Wondering what Mommy Homework is??? Each week you will have an “assignment” here to share in our comments here on this site. You will love this-both sharing AND enjoying answers by others. Some of them, I compile into an ebook (contributors can resell as a product of their own–be sure to submit your email and full name when you register so I can credit you appropriately!).
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Ready for this week’s MH? This is a good one!
Our topic this week is “Strategies for Tight-Knit Families!”
Your Assignment This Week…
We all want tight-knit families. Little things make a BIG, BIG difference. This week, let’s dedicate our week to thinking of ways to forge the bonds in our families. Share ideas for forging bonds, making sweet memories, and connecting with those you love.
This one should be very, very good! Can’t wait! 🙂
Have fun! I can’t wait! 
DIG IN!
Love ya!
Cindy
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Deadline–Friday at midnight CST.
I think the biggest obstacle to family closeness is not having a family centered mindset. When each member of a family is attached to his own electronic device whenever families are together, they are hardly TOGETHER!
My tips would probably seen as the obvious, but it’s what works for our family!
*Eat meals together, as many as possible
*don’t excessively participate in activities outside the home.
*homeschool!
*have limited screen time. Our children are limited to one morning a weekend and my oldest gets more when he does chores that are above and beyond normal.
*make regular yard work dates for your family, it makes working really fun to all do it together and then go out for dinner or icecream together! that could include other big INSIDE the home jobs too.
*read books together in the evenings instead of TV
*find something physical that you can do with all or some members of your family, ie. bicicling, going to the pool together, playing soccer or baseball at the park.
*purchase family passes to educational places like the science center, or local water park, or zoo to encourage you to go there frequently as a family!
*Scrapbook! record all your families good times and bad and place your books in a prominent location in your home where they can be perused at whim.
Rebecca Kvenvolden
The way we are working at forging a bond in our family is to consider one another best friends and to treat each other as such. We don’t allow bickering, complaining and arguing and encourage loving words and attitudes toward each other. We spend lots of time together doing fun things as a family- going on hikes, sitting by the fire, asking questions, reading a good book, eating meals together, playing games, wrestling the little ones and just enjoying each others company. Almost everything we do- we do together as a family.
One of the favorite things for our kids to do is play the “Childhood Game”. One child says a random word and then my husband or I tell a memory from our childhood relating to the word. It’s always fun to see what different words make us remember and the kids love hearing stories from when we were kids. It’s a simple game but one of those little things that I’m sure my kids will do with their kids someday.
In my family my husband and I try to touch base with the kids several times a day. We want them to know that they can come to us with anything.
Our son has never had a problem sitting down and talking to us. However our Niece that we are raising doesn’t trust people that much. She really needs one on one. She likes to write so I try to sit down with her a few times a week and just let her read what she has written. Sometimes she will just bring things to me and walk a way. She is usually not forth coming when that happens. It means she put a lot of herself into the project and is afraid she will be attacked or will be told that she is unrealistic. I try never to do that.
We have realized that for her material things have a meaning of affection. There is a reason for this though. Her father would get her things and then in a rage or drunken stupor would destroy it or pawn it. Then he would yell at her and my sister for losing expensive items. He would do other things as well. Not a pretty scene. So for her if you buy something and it is worth a fair amount and it is still there in 6 months, 12 months then you really do think a lot of her. She is beginning to come out of that. It has taken time. But we are finally seeing an end of that. To the extreme anyway.
I have also started letting her have a bit of freedom. A christian rancher that we know has asked if she would like to come and work with her horses this summer. What she doesn’t know is that she will at the end of the summer own one of the horses. If she works hard and does a good job with the training. Her ultimate dream.
Pretty much everything falls into place with alot of prayer and diligence.
Lisa Robinson
Our family is not as tight-knit as I would like it to be. However, my children and I do a few things that we really enjoy together and bring lots of laughs.
* We read, read, read and then read some more. We love books!
* We play games – all kinds. In fact, last week my daughter got Fancy Nancy’s Posh Bedroom Game and we have played that several times already. Today we celebrated my son’s First Holy Communion and someone bought him Outburst Bible Edition – we had a few laughs all playing together.
* I guess that’s another one: we celebrate life’s achievements by getting friends and family together. We eat, talk and play games. We’re exhausted by the end of the day, but it’s a good type of exhaustion.
* We take lots of photos and display them. The kids love to see various parts of their lives and remember what they’ve done.
* We take walks together. We have a park with a trail near our house and the kids enjoy walking (and sometimes running) this trail and exploring the different elements of nature around it.
