What do YOU do to stop
the boredom and make your family fun?

Making family fun may be simply natural to some parents but that isn’t the case for me. I suppose I may have been able to pull it off with one child in the family, maybe even two,

but when our brood grew to include five children I had to start strategizing.

Living life to the fullest, making most of my days with the kids, building loving, lasting relationships is what I want. And I want to have fun and watch my family having fun as well.

Oh, and I’d like to maintain my sanity in the process. It turns out all these things require effort.

There are times when laughter spontaneously erupts amongst the bunch of us (usually during supper time around the dinner table) but mostly family fun has to be at least partially orchestrated. I suppose you could call it setting the stage for fun to happen.

Having some sort of plan helps the family feel they are part of something.

And so for years we had games night and family day. Holidays come with buckets of traditional activities. I’m sure the kids sometimes hate having such structured days. But we certainly have had a lot of laughter. And having days that are unstructured has been important to.

Boredom and chaos leads to arguments and tantrums. We’ve had those in heaps as well. Those are not fun. Who wants to be around people that aren’t treating them well? I know I don’t.

Having some organization to the days can help a family know where they stand. They’ve got things to look forward to with clear expectations.

All this needs to be pulled off in a relaxed manner. Flexibility is extremely important. It may seem easier to act like an army sergeant but that isn’t going to give your children those loving, laughing memories you may want. It isn’t going to make family fun for them at all.

I’ve been a big failure at raising my kids at times. I am not a perfect parent. If you want the truth on that, just ask my family on any day except mother’s day.

But I look at those kids as they continue to grow and I am impressed. They’ve always taught me at least as much as I’ve taught them. If I can be half as together as they are when I grow up, then I think somehow I may have done something right.

So let’s explore some different ideas and work at preventing frowns on the faces we love as much as possible. Let’s do this together. Let’s make family fun.

Family Fun Blog

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Steve Reifman

Steve Reifman is an elementary school teacher, author, and speaker in Santa Monica, CA. He has written books for educators, parents and children. Learn more about this inspiring man and his works.

Who Am I?

You may be wondering who am I to be giving advice on making family fun. Take a gander at this and you be the judge - but don't judge too harshly.

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