Making Time Together Meaningful

The Holidays are right around the corner and it can be a busy time for many families – between attending Christmas concerts, parties and family events; the festivities are over before you know it and you can feel like it was one big whirlwind. Here are our top 5 tips for making the most of this festive season with your loved ones.

Let them help plan

What makes you feel more special as a child than your voice being heard? It’s exciting when your parents allow you to make decisions!

When everyone is involved in planning you’ll have more opportunity to experience special moments. Allow everyone’s personality to shine through this holiday season by giving each member of the family a designated task they can plan; perhaps it’s the venue, food or the choice of movie.

Creating shared experiences ensures that you have memories that last a life-time.

Family Trivia

Older generations of family have many fascinating stories that unlock so many hidden gems from days gone by. Ask everyone to contribute facts about themselves and enjoy uncovering shared family history.

Additionally, the children in your family can contribute too; this is a great way for extended family to learn about the younger members of the family!

Share an activity

Close bonds are formed when we share experiences with others; it’s also a great opportunity to teach children about teamwork, problem-solving and creating strong relationships.

Shared activities also shifts the focus from each individual to the activity at hand, creating less pressure and resulting in time together that is genuine and not engineered or contrived.

Great activities to share together are; Games’ Night, Family PJ Movie Night, Christmas Plays, make-your-own-pottery and planning/cooking a meal together.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

The desire to create a picture-perfect holiday season can mean that stress levels are increased at this time of year. It’s ironic that our quest to create a perfect stress-free family Christmas can result in the exact opposite!

The secret to a truly stress-free holiday is to not sweat the small stuff. We get upset about things that won’t matter a year from now; or even a week from now.

But there is perfection in the imperfect and memories are made in the mess. No one truly minds if the gravy is lumpy or the gifts got a little crumpled in the car during the drive over. It’s the relationship that means the most and when we let go of the quest for perfection those are the Christmases’ that we remember as being the best ones.

Work can wait

It’s important to create boundaries around work; you need to be a team player at work, but you also need to be a team player at home too.

Make time away from work, time off. This looks different for everyone but putting boundaries around when you respond to emails, texts and phone calls (unless they are life-or-death emergencies) carves out time for your loved ones and demonstrates that they are important to you. It’ll still be there tomorrow, but your opportunity to make memories might not.

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