Summer is about half over. When all the warm days are gone, and short, cold winter nights are here, what is it that your children will remember about these months together? What lessons about life will be instilled in them because of the time you spent with them?
As a child there were times that I was bored with summer, because my parents were busy and my days were unplanned. I wasted them. At times, I wished summer away, thinking that school and friends were much more fun. When school started in the fall, I remember thinking, "How could I have wished summer away for this!" I was so open to have someone pour into my life in those slow paced sunny days.
After I began having my own children, I decided to pour myself into them any opportunity I could. I set goals for our summers. One that I continued to focus on was, developing family relationships. Doing this meant spending a lot of time together, doing things, and just being together. In order to form relationships within our family, we decided that we needed to significantly reduce time spent with friends. Our family had to become our source of support, encouragement and entertainment. So we took a break from a lot of "friend" interaction and "play dates", and did things as a family.
This taught my children how to accept and love each other the way they were created to be, to learn to work through conflict and have fun together. When I brought their friends into the mix, they didn't learn those life lessons.
In order for them to not become resentful and bored, included three things into our day.
Firstly, we always did something fun together. This took commitment and planning on my part, though it was really flexible so that it would fit into our life. I made a list of things to do, so that on a moments notice, I would have something to draw my family together, something that didn't take much preparation. Sometimes we were able to spend all day together doing something fun and sometimes we only an hour. On days when I had a good amount of time and the weather cooperated, we did things things like go to the lake, have a picnic and swim or go on a family bike ride to the park and have a picnic. There were other times when life made it so our time was quite limited, so we might read bedtime stories together as a family, make popcorn together and eat it, or Lay out on a blanket in the backyard and watch the shooting stars and talk about God.
Secondly, each child was given jobs to do. Depending on their age, they were give responsibilities and things that would help out the family. One might have the job of cleaning out the dishwasher, another would be cleaning the toys up off the floor, or taking out the garbage. The older the child the more responsibility they were given. When they were old enough, each would take turns, Setting the Table for dinner, Cleaning up the Kitchen after dinner and clearing out he dishwasher. They did their job for a week, then rotated to the next job. They all did their equal share.
We also focused on meeting other people needs. When one would fall down and scrape their knee, their brother or sister would stop and help them. If one got done with their job sooner than another, many times they would offer to help their brother or sister finish theirs. We encouraged them to think of others and help each other even when it meant they would have to sacrifice in some way to do it.
Each season offers different opportunities to build into your family, and Summer is probably the easiest and most extended time available to make memories and develop deep family relationships. I would encourage you to take a few moments and thing about what kind of family you want to have 10 years from now, and what things you could do this summer to begin making that happen.
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