How to Fit Quality Family Time into Your Busy Schedules

If your family is anything like ours, you are running in a million different directions. Soccer games on Tuesday, PTA meetings on Monday, business trips on Thursday and Friday, and Sunday everyone collapses from exhaustion. In all the hustle and bustle of daily life, it gets very easy to forego family time. After all, the bills need paid, groceries bought, and homework done. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day or week. And then many families ask, “Why do we need family time at all anyway?” We see and talk to each other every day (though admittedly it may be as we pass each other in the door), email each other daily, and frankly the kids aren’t complaining. So why add to our already busy schedules? Because simply, our kids crave it. Yes, they may not be asking, but in the end all kids really want from their parents is their undivided, non-distracted time.

For the most part, kids are very adaptable. They learn to go with the flow, know when the right and wrong time is to ask us for something, and learn that sometimes it is just easier not to ask. And sometimes kids just don’t know the words to express what they are feeling or what they need from us. So their frustrations come out as crankiness, whining, and bad behavior. So what’s a family to do? Follow these tips and you will be on your way to regular fun filled family time.

Schedule Regular Family Time – Grab your family calendar and schedule your family time for this month on everyone’s calendar. Once it’s scheduled, protect it like gold. This means saying no to the last minute birthday party your son gets invited to, saying no the PTA president who desperately needs you to manage the book fair, and saying no to your boss when she asks you to work late.

Plan It – Nothing ruins a family outing more than waiting until the last minute to figure out what to do. Agree as a family ahead of time what you will do and then make your reservations, print your maps, organize your supplies, and fill your car with gas ahead of time.

Make it Fun – Discuss together as a family what fun things everyone would like to do. Make sure everyone’s voice is heard and negotiate differences. If time or money is a concern, then it may be a good idea for the parents to come up with a pre-approved list from which the kids can choose.

Turn Off the TV, Video Games, and Computer - Nothing takes away from quality family time like a TV blaring in the background. Give your family a chance to connect without all the background noise and you will be amazed at the things you learn and how much you laugh.

Make it a Priority – This is the hardest thing for many families to do, but if you can accomplish this everything else will be much easier.

So schedule and plan your family time now. Your kids will thank you for those “little things” later.

10 Fun Things To Do This Spring

Fly a kite

Learn about rainbows and do some experiments

Go on nature hikes and start a nature notebook

Plant a garden

Visit the zoo. The animals typically are more active in cooler weather.

Offer to help an elderly person plant flowers or wash their windows

Buy a butterfly house and watch them grow

Make a birdhouse, feeder, or bath

Visit a local farm to see the new baby animals or look for farm programs in your local community.

Buy or make a rain gauge and measure how much rain falls throughout the spring. Make it fun by having everyone take a guess and see who is closest.

Gardening with Children

Here are some quick tips and resources to help your family get started this year on planting a garden. We have tried to provide you with a variety of ideas to get you going as well as book and website resources to help. Happy planting!

What kinds of flowers and plants do we choose?
When gardening with children it is best to choose plants that grow fast, have a lot of color and personality, and are interesting to touch. Some suggestions for you to consider are Balloon Flowers, Lamb Ears, Bleeding Hearts, Poppies, Sunflowers, Black Eyed Susan’s, Cornflowers, Snapdragons, Sweet Peas, and Forget-Me-Knots. There are many others and you might want to consider reading Sunflower Houses by Sharon Lovejoy. She provides a lot of tips and suggestions for gardening with children.

How do we get started?
You basically have two choices on starting your garden. You can start the plants yourself by starting the seedlings indoors (in general you will need to begin this anywhere from 4-8 weeks before you plant them outdoors). Starting the seedlings yourself takes more up front planning and time, but provides the kids with a great science lesson. Also, packets of seeds make a great gift for the Easter baskets. The other option is to buy the plants from a nursery. If you plan on buying the plants from a nursery, you need to be sure they carry all the kinds you want and need for your garden.

How do we care for our garden?
The care of the garden will depend primarily on the flowers and plants you choose, making sure you use flowers and plants right for your climate , and ensuring you plant them in the right spot in your yard (full sun, partial sun, shade). All flowers and plants need water and a good fertilizer to grow, so you may want to consider starting a worm composting bin. At first this may sound a bit gross (and it is a little), but the castings from worms make great fertilizer for gardens and the worm composting bins themselves provide kids with a great hands on science lesson. Many kids love the icky nature of worms, so if you can get past this yourself they are sure to be a hit and
great learning tool for your kids.

Theme Gardens
Another good choice for families to consider are theme gardens. There are a lot of choices in theme gardens from a butterfly garden, a pizza garden, a sunflower house garden, or an ABC garden and many websites offering a lot of information on how to plant one. Sharon Lovejoy’s Sunflower Houses also provides suggestions and directions on different theme gardens.

Gardening Book Suggestions
Here are some great gardening books you might want to consider adding to your family library.