I guess the common thread through all of these is that we make memories – as many positive ones as possible.
Heather (tgmama)
I like having traditions, ways that things are done that can be relied on. On the day my second son was born his older brother and I were baking cakes for breakfast. I had false labour the day before and I was in that “I don’t care” mood. Anyway we coloured the dough with food colouring and swirled the batter in each cupcake. My dh ended up having to get those cakes out of the oven as I went into labour while mixing the dough. lol
Anyway for my eldest on his next birthday we baked a butter cake and coloured the mixture his choice of colours. We went off to the zoo with my parents and the warm cake wrapped in a teatowel still in the tin. At the zoo we decorated it with icing and mini M&Ms before serving it.
After that it became a tradition that the birthday child has to choose their colours for their cake and has to help decorate it too. It is a nice thing to have some one on one time with me when it can be so busy the rest of the time with 4 children.
Sometimes we do a different shape or I decorate it to a theme but the butter cake with food colouring under the icing stays the same.
I am trying to create other traditions around Easter and Christmas but they haven’t quite stuck yet.
Best wishes
Jennifer George
We hope to have a very tight knit family when our children are grown and have families of their own. What has helped us is making everything as much as possible a family event. We don’t really have seperate hobbies that we persue. We ride dirt bikes together, go camping together, read a lot together, sing/play instruments together. Homeschooling definately enables us to be closer together as a family. The other big thing we’ve noticed that helps is turning off the TV and video games and greatly limiting computer time as much as possible. Playing board games, outdoor games, outdoor sports- whatever to make it fun. The number one thing is that we pray with/ for each other and serve others together. Getting away from selfish things, self-centered activities and friends, and putting the focus of our time and resources (after family) on others is also a big one for us.
I love this question. I think there are many ways that we create memories and bonds within our families. Here are the first three that come to mind
1. Traditions…pizza night Friday night, The Christmas story first thing Christmas morning, Birthday breakfast, ect… These are things we do over and over and they are bound to create memories and a degree of nostalgia as our children grow up.
2. The spontanious (WOW) moments. My oldest daughter still relates to other details of her 7th birthday. I woke her up and “kidnapped” her and her sister and spent the rest of the day in a hotel celebrating. It didn’t matter that the pool was way to cold to swim in, or that the food was mediocre at best. What mattered is we did something surprising and fun.
3. Memory making can’t be rushed. Time, energy and emotions must all be involved to make a lasting memory and creating a close family!
brendawilford
Ladies
Our bonding/memory making is done quite simply. Every night, before our son’s bed time, we all (cat included) cuddle into Mom and Dad’s bed and read out-loud. Actually, I do the reading. We love any book from the Christian Heroes series and are currently reading Corrie Ten Boom. This gives us all the opportunity to relax and go on an adventure together. Plus, Dad and son have the time to be physically close and enjoy one another – precious time, though, sometimes my son ends up more ready to wrestle than sleep!:) My son loves this time, and has told me that it’s his favorite thing to do (he’s almost 11).
As Suzette, mentioned, playing games of all types is also an easy, fun way to grow closer.
Often I’ve found that it’s the simple things that are most rewarding. If I spend too much time and effort planning the “perfect” event, I can be very hurt when they don’t respond the way I think they should – like if they don’t enjoy the activity as much as I thought they would.
Kim Ehlers
I was trying to have my kids feel closer to each other and argue less. So each day someone would pick a game (rotate who picks) and everyone has to play it. It worked well. We also have a family night on Sunday where we make pizza from scratch and watch a movie together. We sometimes pause the movie and talk about it.
We only have one child, so I imagine it is easier for us to coordinate schedules than families that have lots of kids involved in different activites. The two things we do every day is eat dinner together and pray together at bedtime. We’ve also been doing a lot of yard work together (we moved into a house that had been empty for over a year and we’ve been improving the neglected 3-acre lot). We just broke ground for our first attempt at gardening and everyone got to pick at least one plant variety to try–strawberries, tomatoes, and pumpkins are all must tries.
Actually my son is more accustomed to us being together and it’s when daddy has to be gone overnight that I try to make sure we have a special activity to help him feel secure. Last month when daddy was gone we had a campout. It was far to cold to sleep outside, but my son pushed the trundle bed out from under his own bed and we put the sleeping bags and lantern in our “cave.” The tight quarters were made even more cramped when the dog decided she was being left out.
