6 Tips To Maximize Your Family Time

The struggle to strike a good balance between family time and work time is real. Keeping up with all your tasks and activities is challenging enough. Add your kids’ or your spouse’s activities to that and spending quality time with your family can be hard to do.

Here are a couple of things you can do to make sure that you are making the most of your family time:

* Make meal time family time

One of the simplest steps to start with is to have at least one meal in a day together. Be more intentional and make the entire meal time a family affair. Make sure to set rules like there are no exceptions for meal time, no phones on the dinner table, designate who sets the table and who does the cleaning up after, etc. You can use this time to bond while doing things together and also ideally, talking about your day and the most recent interesting things that have happened at work, or school, etc.

* Make family events a priority

If you are working all the time, you are missing out on the family events that you can’t replace. Kids grow up fast and they don’t get to repeat their childhood. Make your family events a priority.Being present at family events shows your spouse or partner and children that you care. Love is shown in actions. Make sure your actions are showing love, by showing up for holidays, birthdays, family nights, and the kid’s games and performances. These things matter.

* Designate your family meeting on your calendar for deep discussions

When tough topics come up, like setting rules and dates for family time together, make it a family meeting at the dinner table. Sit together and discuss things, free of electronic distractions, so that you can all understand one another and the goals. Designate a time for the “family meeting” and schedule it on everyone’s calendar. When you say “family meeting time”, everyone should know that it’s time to gather around the dinner table for an important discussion.

* Establish work boundaries

Are you taking your work home with you every night? Are you playing catch up after hours? Are you still returning work calls and emails after work? If this is your daily habit, then you may need to access your situation. Find ways to cut these things more slowly from your evening routine, so that you are giving more time and priority to your family in the evening.Don’t allow your work to over-run your family time. Try to work things out with your boss to be able to shave time off for your family time. Know your boundaries with your boss, so that you aren’t jeopardizing your job, but you also don’t want to minimize the value of your family and your time that you have scheduled.

* Make kindness and forgiveness a policy

It becomes difficult to have quality family time if there is arguing, anger, hostility, and other negative emotions going on between family members.If it’s bickering, lack of forgiveness, and/or general lack of kindness, then a policy needs to be established so that family time is a time for everyone to get along.Teach your kids by talking about kindness, but also by being an example of kindness to your fellow family members. Establish a clear rule that meanness or lack or kindness will not be tolerated.

* Make family time a judgement-free zone

Life is hard enough. We get judgement from the rest of the world all day long. Time with family should be a safe haven from judgement.Make a rule about passing judgement on one another when you are having family time. If there is a serious issue that needs addressing, call a family meeting to discuss the issue. Otherwise, let it be.Let your family be themselves, warts and all, and let them know they are accepted and loved for just the way they are. Because isn’t that what family is supposed to be about?