Planting a Rainbow
Growing Vegetable Soup
Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children
Where Butterflies Grow
The Gardener (fiction)
Worms Eat My Garbage
Diary of a Worm
How to Eat Fried Worms (fiction)
Dig, Plant, Grow: A Kid’s Guide to Gardening

Resources on the Web
Gardening for Kids
Gigglemoose
The Butterfly Website
KidsGardening.com
GardenGuides.com
BlossomSwap

Raising Emotionally Strong Children

Here are 4 very important things every parent should be doing to raise emotionally strong children.

Be Available both Physically and Emotionally - Kids need to know you are there for them. Sure it is impossible to be with them physically or emotionally 24 hours a day, but just knowing they will see you at the end of the day or can call you when they need you gives kids tremendous emotional security and support. When kids can’t turn to their parents for support they look for it in other people and things.

Set Boundaries - Children need boundaries. Boundaries teach children to take controlled risks, help them better negotiate the social landscape of friends, peers, and school, and give them clear direction.

Give Them Unconditional Love - “Unconditional love provides the cornerstone for a child’s self-esteem. It’s the love that communicates to a child, “I believe in you, I’m here for you, and I love you no matter what.” (source: www.parentingwithoutpressure.com) Withholding your love and approval as a tool to get kids to listen is not effective and it tears down their self-confidence. Eventually kids will learn to resent the manipulation and either give up trying or act out in negative ways.

Be Happy - Kids want their parents happy. Parents are the role models in any family and when mom and dad are unhappy kids know. A parent’s unhappiness makes kids feel bad, worry, and possibly internalize your unhappiness. Take time to figure out what makes you happy as an individual and draft a plan to make it happen.

Organizing Your Shopping List

It never fails. I will be upstairs getting ready for my day and realize we are out of toothpaste or I will be sitting at work and suddenly remember we need to bring the snack for the next soccer game. And I always say to myself one of two things: A.) I don’t need to write it down, I will remember or B.) I will write it on the shopping list we keep on the refrigerator when I get downstairs or home. And about 98% of the time I forget to do either one because I either get a phone call or a request to tie a shoe and the soccer snacks and toothpaste are long since forgotten. Eventually, I end up at the store standing in the aisle telling myself there is something I had to remember and for the life of me I can’t remember what (only to remember when I go to brush my teeth at night).

Getting into the habit of making a grocery list or shopping list helps save money, save time, and leaves us feeling a little less frustrated and overwhelmed, but the habit only fully works if the lists have everything we need. So to make the most of our time, money and sanity here are some tips to help make list making easier.

Have a shopping list for things like toiletries, laundry detergent, or cleaning supplies in every room where you use these items. Tape them to the bathroom mirrors, laundry room cupboards, and on cleaning closet doors.

Use either tape or a magnet to post your grocery list to the refrigerator door. Add things as soon as you realize you are out of the item. Hands busy and don’t have time right away? Leave the empty box or carton on the counter until you get a moment to write it down.

Most email programs and calendars like Microsoft Outlook have a note function for keeping small notes and memo’s. Use the notes to keep track of things you need at the store. You can either print off the note itself or sync it to your PDA for use in the store.

Leave yourself a phone, email, or text message as a reminder. I know this may seem a little extreme, but it can work. This is a great option for parents who spend a lot of time in meetings at work and don’t have access to their lists. Simply pull out your cell phone or laptop and email or text yourself a reminder to add whatever you need to your list.

Teach all family members how to write down what they need when they realize they are out of something. Trust me when I say, they may forget at first to write things down, but it only takes one time of not having something they need for them to start remembering how!

Parents’ Night Out

Getting away for a few hours with your spouse every so often is a definite must do, but actually getting out the door with your sanity in check can be a challenge. Here are some quick tips to ease the stress and make the transition from loving parents to happy couple easier:

Plug in your cell phone when you start to get ready to make sure it is fully charged while you are gone.

Allow more time than you think you’ll need to get ready. Children always know when something is up or they are about to be left behind and have this incredible knack for suddenly needing EVERYTHING just before you leave. Allow at least an extra 30 minutes to make the transition easier.

Think through in advance everything the babysitter will need to know and do while you are gone. Use a babysitting checklist to help you remember and organize your thoughts. A checklist not only helps you organize your thoughts, but also helps the babysitter remember everything you tell her. In the confusion of the parents leaving and the babysitter arriving it is often difficult to remember all of specific instructions. So help the babysitter out with a checklist.

If your children are anxious about being left behind, read them a story or get them started on an art project before you leave.

Have any specific snacks you allow the kids to eat sitting out on the counter. This eliminates confusion and makes it easier for the babysitter to find them.

Decide early in the day which outfit you will be wearing and if you need to change handbags. Make sure everything is clean and ironed.

Free Stuff

Who doesn’t love free stuff?  Just about everyone we think,  so we have added a section of free printables and free games & activities.  Enjoy!