While it might seem rather simple, one thing we work hard to do is having dinner together as a family most nights. Since taking on a temporary, part-time job this year, there have been times i had to miss our family dinner. But, there is something nice about eating together and sharing conversation. For a while, the boys wanted to jump up and go when they finished, but my husband quickly began to insist that everyone stay at the table for conversation.
Most weeks, we try to have a movie or game night. Also, just avoiding the ‘trap’ of overscheduling our lives so that we can have time together helps a lot. Thankfully, the boys have tried some organized activities and do not want to continue. Scouting is the one exception and something they do with dad. So, while I might be missing from that adventure at times, at least the family is continuing to bond.
Laura O’Neill
Lately, our family bonding has been through planning our move. By making our daughter part of (and often in charge of) different aspects of our move across country, we have truly made the move into a family event.
When our daughter has outside activities (such as sports), we are actively involved with the practices and games. It becomes a family activity for us.
We also make sure that no matter how crazy our day may have been we end the day with family cuddle time. We make sure that we let each other know how important our family is to us. We do this through words and actions.
Heather L.
game night
Pizza night every Friday
We sit together in church, girls are not allowed to sit with friends, we worship as a family
Some weeks we have movie night with popcorn
We like to go hiking together
Supper together at table nightly
~Marni in Tx
Our family has had to be divided up for the past 8 years due to problems with our oldest but we have still tried to keep our family as close together as possible and we are looking forward to being more together in the coming months as our son moves back into the area.
*My husband and I always eat breakfast together and if the kids are awake at the time they join us.
*We always have lunch & supper together.
*Friday evenings we get-together as a family and watch one good family movie (either on Halmark or one we own).
*The day my husband gets paid we all jump into the car and go grocery shopping and then pick up something to eat (this is special because it is the only time we eat out).
*Have devotions together as a family.
*Share the work as a family because it takes everyone to help make things run smoother.
*Some go on vacations without their kids, but we take them everywhere with us!
*My husband spends special time, at least once a week, with his “princess” and I try to spend special time, at least once a week, with our little “prince”.
*We HOMESCHOOL!!
*We play together
*We make a big deal out of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter but we bring out the most important part of the event as Christians.
*We love doing crafty things together.
*We read together.
*We just love being together no matter if we are doing something alone or as a group.
Orilla Crider
We have a family night weekly where we have homemade pizza and homemade pizza sauce 🙂 We will watch a tv show or a movie if the sow is not on that night.
More things we do randomly:
play games
read stories
listen to Odyssey nightly
go for walks
we have dinner together most nights
Something that we do is what I remember doing when I was growing up- we do things together constantly. We don’t do a lot of separate things as a family. We go shopping together, to the library together, any time my dh has to go and check some servers, we ride out with him. We also eat meals together. We practice hospitality together.
We have also cut out tv time way, way back. We rarely watch tv. We have been picking movies at the library to watch if we have time for a movie night. We play games together, work in the yard together, garden together, etc. I look at whatever is going to happen during our week and see if there is anyway we can do together or if it is necessary to do it separate. We do as much stuff as we can as a family and seems to have helped us be a close-knit family.
Many of these ideas have already been mentioned, but this is something that is really important to us as a family. We want a close family where our kids want to be home to spend time with us and with each other.
Here are some things we do to facilitate that:
* We’ve never been ones to “send” our kids places. When we have playdates, we play as a family. When we do church activities, we all go, and dh or I usually help in a class. With our neighbors, ours is the house that everyone hangs out at.
* We make sure we do some spontaneous play as a family. We might head out to the park after supper one evening or to McDonalds for ice cream.
* We have lots of traditions around the holidays and seasons. We just went today and picked strawberries. That is a spring tradition.
* We try to eat meals together. This has fallen by the wayside to some extent while my dh has been in school these last two years. But we have plans in the works to get back to this routine as he finishes school this week!
* We homeschool, which makes us very close as a family because my older children have so much more opportunity to be with the younger ones. If we had sent them away to school, my oldest daughter would have been in school all day by the time number three came along, and they would hardly know each other!
Leah Courtney
My children are still rather little, so we pretty much do everything together. Some of the things we love to do are: reading together, going for picnics and bike riding at the park, cooking together. We also are big on having at least one meal a day that we all eat together. My husband is a pastor, so if he has to be away over the supper hour, he’ll come home for lunch with us.
