Weekend Wonder

It’s time for a Weekend Wonder! Hope you’re having a wonderful weekend so far. Better yet, I hope you are spending time with your family! If you haven’t had dinner with your family yet this week, please do and let me know how it goes. In the meantime, tell me what you think of how this restaurant in New Jersey is encouraging its customers to connect with their families:

http://www.thestationbernardsville.com/news/21-connect-with-your-family

Q & A Friday

Today’s question: What is one moment you remember sharing with your family as an adult that really touched you? A moment you don’t think you’ll ever forget?

One moment I remember very clearly from this past Christmas Eve took place when everybody was sitting in the living room. A lot of packages were wrapped in festive paper and stacked beneath the Christmas tree. My boyfriend said: “My family always gathers on Christmas Eve and exchanges gifts to open.” I got a lot of gifts from my boyfriend’s mom, dad, and brothers. His mom, Diane, wrote a card to me: “You are one of our family and are always welcome home! Whenever you need a home, here is yours. If you need help, need to move, need a place to stay, need a place to store your boxes, we will go help you, anytime. Give me a call or text me, if you need. If you miss your family, miss your home, tell me, I will go pick you up and take you home.” At that moment I felt tears in my eyes and gave her a big big hug. “Thank you so much. You are just like my mom,” I said. I had a thousands words to say in my heart, but at that moment I was speechless. She said, “You can call me mom; I am your mom.” 

All the gifts I received were so special for me. They were not just gifts, but  expressions of love. Opening presents with my family was a wonderful example of enjoyable time together. It was my first Christmas with my boyfriend’s family, and it was the best Christmas ever!

A Thousand Words Thursday!

Family Game Time

Yay ~ it’s A Thousand Words Thursday! This is a picture of my Family Game Time: Bingo! After the Thanksgiving meal, there is usually a family activity,whether it’s watching some Thanksgiving football on television, watching a movie together, or on this year’s occasion, playing a game together. The focus of the game isn’t so much on who wins or loses, but rather the importance of the family interaction. Sometimes there’s joking, or teasing, or story telling during the activity which always creates laughter or enjoyment among the family. For example, this year, Aunt Judy and Aunt Debbie sang the BINGO song like they were five year old girls. And everyone was or excited about getting a prize when they won a BINGO match!

Wisdom Wednesday

     It’s Wisdom Wednesday! Today, I want to share a few resources that might help you facilitate the family dinner ritual I described yesterday. 

     The Family Dinner Project is a grassroots movement of food, fun and conversation about things that matter. I suggested it as a source of conversation starters in my post yesterday, but you can learn even more about the movement’s focus on family dinner and family healthcare if you visit the website. I really liked this site and thought it was helpful because of the step-by-step guide to help you plan and facilitate family dinner. The Family Dinner Project provides information about how to become a family dinner organizer. Also, it gives you dinner menus and recipes designed for family preparation and fun activities for the dinner table.  

     Other sites for conversation starters include Dinner Table Talk and Easter Dinner Conversation Starters. I liked Dinner Table Talk because these questions are easy and fun. Emerging adults can use these questions to encourage family members to get to know each other better. Easter Dinner Conversation Starters are helpful because these questions are very light and easy to answer as well. Both websites are designed like a chart so you can print them and cut them into strips to be placed in a jar for each family member.

Try-It Tuesday!

      This week’s ritual is intended to enhance enjoyable time together (DeFrain & Stinnett, 2008). Specifically, it is intended to help each family member 1) discover the importance of family rituals and customs and 2) feel strongly connected to his/her other family members, two of the qualities of enjoyable time together. Other qualities of enjoyable time together focus on fun and laughter, childhood memories and family stories, spending time together and hanging out with family members.