Easter Activities and Games

With Easter only 12 days away, we thought it would be a good idea to offer up some fun Easter activities for the family. Enjoy!

Make a homemade basket for the Easter egg hunt. You can find a really cute bunny basket at FamilyFun.com or for group projects you might want to take a look at the cute bunny basket from S&S Worldwide.

Try some fun and wacky egg science experiments.

Spend the day making Easter bread with the kids.

Play an egg relay race game where family members divide into teams and race carrying an egg on a spoon. Another game to try is an egg toss game. Similar to a water balloon game, family members pair up in teams of two and slowly and gently toss an egg back and forth making sure to take a step backwards after every toss. Once a team drops their egg, they are out of the game. For something completely new, try the Dancing Eggs Game from Hearthsong. You would be amazed to find all the places and ways to carry an egg!

For big family Easter dinners, try making family trading cards. They make for hilarious dinnertime conversation!

Debt Reduction Strategies

For many families battling debt is a problem. From braces, to daycare, to family vacations, families every day are struggling to keep up financially and are relying more and more on credit cards to help pay the bills. According to money-zine.com, the average family carried a balance of $8,500 in credit card debt in 2007. With a current average variable rate of 12.89% (source bankrate.com) and an average payment of $212.50 (2.5%), it will take a family approximately 53 months or about 4 ½ years to pay off this debt.

So what’s a family who is faced with a lot of debt to do? Here are some common debt reduction strategies to help you get started.

Pay the Highest Rate First - List all of your family debt (credit cards, auto loans, personal loans) on a piece of paper with each debt’s balance, minimum payment, and interest rate. Sort the debt from highest interest rate to lowest interest rate and start tackling the debt with the highest rate first. Throw as much money as you can at the debt with the highest interest rate while making only the minimum payments on all the other debt. Once the highest interest rate is paid off, move onto the next highest rate paying as much as you can while continuing to pay the minimums on all the other debt.

The Debt Snowball approach is a debt reduction strategy advocated by Dave Ramsey in Total Money Makeover. In this strategy, you begin by listing all of your family debt just like in the first strategy, but rather than starting with the debt with the highest rate you start with the debt with the lowest balance. You throw everything you have at the debt with the lowest balance while continuing to make payments on all of the other debts. Once the first debt is paid off you take the payment you were making on it, roll or snowball it into the minimum payment on the next debt until the next debt is paid off. You continue this snowball approach, each time making your payment bigger and bigger, as you roll your payments together until all the debt is paid off. The philosophy behind this debt reduction strategy is more psychological in that people need the psychological win of actually paying off a debt to continue. By paying off the debt with the smallest balance, families realize a quick win and thus have motivation to continue tackling the remaining debt.

Dead on Last Payment (DOLP) - In the book Start Late, Finish Rich, author David Bach advocates the DOLP debt reduction strategy for families. In this method he advocates using a DOLP factor to determine how to pay off your debt. Begin by listing all of your debt along with each debt’s balance and minimum payment. Divide the balance on each debt by the minimum payment to calculate a DOLP score - or Dead on Last Payment. Rank the debt from lowest to highest DOLP score and begin tackling the debt with the lowest DOLP score first. Throw any extra money you have at this debt while continuing to make the minimum payments on all the other debt. When the first debt is paid off, move onto the debt with the next highest DOLP score.

The Goodnight Thing

What I Think I Know - A monthly tongue in cheek commentary of things I’ve learned (or so I think)….

It started when my daughter Grace was three. Partly out of just goofiness and partly out of my worry Grace was feeling neglected with a new baby sister in the house, the two of us created what we affectionately now refer to as the Goodnight Thing. The Goodnight Thing is a silly little bedtime ritual we do every night just before she nods off to sleep.

The Goodnight Thing goes something like this: with the door partially closed and me standing outside, I make 5 quick jumps back into the room and each time say one of these things, “I love you very much”, “No one loves you more than mom”, “You’re my favorite 6 year old (or whatever age she happens to be at the time)”, “I love you da more (da is how Grace used to say the)”, and the last using only hand signals as I point to my eye, cross my heart, and point back at her is “I love you”.

Now to anyone who has never seen this ritual, it really does sound pretty goofy, but to Grace it is one of the most important parts of her day. Not a night goes by that Grace with a soft pleading look in her eye doesn’t ask me to do the Goodnight Thing. It is our way of connecting after a busy day and most importantly makes Grace feel special. Special in a world where she has to compete with three sisters for attention, special in a world where she has to compete with 17 other kids in her class to be heard, and special in a world where quiet little girls struggling to find their voice sometimes have a hard time making themselves known.

And if I was perfectly honest, I would admit that sometimes after very long days it is all I’ve got in me to drag myself to her room for the Goodnight Thing; you know the nightly bedtime ritual that takes all of ONE minute of my time, but fills my daughter with something so powerful.

Somehow I always manage to find that one minute.

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