Make your home a center—a center for learning, a center for growing up together, a center for spiritual formation, a center for relationship building, a center for caring—and your kids will know that you want to spend time with them. There is nothing that can stop a child who knew his parents loved to be with him!
Donna Reish, Character Ink Press author of fifty language arts/writing curriculum books and co-author/presenter of Raising Kids With Character parenting seminar (and blog), presents suggestions on how to spend more time with your kids in the upcoming year. On this Wondering Wednesday podcast episode, Donna answers parents questions about how to squeeze in more “kid time” in the midst of busy-ness, how to make each child feel special in large families, and more. Drawing on thirty-three years of parenting experience of seven children (ages seventeen to thirty-three) in a family in which both Mom and Dad have spent countless hours building strong relationships with their kids, Donna brings insights on this topic from very young to young adults.
When we are asked those common questions of “What things did you do the most right?” and “What things did you do wrong?” (or any version of those), we immediately know a solid answer to the first one: One thing that we have done right in our parenting for thirty-three years is talk to our kids—all the time, about everything, never ceasing, without hesitation. We made time, and we always talked.
One of our favorite Christmas traditions is reading aloud from Christmas stories.
We have done this for so many years that we have a handful of them that we try to read whenever some of the grown kids are over during December–and especially on our family Christmas decorating night and Christmas Eve. (Many of our favorites are in Joe Wheeler’s “Christmas Stories From the Heart” books.)
Plastic wrap prizes! Several have asked how we do this activity, so here is a somewhat-clear description! (The pics are a little grainy in our living room that night!)
One thing that I highly recommend as you prepare for Christmas with teens and adults is that you try to make new memories…that you try to do things that are applicable to their ages. Yes, we definitely continue some of the earlier traditions. But we’ve also added new ones that are more age-appropriate. One of those is plastic wrap prizes.
This activity could be in lieu of stockings, Christmas Eve PJs, piñatas, etc. It is a ton of fun for teens and adults. With younger kids, there’s always a danger of some disappointment if they get Chapstick or antacids (lol!), but with teens and adults, it is all just good fun. Lots of laughs. Lots of usable items. And more family unity than you would think, LOL!
I am so excited to be putting into posts many of the things that I have found to work well with Christmas and college/adult children. It has been a definite learning curve from eleven years ago when our first child was married to last Christmas with our first grandchild.
I was used to Christmas revolving around our home. Yes, we did a lot of outreaches (specifically to disabled adults in the Fort Wayne area each year through One Heart’s Special Deliveries), and yes, we spent a lot of time with extended family. (Our children will respect and love their grandparents to the extent that we parents respect and love our kids’ grandparents!)