I’m also a big one for trying to create traditions. For example, we always put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, and then we all (yes, even Mom and Dad 😉 ) camp out in the living room that night and fall asleep with the tree lights glowing. The birthday boy or girl gets to use a special plate on his or her special day for meals. Sunday nights we curl up and watch a favorite TV show and eat snacky foods — always popcorn and sometimes other snacks as well. (Popcorn on Sunday nights was a tradition in both my home as well as my husband’s when we were growing up! 🙂 )
We have slowly been working on this. It has been a seemingly natural product of my drawing closer to the Lord personally, and my husband – before implementing anything that was going to “stick” for us as a family. It has meant that I’ve had to either stay up late or get up early for quiet time with the Lord, but it is making a difference.
We are watching TONS less TV. Hello?
We are taking long walks together and talking. Although our daughters are only 3 1/2 and 21 months of age, they continue to bring up these walks and ask for more.
We are praying together as a family every night before bedtime. This has been a blessing and a joy for us, and hearing our girls pray in their own way has made me very aware of my responsibility & role as their mother.
I’m so BY FAR from perfect and have really struggled with my temper and yelling. I have found that as we are praying together more, God is also helping me in this area.
For us, these little things are already impacting us and making a difference in our attitudes towards one another and our relationships with each other.
What a great question! My answers come from what I know in my heart to be true and not from what I am actually able to accomplish each day.
There is no substitute for spending time together. God created us to be social beings. We must as a family satisfy member’s needs, no matter how young or old, for acceptance, encouragement, laughter, understanding and physical affection (hugs) so that members are not drawn to seek these things outside. That doesn’t mean that there will be no outside friends. It just hopefully means the friendships within the family satisfy many of these social needs so that a family member is not desperately searching for affirmation, affection, etc outside the family unit.
But time together must be both quality and quantity. It is not one or the other, but both that is necessary. Although we enjoy an occasional movie night together in our home, TV time should be very limited because when we watch TV together we are really not focused on each other.
Family traditions are often more important than we realize, especially to children. We were at a friends house helping to celebrate a child’s birthday yesterday and one of the older children remarked that they didn’t follow tradition on this birthday. She elaborated that their tradition is to make the birthday last all day from their morning ritual for birthdays to the end but that the presents always came at the end of the day and today they had come at breakfast. It seemed to bother her. The mother laughingly remarked to me that she was surprised by the comment because what her daughter didnt realize is that presents had always come at the end of the day because Mom never had them wrapped in time to come early in the day. Point is that children especially are searching for traditions- little things that signify this is the way our family celebrates – that help to idenify them as a family unit. Adults often overlook the significance of small traditions.
Reading together is a biggie in our family. My kids feel like I am investing time in to them when I take time to read.
Nature walks are very enjoyable as a family.
I could go on and on as I set here musing about these things I know to be true and often fail to implement as I should. Think I will go and work on that now…..
Tina James
Family Building Activities we like to do:
Eat meals together
Participate in most outside activities together: shopping, 4H, Keepers, Co-op, scouts
Homeschool
Watch movies or TV together in the evenings after dinner
Home Improvement Projects: Currently we are working on painting our bedrooms, and cleaning the garage
Yard & Gardening chores (vegetables, flowers, herbs, and berries)
Read or listen to books on tape
Sports: bicycling, swimming, soccer, baseball, basketball, monster volleyball, and hiking
Yard Games: horseshoes, ring toss, corn hole, and washer toss
Board Games: Scrabble, Life, Yatzee
Family passes: science center, zoo, pool, YMCA, and Creation Museum
Homemaking Skills: baking, cake decorating, candy making, sewing, and needlework
Hobbies: Paper crafting (Scrapbook, card making, origami), models, woodworking, wood burning, leather crafting, and soap making etc.
My boys are still somewhat little, but I have always stressed that they should be best friends with their brothers (and sisters if God so wishes to bless us with some girls). Just recently I was talking with my 6 year old about my brother Mark (age 16) who died last year. He asked if Mark was my friend and I said yes he was one of my best friends. He couldn’t understand how my brother could be my friend and a brother at the same time. It made me stop and think that when I was his age (6) I didn’t think my brothers were my friends at all. In fact, they were the most annoy things in the whole world and why did I even have to like them. 🙂 I know now that my siblings are some of my best friends because of the foundation my parents gave us. Dad used to say, your siblings will be there for you when no one else will and its true. I think every little fight, every little secret and every amazing game we played helped us to develop that friendship without us knowing it. That is what I want for my boys.
I want the baseball games where there are no rules. I want the popcorn and movie every Sunday night. I want the club house made out of every blanket in the house. I want the chairs arranged in the livingroom like a bus or a train when I’m sweeping the diningroom floor. I want them to share bedrooms and share toys. I want them to share secrets and fears with each other. Oh my I even want those fights over the blue airplane that everyone thinks they got for Christmas (who did get it anyway??). I want memories for my boys that they can take into their adulthood. I want my words “Your brothers will be your best friends someday!” to echo in their heads. I want to hear my boys say “Thank you Mom for the memories and letting us be kids!” when they get older.
