging for the workaholic people to plan some fun family activities because a person’s idea about a fun activity can be a bad or boring thing for other people. Sometimes, the kids want to have fun with their family and get agree on something while they do not know about what their parents had in their minds. As a result of it, the parents are often left with an unwanted or unpleasant job of balancing their kids’ happiness with their own kids, and that is not an easy job to do.
There are some people who totally stop forcing their family members to enjoy family time together. The forced family fun never turned out good for everyone, as it may act like a bummer for some people who are involved in it. But you can even turn your forced family fun ideas into less forced plans by following some of the strategies in order to make the most out of your time with your family without any violence.
Whenever you talk about the forced family fun time in a room, everyone’s eyes will roll as a gesture of protestations of it being the most horrible and boring idea in the whole world, but deep down in heart, everyone likes it and want to spend time with their families. If you want to make a special kind of bond with your family, you need to follow these following five steps in order to make this forced family fun, less forced, and to enjoy a pleasurable time with your family and peers.
- Work Together
One of the best ways to make the most out of your family time is to do some tasks together, which require teamwork. This is how you can easily bring each member of your family together while having great family time. You can choose such a game or a risk-taking task in which the performance of each participant truly affects the rest of the members, for example, water rafting. You can also cook a meal together because it can also boost your family bond. Even the simple act of making homemade pizza can be a blast for you because it will give you an opportunity to work and have fun at a time. It will also give each member a chance to showcase his or her capabilities and their individual choice of toppings.
- Have a Purpose
Your little forced family fun ideas will become extra special if they include a meaningful endeavor or struggle as most of the people enjoy volunteering in certain communities by working together like hosting a car wash for a local charity program or by participating in tree-plantation activity. You can also spend your time helping some homeless people, or you can even work with a political campaign together. Not matter, which task of activity you use for a family fun time, you just need to make sure that each member is on board with a true cause. Even if the activity is playing darts, make sure everyone in the family is enjoying it.
If your family is also daring or adventurous, you can also go for a volunteer vacation like traveling to distant lands in order to construct schools or teaching English for college grads. Nowadays, people want to spend their spare time helping other people, and it is a great idea to help those in need while strengthening their own family bonds.
- Empowering People
If you want to create a positive attitude towards this family fun idea, you can do it by integrating every family member into the task at hand. For instance, if you are out with your family for a picnic, let your children decide the menu, and if you are hosting a game night at your living place, you can ask your partner (wife or husband) to be in charge of the music. And if you are headed on a road trip with your family or friends, you need to put every person in charge of some activity or a task such as a snack maker, DVD operator, navigator, etc.
Assigning a certain task or responsibility is quite difficult for someone who is already familiar with doing everything for his family. But if you do so, it will also empower other people as well to be a part of the assigned task rather than just being along for the fun or ride. They will not even complain about it.
- Be Spontaneous
Family fun is just like an unplanned dish that is being served in the best way. Most of the time, while planning a family fun time, we used to focus on the destination more instead of the journey. For example, if you are planning to visit a theme park, you must think about the anticipation of a thing that can be better than the thing itself, which means that your children will be in a good mood on the way to the theme park. So you must make the most out of your journey. You can play or sing songs while enjoying each other’s company. Most importantly, do not be sad if nothing goes exactly as planned.
If the lines are too long at the state fair, you can go for a movie night until the line thins out. Always remember that if you have an open mind, plan B can be a blast for you all.
- Ask for Input
Remember the most famous quote, a family that plays together stays together.” And it is really true. If you actually want to make your family time memorable and enjoyable, you should ensure the involvement of everyone around into the activity. It means that you should consider the likes and dislikes of each member of your family and create such an event that works for all. You can start by asking every family member for some suggestions and make a list of their responses.
Author Bio:
Willow Older is a great international writer and a professional editor and content specialist too. She likes to play with words. She used to write a lot about the forced family fun ideas in her blogs. She believes that forced family fun is a concept rooted in parents’ intellectual understanding that our emotional need is to make some remarkable happy memories with our families because time is already flying.
