Investing in your family’s future might bring thoughts of money and finance to mind, but there are many other ways to intentionally invest in your family. When you think of your family investment time, do you have cultivated moments together, or are you in a season of passing each other by every week?
Each season requires different roles and commitments from each family member that can either build you up or burn you out. Recognizing the season you are in and taking time to build family investment moments, no matter the busyness, will keep you connected and tuned in together. Investment is an intentional choice that is communicated and carved out with the purpose of gaining from the deposits shared with one another.
For past few years, we have invested in intentional family Spring time where no kids are signed up for sports and we engage in other hobbies together as well as carve out nights of fun every week. It has been a tender regrouping time for us to have more “yes” opportunities of adventure, of exploration, and of rejuvenation and savor the rhythms of a season that’s purposed for family connection.
Even if you are in a season full of sports schedules and shuffling kids back and forth in car line or “taxi” driving, this list of family connectors can be cultivated during some carved out off-times in your scheduling for the week. This list of family investment ideas will be fun for you to tailor to your own family’s personality, interests, and season.
- In Family Investment Time, phones are down and are not part of this interaction with one another. You can designate a special family box that you keep in same spot of house and when it’s family time, the phones go in there so you can have uninterrupted time together.
Designate carved out family investment nights together every week. Whether this is one day vs. multiple days every week will depend on your commitments in that season of life, but making it a priority that is uninterrupted will strengthen you and give you stopping points to regroup.
Choose table gathering time to share in meals together. In Spring, we engage in dinner gathering time. For us, Fall season dinner is hard to maintain with different schedules, so we shift and commit to breakfast time together for our gathering time.
Weekly family meetings have been a rich encounter with our tribe. This is a place every Sunday that we invest in voicing a favorite high of the week, discuss any challenges, a low from the week, and we communicate what the week looks like for everyone by walking through the schedule of the week. This helps with identifying the different parts of our week that we need to work together on so that our home can flow with more peace and togetherness. It gives expectations, including the kids in the process, and helps with connection.
Some family investment nights/activities we value:
- Board game night: Yahtzee and dominoes are two of our favorites
- Pizza/movie night: homemade pizza is fun and we also love changing up which place we get pizza at and choosing a movie for the night
- Art/craft night: YouTube is great for online painting tutorials and we will have art supplies set up and participate in some creative time all drawing together
- Movement night: this is time where we are outside moving together. This can be finding a hiking trail to explore, family bikes, walk, or swimming in Summer months.
- Music night: kids have loved learning ukulele recently, so carving out time for learning on music app together or just pulling up different music together and having a fun family dance party. If you have game systems, we like dance party games like Just Dance and having some competition time
- Bake off night: partner up and do a theme bake off. You can gather friends/neighbors to come taste and judge when you are finish.
- Cultural night: pick different food genres in your area and support local restaurants.
- Service night: invest in a family service project, volunteering together.
- Passion night: my kids are a year apart and are all interested in similar activities, but we love giving this time for one kid at a time to pick the activity that we do as a family. This allows them to share a passion with the whole family and we get to learn more about that family member. Then the next time, another kid gets to choose until we have made it through all the family members.
- Activity night: a time where we have saved up to invest in fun activity out time together. This may be bowling, rock climbing, jump zone, laser tag, etc.
- Explore night: this is a place where we travel in the area and explore a place that maybe we have not been to in a while or have never experienced. This helps us learn our city even better and gives some fun time in exploration together.
- Community night: a time where we intentionally invite another family over and invest in an activity together