Foundation in our family = God and family, together all things are possible
Karen Gebes
We stay home and do most things together. We homeschool our children so that means we eat nearly every meal together. On weekends, we pretty much stay home and work on projects inside and outside together. If DH needs to run into town to get ____, we will frequently all go along with him. We like being together 🙂 If something momentous happens when DH is at work, we call him. DD#2 lost her first tooth–called Daddy. DS had a very successful day potty training–call Daddy. Our children are each others best friends and biggest cheerleaders. We don’t force them to play together, share toys, etc. Occassionally they don’t want to, but usually, they seek each other out to share and play.
I am very blessed in that this is not something we have to work at, it is just how our family is.
Blessings!
Hillary in Indiana
We try to pick activities that the whole family can do.. With 2 young boys it is hard sometimes…
Anyway, things that I do to create that tight family feeling:
1. We eat dinner together. Sometimes it is hard but I always try and make sure we eat dinner as a family. I know it will get harder as the boys get older, but for now I want to cherish that time together.
2. Plan family field trips that we can include Daddy in as well. Even simple trips to the park for a picnic.
3. With my youngest (he is 3 1/2), we spend the quiet time at bedtime with our prayer and our lullaby. I don’t miss many nights of this activity.
4. My boys get to spend at least 1 night a week at Gamma’s house, this create precious memories for my boys and gives Mommy a breather.
Some ways that have helped us to grow closer and more tight-knit as a family are:
Time Together, enjoying even the everyday ( maybe seemingly mundane ) ups and downs of daily life together.
Trust and Respect, family members will come to one another with needs and joys when there is mutual trust/respect.
Bible reading and study time, when each member gives their own prayer requests! We learn about one another and their concerns and enjoyments.
Warning! Warning! Don’t do what I did!!
When I first became a Christian I was very misguided and spent every evening involved in church activities, while leaving my poor children and unsaved Hubby at home.
Thankfully this did not last for ever, but it does serve as a great example of how not to have a close knit family!
The reason I changed what I was doing was not because my family complained, but because I found out what God’s picture of a woman, a wife and a mother really looks like.
Fathers may be the head of the household and, therefore, the leaders of the family, but as mothers we should be the one who guide the family along behind him. If we are not close behind him how can we expect them to be.
So this is where we need to start. Invest time and effort into your relationship with your husband. This is the second biggest gift you can give to your children (the first is of course to invest in your relationship with the Lord). This is how the wise woman builds up her home (instead of tearing it down with her own hands).
Take advice from older (more mature in the Lord) women about how to love your husband and children and take care of your home (this is not my idea – it’s God’s).
Pray, pray and pray some more…..
Study your family and become an expert on there needs and the things they enjoy. Then act on your knowledge.
Never compare your family to anyone else’s. This is the family the Lord blessed you with thank Him for them regularly and enjoy them because this is your perfect appointed place.
Love and Blessings
Angela Marchington
We have what I believe a tight-knit family. We do most everything together, we discuss everything from news, bills, challenges, decisions, pretty much everything, together. While we do share and discuss everything, we, the parents always make the final decisions.
We always have dinner together.
We work and do chores together.
We shop together.
We visit other families and socialize together.
We play together.
We exercise and take walks together.
We play sports together (even if I just watch on the bench 🙂
We share about each others day when we are away at work (my son) or college (my husband.)
We read books together.
We watch movies together.
A you can see we do most everything TOGETHER. I think that is the best “secret” to a close knit family I can think of.
Annmarie Rozelle
Spending time together! I think you also have to be willing to say “I’m sorry” and “I was wrong”. This seems to go a long way in keeping close relationships with your children. They know we are not perfect. We won’t always make the right decisions where they are concerned, but if they know that it was all done out of love and they feel secure in the relationship, they can be more forgiving in the long run. At least, that is what I am hoping!
I have seen lots of relationships and close knit families ruined because apologies were never made and misunderstandings were never corrected. I think this is very important.
Katrina Boatwright
we also spend lots of time together. one of the kids favorites is friday night movie night with pizza for dinner AND chips AND pop AND ice cream for desset (life doesn’t get much better 🙂 on their birthdays my husband takes the day off work and we go where ever the birthday person decides to spend his day. memories that will last…
melissa wojcinski