Do you have a good relationship with your family? The bond between you and your family members is essential. It creates a sense of belonging and improves your communication and trust with your family. But where do you start? How can you improve your bond? Even if you already have a good bond, what can make it stronger? Family activities, maintaining a healthy lifestyle together, travel experiences, and traditions can accomplish this.
One of the best ways to bond with your family is through engaging activities. Finding a pastime that everyone enjoys is a great place to start. Try watching your favorite movies together or have everyone pick a movie they love to share with the family. You can have fun rating the movies and choosing the best. Playing games is another way to bond. Put all your devices away and engage with each other without any distractions. Board games, card games, guessing games, challenge games; there are many options. Find one that the whole family enjoys and you’re guaranteed to have a great time!
Having everyone pitch in to help the household run smoother is another activity to unite the family. Every member doing their part, whether it’s doing a certain chore or making breakfast once a week, is a wonderful way to learn to work together. Assign everyone a weekly task. Make chores more enjoyable! Have competitions to see who can unload the dishwasher the fastest or who can clean their room the best. You can even award prizes for who does the most chores. It not only gives the whole family some motivation, but gets things done faster. Try growing a garden. Everyone will pick a vegetable, fruit or plant to grow and you can work together to keep the garden thriving. Keep track of which plants grow best, which need the most sunlight, which need more water, etc. All these are ideas that encourage unity while getting things done around the home.
A healthy life is a happy life! When the whole family strives to maintain a healthy lifestyle, they not only are bonding through a shared experience but also improving their mental and physical health. Cooking clean meals as a family is another great way to learn to work together while improving your meals to make them more nutritious. It can be a lot of fun for you and your family to laugh and enjoy each other’s company, while having everyone help out as well as making a healthy meal. Get a cookbook of yummy recipes everyone enjoys and assign each person a part of the meal to cook. For smaller families, each member can make their own dish to bring to the table. For larger families, everyone can take turns cooking the meal. Either way, you are still sharing a kitchen and working together to make a nutritious meal. How nice it will feel when you all sit down to eat something everybody helped to make.
Food is only one part of a healthy life. Exercise is crucial for your wellbeing. It’s not always pleasant on your own, but with your family, you can make it a good experience. After you make dinner together, go out for a walk in the fresh air, and pick a different route every time. Bike rides are also very enjoyable. You can choose a destination such as your local park, the beach, or a restaurant to ride to. You can also go hiking. Select your favorite trail, pack your lunch and spend the day outdoors. Just being in nature can actually improve your mood, behavior, mental health, and physical health!
Traveling doesn’t have to be a costly getaway to a foreign country. You can have just as much fun locally! Have each member choose a place in your area and every weekend select a new one. This can be a trip to the museum, the beach, a historical site, an escape room, bowling or a farmer’s market. Museums and historical landmarks are both inexpensive, (check to see what days you might get into a museum for free) and educational. A day at the beach or a farmers market is a good way to get outside and have some fun. If you don’t mind the expense, escape rooms and bowling are also great options. Take a little time to research places near you. You’ll be surprised by all the local experiences you may have not known about.
Family traditions create everlasting memories and stability. Chances are, your family already has some great traditions. Such as celebrating a holiday or a birthday tradition. But did you realize that traditions don’t just have to be annual events? Having a weekly ritual such as movie nights on Fridays or having brunch on Saturdays is just as good. Simply having a set time to spend together is a start. Try bringing your heritage into your traditions. Maybe cooking a cultural meal on occasion or celebrating a holiday with traditional music and games. When it comes to calendar holidays there’s many choices. If you celebrate Christmas, you can decorate the tree as a family, bake cookies, sing carols and read Christmas stories. During Easter, dye eggs and have an egg hunt. For Thanksgiving, create a list of what everyone is thankful for. Shoot off fireworks for the Fourth of July. Carve pumpkins for Halloween. The options are endless. Whether it’s a reliable routine of togetherness or fixed festivity, find what works for your family.
There are so many ways to strengthen family bonds. Doing activities together, keeping healthy routines, traveling locally, developing and maintaining family traditions. Take the extra time and effort to really improve your relationships. In the end, you’ll be so grateful you did.
I enjoy writing and editing videos. I’ve loved to write and create stories my whole life. My dream is to someday become a published author. When I was younger, I used to make short movies with my brother and spend hours editing them. Then, when I got older, I started to edit my dad’s videos for his work. I found that this was another passion of mine. When I’m done with high school, I want to take further writing classes and go to film school.
This post was written by Ava, a student at Sparks Academy.
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