      This week, the ritual I want you to try with your family is a family dinner. Family dinner is an important ritual that helps build enjoyable time together. Although there are many ways emerging adults can spend enjoyable time together with their families, family dinners are a good place to start. Family dinners allow family members to reconnect with each other, leaving behind other distractions (i.e., playing games on the cell phone, catching up on email and sending texts to those who aren’t there!). Dinner is a time to relax, laugh, tell stories and release some stress with the family members who are there, while also helping you develop a sense of who you are as a family. I sometimes feel like the time spent together is more important than the actual foods we put on the table to eat. Looking back, I am happy to say that I have had many fun, meaningful, joyful dinners with my family, even though most of the time, they were long distance family dinners via Skype or FaceTime.

      This week, invite your family members to have a family dinner at a certain time. You can give your parent(s) a formal invitation in the mail if you want to make it something special or maybe just give them a call or email or text them and ask them have dinner with you. You might find a good time that works for your, maybe over the weekend, a time when no one will be too tired or stressed. But make sure that time works for your parents or other family members too! You also need to suggest a location. For example, you might suggest family members go out to a special restaurant or ask them what kind of food they prefer. If you choose the restaurant, tell them why it is special to you. As an alternative, you could invite your parent(s) to your place or have the dinner at your family’s house. If you propose your family’s house, tell them you’ll bring all the ingredients and do all the cooking and clean up. Or, if you think they’ll want to help, you can ask everyone to bring an ingredient and cook the meal together as a family. However you decide to approach the meal itself, the most important thing is to make it happen!

      The first rule of this week’s ritual is to turn off the computer, the television, your tablet and your phone, unless of course, you’re using one of them to have family dinner with family members too far away to see in person because, let’s face it, sometimes getting everyone to the table can be difficult. If you live far away from you family members, don’t be discouraged. Having family dinner together in person may be hard but you can still use Skype or FaceTime to be together for dinner. 

Download Skype here: http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ 

Or if you have a Mac computer, iPhone, iPad download FaceTime free from here: http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/ 

      Once your family members sit down together for the meal, as the host, explain why you want to minimize distractions, including television and cell phones. Before your meal, you may want to begin with a statement of gratitude for their willingness to join you for a family dinner. You might also start with a prayer, but if your family doesn’t pray, you could say a few words of thanks for the food or for the family members who helped provide or prepare the food. You can make the dinner feel more special by lighting candles or including a centerpiece, but none of that is necessary if you just want to focus on having fun together.

  

      Whether you remember family dinners during your childhood as tense or happy, filled with conflict or storytelling, or a time when your parents laid down the law or they asked you for your input on family decisions, you can make this week’s family dinner about enjoyable time together by preparing some fun conversation starters. Adding interesting topics or discussion questions to your family dinner will family members focus reconnecting with each other. Stay away from general questions such as “How was school or work?” or “What did you do today?” Be more specific and playful. There are times when all families need some help getting enjoyable discussions started at the dinner table. If you’re not sure how to come up with your own conversation starters, try some of these:

 1. What was your favorite tradition when you were a child? Did you try to pass it down to future generations? Will you?

2. What was your favorite childhood book? What was special about it? Who used to read it with you?

3. What was your very first job and who was your favorite coworker there? 

4. How do you feel about social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp)? How do you think they affect your relationships with others?

5. Think of someone from your past you used to see on a daily basis but no longer see every day. Are you still in contact in other ways? If so, how? If not, would you like to be? Why or why not?

6. Who is your favorite musical group? Talk about the performers and which of their songs you like the best and why.

7. Who is your favorite athlete and why? How does that person inspire you?

8. Where was the last place you went on vacation? What was it like there? Would you go again?

If these conversation starters do not inspire you, you can find more suggestions here: 

Conversation Starters 

      Some of the ideas are silly, and some are serious. The important thing is to get to know each other better and smile as you create memories with your loved ones!

       As a host, you can provide all of the conversation starters, but you also can ask all the family members to contribute their own conversation starters. Either way, you may want to prepare the conversation starters before dinner by printing them on strips of paper and placing them all in a jar for each person to choose one after dinner has started. You can tell your family members that if they don’t want to answer the question they draw, they can pass and choose another one instead. 

