Key Pointers

  • Spending time with family unit is important to strengthen the bonding betwixt family members.
  • Quality family unit times lessens the generation gap between parents and children.
  • You may spend a few hours every mean solar day with your children past involving in their school projects or eating together.

Spending time with family can never be a luxury merely a necessity. As Barbara Bush rightly said, "At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more examination, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a married man, a friend, a child, a parent." According to research, time spent with family plays an important role in our developmental process. It is a driving forcefulness backside a salubrious relationship between married woman and husband and parents and children (1). This mail service tells you about family fourth dimension, including why information technology is so important, how much time you should spend, and different ways to spend time with your family.

Why You Should Spend Time With Your Family

You need to spend time with your spouse and children to strengthen the relationships. In fact, enquiry shows that the college the frequency of shared time, the better the marital stability and happiness (2). Moreover, your kids will learn to respect your sacrifices, show affection towards each other and grow up into healthy individuals.

Here we tell y'all how family unit bonding can help the couple, the parents and children.

Importance Of Family Time For Couples

Partners are like the roots of the family tree. They need to back up and nourish the tree and then that it stays firm, grows and blossoms. This is possible merely when they have a strong and loving relationship between them. Here is how it helps.

  1. Be there for each other: The essence of family is to exist there for each other. For example, if y'all are facing a tough time at piece of work, sharing information technology with your partner can exist a big relief. This volition create a sense of security and belongingness.
  1. Appreciate each other: The beauty of a family is that it has a mix of people with unlike personalities, and only when you spend fourth dimension with them volition you know how unique each one is. It will besides help in developing tolerance towards each other'due south shortcomings.
  1. Create a loving environment: When at that place is harmony between the couple, it will resonate in the family. When you and your partner dear and care for each other, the kids will as well develop such positive feelings.
  1. Strengthen the marital bond: Family fourth dimension tin also assistance in securing your marriage. When the partners spend time together, they will begin to learn about each other's emotional well being and create a comfy environment for each other. All this volition help you grow into a strong couple.
  1. Reduces stress: Work-life residue, family responsibilities, etc., can exist stressful. However, spending time with your family acts as a stress-buster. Having a support system to hash out one's stress and issues substantially reduces the pressure. Studies testify that high-quality social support decreases posttraumatic stress disorders, and reduces medical morbidity and bloodshed (three).

Importance of Family Time For Children

  1. Keeps the family together: Kids need to experience safe and secure at home. Spending time with them will make them realize that you will always be there for them. For example, if your kid is being bullied at school, they might open up up to you if you sit down with them every day, ask them about their twenty-four hours, talk to them and make them feel comfy. But if you practise non give them your time, they would never know that they are able to come to yous in times of trouble.
  1. Lessens the generation gap: "Yous will never understand," is what we oftentimes hear a teenager say. Children and their parents might drift apart because of the generation gap. Spending quality time will decrease this gap and also create a friendly space, where the children can talk without hesitation, and the parents listen without beingness judgmental.
  1. Teaches values of life: Y'all, every bit a parent, might have learned valuable lessons through various events in life. Family unit time is the best time to discuss such incidents and teach your kids nigh virtues like honesty, integrity, and social responsibleness. This would make them know what is right and wrong. The next time when they face an upstanding dilemma, they will know what to exercise.
  1. Gives an opportunity to prove amore and appreciation: Whether it is getting their math respond right or learning their kickoff music lesson, children look appreciation from parents for fifty-fifty the tiniest of achievements. And at that place is no better time than the family time to inquire about their day and tell them how proud you are.
  1. Builds self-esteem: When children experience valued at home, they are probable to be confident and outgoing. Such kids will be able to brand friends easily, help others and develop a positive mental attitude towards life.
  1. Helps stay abroad from bad habits: Children are exposed to the adept and the bad in club. What makes the difference is which way they choose to go. According to a study conducted by the U.s.a. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia Academy, teenagers whose parents know nothing of their lives are more probable to have used marijuana and booze than other children (4).

The benefits you reap by spending time with your family are too good to be ignored. Simply does that mean that you have to spend hours together with them, or just make a casual 10-minute breakfast meet and become done with information technology?

How Much Fourth dimension Should You Spend With Your Family?

You lot may spend 45 minutes to one hour daily and four to five hours during the weekends. Information technology depends on your convenience and the family'due south schedules. You would not want to disturb their bedtime or learning time and similarly, you cannot afford to ignore your work to spend unending fourth dimension with the family.

Simply brand sure yous are non spending the fourth dimension just for the sake of it. When you say family fourth dimension, information technology must strictly be between you and your family – no office work, Idiot box or smartphones in between. So, should y'all just keep talking all the time or can you lot do something else together?

How To Spend Time With Your Family unit?

