Advice

QUALITY TIME - YOUR FEEDBACK

CFN members share their family lives and approaches to spending time together

Income sacrifice has helped integrate our lives

In response to your request for feedback on the issue of quality time with the family:
I do not believe there are easy answers here - whatever happens, a sacrifice is required.
The question is: who makes the sacrifice? Either we do as parents for the family's benefit
or the family does for the individual parent's benefit or some external organisation, work or church.

I have been married to Sandra for 17 years and am approaching my 40th birthday.
We have four children: Adam (8), Mary (11), Sarah (14) and Ruth (15). I am the network manager at Bingley Grammar School, supporting 2,000 users, and a deacon at Bingley Baptist Church with responsibility for property and family outreach.

I'm also the treasurer of the PTFA at our primary school, and Sandra and myself are currently directors of an out of school club that we are setting up. My wife is involved in doing a variety of cleaning and gardening jobs. She is part of the leadership team for our parent toddler group, a school governor and voluntary classroom assistant. We do not drive.

That gives a bit of backgound to our lives.

With such a spread of ages, it is quite often difficult to keep everyone happy. Holidays for the whole family are not viable at present due to different needs and tastes. We probably manage to sit round the same table for dinner two or three times a week. Each child is different, and sometimes it feels like we have two families!

We make ourselves accessible to our children at all times. One of us is always in the home at all times. We involve the children in our tasks, so Ruth helps me run the Saturday Morning parent toddler group.

Each one of them will at different times join us as we go shopping. Once a fortnight I will take Adam out for a day's cycling or a weekend's camping.

We make time for each child so that they feel special. We take an interest in our children's friends.

The sacrifice we choose to make is that we live on a lower income than we could raise.
I am the main income-earner, Sandra's income is negligible.

We are fortunate in that all our children are growing in their relationship with God. It helps.

Ruth and Sarah will often natter with us when the younger two have gone to bed.

From September we are going to try and have our midday meal together, all except Adam. This is possible because we now live five minutes walk away from school.

Two years ago I changed jobs, previously I worked a 10+ hour day with some travelling nationally. Work, home and church were three separate worlds - now our whole lives are much more integrated.

The change in lifestyle has had major benefits for our family life.

I am not certain how much of this is answering your question!

Take care
David Fisher

CFN says: Thanks David for being so honest and detailed about your family life! We're sure God is honouring the changes you've made. It's surely true that the thing most children want from their parents is themselves - their time, their support, their friendship. (And a little cash comes in handy from time to time! :) It was Rob Parsons who pointed out that there are unlikely to be many fathers whose last words would be: "I wish I'd spent more time at the office ..."

Building happy family memories

I was interested to read your comments about spending family time together - here's what happens in the Wilson household at the moment:

We have four kids with a reasonably wide age span: Tom is 11, Jessie is 9, Will is 6 and Alice is 3, but we do try to make time to be together as a family during the week - while we still can!

We all eat together round the table in the early evening on Mondays to Thursdays - this is easier at present as neither Graham nor I are in paid work at the moment, but even when I was working, the children would have a snack to keep them going when they came home from school until we all sat down to eat together when I got home.

This works at the moment because the children tend to go to activities immediately after school, rather than later in the evening, but it's a good time to chat about what has been happening at school and what we've all been doing.

We tend to watch TV together for an hour or two after that (Star Trek, Captain Scarlet, TOTP2 or the dreaded Simpsons) and find that works out OK because even with the differing age ranges, the two older children can sit and watch their progs, and Graham and I can sit and read to the younger ones or they'll play with each other/on their own.

We try to make sure we spend time together as a family at weekends too - if we're not visiting or having relatives to stay we often go for a walk and take a picnic on Saturdays (a cheap day out with lots of fresh air and scenery - we live in Birmingham so are quite near to lots of great countryside, especially in Shropshire, Worcester/Hereford, Warwickshire etc.) This inevitably starts with a chorus of disapproval from most if not all of our kids, but thankfully they always end the day by saying they're glad they went and enjoyed it!

We both have happy memories of family picnics when we were kids, so hopefully our kids will too!

On Fridays and Saturdays we usually eat after the kids have gone to bed with friends or alone.

Sunday lunchtimes are also family times (after church, which so far we still attend together), usually with the extended family/older relatives and we try to watch TV together at teatime. The kids eat with each other at teatime as Sunday evenings are for Graham and I to flop and prepare for the week ahead.

At the moment we only have one TV which is in the lounge (apart from an old B/W portable which Tom uses if he's desperate to watch footie!), so we still have to compromise and the kids have to learn to give and take with each other - and us!! - about what they watch.

Our PC is in a central area near the kitchen downstairs, so the children will often play together on that too.

We feel it's important to encourage joint family activities at this stage, although that does sometimes mean they cannot join some clubs or visit friends at weekends - but I figure they see them all week, so they won't miss too much!

