Family Nights

Growing up, my family spent a lot of time together. Being homeschooled, my mom, brothers, and I were together pretty much all day every day. But my dad positioned his work schedule so that he was home between 3:30 and 4 most nights. We had dinner together almost every day. Then we grew up and family time became much harder to come by. Recently, we started fighting for our family time by designating one night a week as "family night".

Now that we kids are all adults and my brothers work full time, there are very few evenings when everyone is home. The times we are all "home", we tend to be doing chores and tasks that need to be done but people are rarely around to do. Or we are all working on the same task, but we aren't enjoying one another's company because we are just working.

A few months ago, we sat down and looked at our schedules and came up with two nights a week that were options for a family night. One of those two nights each week gets set aside as family night. Some weeks we have to give it up for some reason, but most weeks, it is a priority to keep that night free. We eat dinner together, (something that only happens a few nights a week these days), and then generally we watch a movie or play games. Nothing too complicated or fancy but the idea is we are spending quality time together.

My family is kind of unique because we kids are still living at home but have our adult lives and adult schedules but even as teenagers, our evenings were pretty full. The difference then, I guess, was that our activities were still together, whereas now it's the boys having something this night and I have something another night and our parents have something on yet another night.

I know that families with teens often run into this kind of problem. Sports and work and other school activities fill up your evenings quickly. Time as a family isn't going to magically appear. If you want it to happen, you have to work for it. Fight for it. Make it a priority and then plan your schedules around it. Don't be legalistic about it, but as much as possible, protect that night and then be willing to let it go if need be on occasion. If it's getting cancelled almost every week, though, you might need to go back to the drawing board.

You have to decide what your priorities are and then fight for them. It won't necessarily be easy but it is worth it. You're creating the space to grow closer as a family and make memories that will last a lifetime.

Do you have a designated family night? What kinds of things do you do together?