You do non e'er demand to go to Disneyland or go together only on holidays to have quality family fourth dimension. While annual vacations are enjoyable, there are other constructive ways to spend time quality with your family. We accept listed the almost basic and of import ways to spend time with your family:

  1. Do school projects together: School DIY projects, such equally completing a scientific discipline project or participating in a blistering class, are some of the best means to spend time with your kids. These projects will non only help them develop skills but also teach them how to piece of work equally a squad. It gives an fantabulous opportunity for y'all to encourage your children to find their passion and pursue it.
  1. Eat together: If both yous and your partner are working and are on the run throughout the day, then dinners are the best place to spend time together. You lot can savor a delicious repast while sharing the day's experiences and laughter together. If yous have children, then eating together will ensure they are having nutritious food, and learning some good for you eating habits and food choices (v).
  1. Celebrate special occasions together: Make it a betoken to spend special days such as anniversaries, birthdays, etc., together. This will not just double the happiness but as well bring the family closer. You can also play some family games to take fun. Such occasions can as well exist an excuse to meet and greet the extended family unit, which will give your kids a chance to know them.
  1. Inculcate help and worship: Visit a place of worship together, teach the importance of prayer and innovate your kids to the positive energy of prayer. Alternatively, you lot tin can also visit a local animal shelter or a nursing dwelling and spend time there. Activities similar these will help your kids to retrieve and feel for others. They will also larn to value and show gratitude for the privileges they have.
  1. Be a function of your teenager's world: Teenage years tin can exist a tricky. Even though parents were once teenagers, friction is quite common. Only information technology is important to maintain the rapport with them. Y'all may participate in activities that involvement them, such as a basketball game or building a robot. Be sure to talk to them for at least 10 minutes every day, to know what is happening in their lives.
  1. Accept a break: Once in a while, take a break from the routine, and go on a vacation or a picnic with your family. Employ this fourth dimension to the fullest past spending time with them. Keep aside your phones and give your undivided attention to each other.
  1. Practise chores together: Mundane work like cleaning the house can be fun when the whole family unit gets involved. You can fix a day in a week or a month and engage the kids as well as the partner to revamp the business firm, declutter the basement, cook together, etc. At the end of the mean solar day, yous will be satisfied to see how productive the day was.
  1. Family day at work: This is a day where you tin bring your family to work. A family 24-hour interval at piece of work is increasingly condign pop every bit it helps in blending family unit, fun and work. Your family will have a run a risk to get to know nigh your job and might assist heave your morale at work.
  1. Go on dates: Amidst taking care of kids and spending time with extended family unit, do not ignore the relationship with your partner. Remember, the well beingness of your family unit depends on the harmony in your relationship. Once a while, exit kids with a bodyguard and go along a date just the ii of you lot. Take out time for each other, and keep the spark live.
  1. Help your kids with schoolwork: Some other productive way to spend time with your kids is to help them in their academics. Yous could be good at English and your partner at Math, so take turns tutoring them. This way, you lot volition know about their studies and sympathize their strengths and weaknesses.
  1.  Storytime: Who wouldn't like to hear a good story? This is a fun way to bail with children, ditching smartphones and other electronic devices. Gather your kids around and either read them a story out of a storybook or tell them instances from your babyhood. You can likewise take an old photo album, and go nostalgic together.
  1. Celebrate with grandparents: Circumstances might take made nuclear families popular, but never underestimate the influence of the older generation. Don't you lot still reminisce well-nigh the carefree days you spent at your grandma's place? Such memories are precious. Hence be sure to brand it a point to have your children to visit their grandparents; the values and virtues they teach are invaluable.

If you are not in a situation to spend much fourth dimension with your family due to other obligations, then practice your best to be there with them as often equally possible. If yous are abroad from them, call them upward every day, and talk even if you do not have anything of import to say. These efforts are necessary because non spending time with your children might have some adverse effects on them.

What Would Happen If You lot Are Not Spending Time With Your Kid?

Consider this: You can buy an expensive birthday souvenir for your child, only does it give them happiness if you are non there for their altogether? No. While it is essential to work hard and provide for your family, spending quality fourth dimension with them is essential as well. Hither are some of the agin furnishings of not spending time with children:

  1. Behavioral issues: Children, whose emotional and psychological needs that are non met, might develop insecurities and anger issues.(half-dozen). All these will lead them to depend and trust strangers who might accept advantage of their innocence.
  1. Dependency on technology: When parents do not spend enough time with children, the latter might finish up spending time on gadgets and online entertainment to escape loneliness. Spending hours together on smartphones might hinder their concrete and mental development. (vii)
  1. Failing academic functioning: All the emotional distress leads to poor academic performance, with no ane to guide them through their education.(five)
  1. Withdrawal: A child deprived of attention and amore would eventually show signs of withdrawal. They may feel they are not loved and are not worthy of your fourth dimension. They might turn aggressive and resort to bullying to vent out their frustration and acrimony.

Time is precious. Information technology is something that you lot can never get back no matter what. Make the virtually of the time you lot can give to your family because information technology is futile to expect back and regret later when zippo is left for you. Understand that nothing tin be more of import than your family because they are the people who volition exist with you e'er, in rain and sunshine and in the skilful and the bad times.

What is your take on spending time with family? Do let us know in the comments section below.

References:

MomJunction'southward manufactures are written after analyzing the inquiry works of skilful authors and institutions. Our references consist of resources established past authorities in their respective fields. You tin learn more about the authenticity of the information we present in our editorial policy.

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Dr. Domonique Rice began her career in the cyberbanking industry but eventually moved to counseling and therapy. She did her Masters in Marital, Couples, and Family Therapy and a doctorate in Advanced Studies in Human being Services. She runs her private do OhioMFT. Dr. Rice loves to see couples and families heal and go back together after her therapy sessions. In... more

Sanjana did her graduation in Pharmacy and post graduation in management. It was during her outset job, she recognized her skills in writing and began working equally a freelance writer. Subsequently, she completely moved into content writing and began working as a full-fourth dimension content writer. Sanjana'south articles in MomJunction cover topics related to new parenting and relationships. A fitness enthusiast... more