      Before the dinner ends, you may want to take a moment to talk as a family about the importance of having family dinners together. You might even ask your family members to share a positive moment from the dinner, maybe when they felt strongly connected to the rest of the family. Take some time to share what you thought about the family dinner too. You may want to talk about what it was like to have a family dinner again or to spend time with family members, how you might continue to have family dinners and how you felt connected with your family members.

      After dinner with your family, don’t forget to come back here and share your thoughts! Tell us who you invited and why, where you had dinner, what you ate, and how it went. What conversation starters, if any, did you use during your family dinner? How well did they work for your family? What family rituals or customs did you remember as important to your family when you were talking at dinner? What was one positive moment when you felt strongly connected to your other family members during your family dinner? Do you think you’ll have another family dinner again soon? Why or why not? 

     I look forward to reading your opinions soon! 

Sources:

101 Conversation Starters. (2014). In Conversation Starters.com Retrieved from http://www.conversationstarters.com/101.htm

DeFrain, J., & Stinnett, N. (2008). Creating a strong family: American family strengths inventory. In NebGuide. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=1099

Markham, L.(2014). Citing Websites. In Aha!Parenting.com. 100 Conversation Starters for Family Discussions, from http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/communication/family-discussions

Conversation Starters: Age 14-100. (2014).In The Family Dinner Project. Retrieved from

http://thefamilydinnerproject.org/tag/ages-14-100

Memorable Monday

Last week I introduced you to the six sections of my blog. I’m excited for tomorrow because I will be posting the first family ritual to enhance enjoyable time together. Today, I thought I’d describe my blog’s structure so you’ll know what to expect each day of the week.

Every Try-It Tuesday, I will share a new family ritual that focuses on building a specific characteristic of strong families from the American Family Strengths Inventory (DeFrain & Stinnett, 2008). I’ll ask for feedback from you guys. Specifically, I’m hoping you will try the family ritual and then comment on your experiences, whether you would try it again, and how you saw it impacting the characteristic the ritual was intended to address.

On Wisdom Wednesdays, I will post resources related to family rituals or emerging adulthood as a way to support and encourage readers’ efforts to engage in family rituals. These resources might include links to books, movies, websites or other sources. 

On A Thousand Word Thursdays, I will share a photo capturing a family ritual because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Of course, I may also share the story behind the photo, maybe not in a thousand words, but in a few. 

On Q&A Fridays, I will pose a question and try to answer it or include a question you may have asked. On Saturday, I will post my Weekend Wonders—funny memes, games, stories, or quotes that readers can share with their families. And to give myself and my readers a break, I will not post on Sundays. 

On Memorable Mondays, I will summarize readers’ comments about their family ritual experiences and add my own thoughts about my experiences with the family ritual posted the week before. So please provide lots of comments!

Today is Monday, but I haven’t posted the first family ritual yet so, I thought I’d just ask you to share your favorite family memory by commenting on this post. Share a specific example of when you spent enjoyable time with your family. What did you do? Was it a one-time event or something you did on a regular basis? Who participated? What made this time spent with your family so enjoyable? So memorable?

I’ll get us started by sharing one of my favorite recent family memories: my boyfriend’s family dinner on Christmas Eve. During the holiday season in his household, it is a tradition for all of the family to gather, with this year’s addition of Adria (my boyfriend’s brother’s wife) and me! After having an enjoyable meal with the family at the dinner table, my boyfriend’s mother surprised us with a quiz entitled “How well do you know your family?” We were each handed a piece of paper and a pencil and were instructed to number down the sheet 1 through 39 and label across the sheet the names of all the family members present (including their 2 cats!). She then progressed through a series of 39 statements meant to demonstrate characteristics of each individual of the family. For example, one of the statements was “This person’s initials are true to his name.” The answer was MES (or mess) as one of the family members was a technology education teacher who often made a mess working on his projects. Another example statement was “This person is often pink and sparkly” and referred to Adria. So whether funny, informative, or otherwise, it was a way to bring all of us together and to share laughter and memories. Also, I learned a lot about my boyfriend and his family! 

I’ll be back tomorrow with our first family ritual. I hope you enjoy it and are ready to get started!