I do sometimes wonder whether the kids may be missing out - we don't tend to encourage sleepovers for example, because space in our 3-bed house is already at a premium, and they don't have a Playstation or Gameboy, but they all get on together really well (barring the usual spats!) and I hope that closeness will endure, even when they start to want to do more separately, as I'm sure they will soon!

Thanks for a great resource in CFN!

Jane Wilson

CFN says: Thanks for the insight into the Wilson family, Jane! Good ideas for cheap days out are always worth sharing, as well as strategies to handle wide age ranges and competing tastes! If you've got ideas to share, tips to pass on or issues you'd like some help with, mail us or even better, post your thoughts on the Bulletin Board - and let other CFN members respond. Someone will be facing exactly the same problem, or will be glad of the suggestion from your own experience.

Eating together helped us a lot

Our children are now 18 and 20, but thought you might be interested in how we created family time together.

Firstly, we always ate our evening meal together. We still do. Times have sometimes needed to be changed to accomodate clubs etc. but we have made this time sacrosanct, with no TV allowed. Our answerphone takes calls and before we got that we didn't answer the phone while eating. We made sure that our children knew that time was valued.

Also, one evening a week was family time which no-one was allowed to opt out of (except emergencies). Sometimes we stayed in and played games. Sometimes we watched a film together or hired a video. Sometimes we went out, even if it was a trip to the beach and an ice cream.

As the children got older this stopped but my friends were amazed at how long it continued for. Our children still come on holiday with us and this year we are all having holidays apart but one week together.

We have a very good relationship with our boys and had little teenage rebellion. They no longer come to church and both do things we'd rather they didn't, but we get on very well as a family and I know they'll come back to God one day.

I certainly don't advocate us as a perfect family but I'm sure eating together helped us a lot.

I do enjoy reading the newsletter and magazine. You're doing a great job - keep it up!

Debbie Kryvoblocki

CFN says: Thanks for the encouragement, Debbie! There's something special about eating together that maybe echoes Jesus' Passover meal with his disciples. Relationships are strengthened, lives reconnect after the day's work and there's time to relate to one another. No wonder Alpha has gone down so well!

Scriptural standards for family life

Always delighted to have your newsletter. Living in the kind of society as we do these days it is always good to know there are those who still believe in the Scriptural standard for family life and the biblical home pattern. May your ministry continue to be a blessing to many.

Ron Salter, Kircaldy

CFN says: Thanks, Ron. If we can help Christian families grow closer to one another and to the Lord, we'll be happy.

My mum and I chew over the sermon!

Hello.

I'm Chris. My mum is a member of the CFN and we were reading the CFN newsletter together. In response to your query about the quality time spent with parents, I have to say my mum does quite well. This morning we were discussing last night's sermon about the nature of truth.

This is an excellent way of taking the essential aspects of the sermon and using them to affect one's life. This time spent with my mother is a good way of sharing our faith and growing through encouraging each other.

My dad's a workaholic but we'll not talk about that!

Chris Ware, Sheffield

CFN says: Keep up the theological discussions, Chris!

© Christian Family Network
is run by CPO, supported by
Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting,
Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.


