Finding Joy at Home

For the past few months our family started to have a family fun night at least once per week. It is part of our actions on being more intentional as parents. It started as a new bonding experience and now they are always asking for it. It gives us so much joy to see them being together and spending quality time.

Whenever we do our family fun night we either watch a movie or we play board games at home. It was a good initiative because the kids also had the chance to bond with their siblings.

We cook food either pasta or some wraps and ice cream. We prepare their favorite food or if time will not allow we would order pizza.

We chose Word for Word ( Scrabble) to be our board game of the month. It is educational and makes the kids really think. My 2 boys Elijah and Kyle are competitive. They would really want to beat each other, this gave us a chance to teach them about being a good sport and they are learning from the experience.

To make the game more exciting. We had an agreement that 3 consecutive wins will be a grandslam and the winner will be served by the losers. They team up to make sure we will not get a grandslam 😃

Aside from this we started to have our grateful tree last November. We wanted to cultivate a thankful heart in our children's lives. We studied the history of thanksgiving and how grateful we are that we live in a country where we can express our faith freely.

Our grateful tree grew as days pass by.

God also taught us to do SATs during our fun night. We learned this from our spiritual family. S stands for Sorry, A for Appreciation and T for thanksgiving. Though we have been doing the T, adding S and A will be a great practice. It is the best time to affirm our children more rather than being corrective most of the time.

Affirmation uplifts their spirit and creates a positive home atmosphere. They feel appreciated and special.

The first time we did our SATs, my 2 older son learned to apologize for things that they have done wrong for the week but failed to realize that they hurt or offended somebody. It is a good practice since they will be aware and be more tactful on how they speak.

As weeks past, we have added more board games in our list. The kids are enjoying it and they would always ask for our family fun night even if it is not a Monday. They look forward to it. They love spending the time with our family in playing, laughing and having a good conversation. In return, it helps us to know our children more.

As parents, we want our children to love our family and home. That they would find it as their comfort place and will not look outside to gain the joy that they can get at home.

It is an atmosphere that we want to develop. Having a positive environment full of love, affirmation and hope in God.

It starts with Jesus, when they have come to know the Lord and obey His teachings they were convicted to choose their friends.

Jesus sets the atmosphere in our home. He is the head of our house and the silent listener in every conversation.

I remembered reading this...when your child commits a mistake or whenever you want to correct them. Talk to them like how Jesus will talk to them. It impressed on our hearts to be more careful with the words that we speak because how we speak is how our children would speak too. We are their models.

By God's grace we want our children to have and to practice the habit of being thankful even in small things. To see the positive in every struggles. To have the habit of asking forgiveness and being forgiven. To speak words of affirmation and be appreciative with others.

Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.
Stephen R. Covey

Every family needs to have intentional parents, we are still striving at this but being intentional helped us a lot to improve as a family. To be our children's friends and in their hearts they would know that here in our world we, their parents are their first best friends.

All Praise and Glory to God!

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