		QUALITY TIME - YOUR FEEDBACK CFN members share their family lives and approaches to spending time together Income sacrifice has helped integrate our lives In response to your request for feedback on the issue of quality time with the family: I do not believe there are easy answers here - whatever happens, a sacrifice is required. The question is: who makes the sacrifice? Either we do as parents for the family's benefit or the family does for the individual parent's benefit or some external organisation, work or church. I have been married to Sandra for 17 years and am approaching my 40th birthday. We have four children: Adam (8), Mary (11), Sarah (14) and Ruth (15). I am the network manager at Bingley Grammar School, supporting 2,000 users, and a deacon at Bingley Baptist Church with responsibility for property and family outreach. I'm also the treasurer of the PTFA at our primary school, and Sandra and myself are currently directors of an out of school club that we are setting up. My wife is involved in doing a variety of cleaning and gardening jobs. She is part of the leadership team for our parent toddler group, a school governor and voluntary classroom assistant. We do not drive. That gives a bit of backgound to our lives. With such a spread of ages, it is quite often difficult to keep everyone happy. Holidays for the whole family are not viable at present due to different needs and tastes. We probably manage to sit round the same table for dinner two or three times a week. Each child is different, and sometimes it feels like we have two families! We make ourselves accessible to our children at all times. One of us is always in the home at all times. We involve the children in our tasks, so Ruth helps me run the Saturday Morning parent toddler group. Each one of them will at different times join us as we go shopping. Once a fortnight I will take Adam out for a day's cycling or a weekend's camping. We make time for each child so that they feel special. We take an interest in our children's friends. The sacrifice we choose to make is that we live on a lower income than we could raise. I am the main income-earner, Sandra's income is negligible. We are fortunate in that all our children are growing in their relationship with God. It helps. Ruth and Sarah will often natter with us when the younger two have gone to bed. From September we are going to try and have our midday meal together, all except Adam. This is possible because we now live five minutes walk away from school. Two years ago I changed jobs, previously I worked a 10+ hour day with some travelling nationally. Work, home and church were three separate worlds - now our whole lives are much more integrated. The change in lifestyle has had major benefits for our family life. I am not certain how much of this is answering your question! Take care David Fisher CFN says: Thanks David for being so honest and detailed about your family life! We're sure God is honouring the changes you've made. It's surely true that the thing most children want from their parents is themselves - their time, their support, their friendship. (And a little cash comes in handy from time to time! :) It was Rob Parsons who pointed out that there are unlikely to be many fathers whose last words would be: "I wish I'd spent more time at the office ..." Building happy family memories I was interested to read your comments about spending family time together - here's what happens in the Wilson household at the moment: We have four kids with a reasonably wide age span: Tom is 11, Jessie is 9, Will is 6 and Alice is 3, but we do try to make time to be together as a family during the week - while we still can! We all eat together round the table in the early evening on Mondays to Thursdays - this is easier at present as neither Graham nor I are in paid work at the moment, but even when I was working, the children would have a snack to keep them going when they came home from school until we all sat down to eat together when I got home. This works at the moment because the children tend to go to activities immediately after school, rather than later in the evening, but it's a good time to chat about what has been happening at school and what we've all been doing. We tend to watch TV together for an hour or two after that (Star Trek, Captain Scarlet, TOTP2 or the dreaded Simpsons) and find that works out OK because even with the differing age ranges, the two older children can sit and watch their progs, and Graham and I can sit and read to the younger ones or they'll play with each other/on their own. We try to make sure we spend time together as a family at weekends too - if we're not visiting or having relatives to stay we often go for a walk and take a picnic on Saturdays (a cheap day out with lots of fresh air and scenery - we live in Birmingham so are quite near to lots of great countryside, especially in Shropshire, Worcester/Hereford, Warwickshire etc.) This inevitably starts with a chorus of disapproval from most if not all of our kids, but thankfully they always end the day by saying they're glad they went and enjoyed it! We both have happy memories of family picnics when we were kids, so hopefully our kids will too! On Fridays and Saturdays we usually eat after the kids have gone to bed with friends or alone. Sunday lunchtimes are also family times (after church, which so far we still attend together), usually with the extended family/older relatives and we try to watch TV together at teatime. The kids eat with each other at teatime as Sunday evenings are for Graham and I to flop and prepare for the week ahead. At the moment we only have one TV which is in the lounge (apart from an old B/W portable which Tom uses if he's desperate to watch footie!), so we still have to compromise and the kids have to learn to give and take with each other - and us!! - about what they watch. Our PC is in a central area near the kitchen downstairs, so the children will often play together on that too. We feel it's important to encourage joint family activities at this stage, although that does sometimes mean they cannot join some clubs or visit friends at weekends - but I figure they see them all week, so they won't miss too much! I do sometimes wonder whether the kids may be missing out - we don't tend to encourage sleepovers for example, because space in our 3-bed house is already at a premium, and they don't have a Playstation or Gameboy, but they all get on together really well (barring the usual spats!) and I hope that closeness will endure, even when they start to want to do more separately, as I'm sure they will soon! Thanks for a great resource in CFN! Jane Wilson CFN says: Thanks for the insight into the Wilson family, Jane! Good ideas for cheap days out are always worth sharing, as well as strategies to handle wide age ranges and competing tastes! If you've got ideas to share, tips to pass on or issues you'd like some help with, mail us or even better, post your thoughts on the Bulletin Board - and let other CFN members respond. Someone will be facing exactly the same problem, or will be glad of the suggestion from your own experience. Eating together helped us a lot Our children are now 18 and 20, but thought you might be interested in how we created family time together. Firstly, we always ate our evening meal together. We still do. Times have sometimes needed to be changed to accomodate clubs etc. but we have made this time sacrosanct, with no TV allowed. Our answerphone takes calls and before we got that we didn't answer the phone while eating. We made sure that our children knew that time was valued. Also, one evening a week was family time which no-one was allowed to opt out of (except emergencies). Sometimes we stayed in and played games. Sometimes we watched a film together or hired a video. Sometimes we went out, even if it was a trip to the beach and an ice cream. As the children got older this stopped but my friends were amazed at how long it continued for. Our children still come on holiday with us and this year we are all having holidays apart but one week together. We have a very good relationship with our boys and had little teenage rebellion. They no longer come to church and both do things we'd rather they didn't, but we get on very well as a family and I know they'll come back to God one day. I certainly don't advocate us as a perfect family but I'm sure eating together helped us a lot. I do enjoy reading the newsletter and magazine. You're doing a great job - keep it up! Debbie Kryvoblocki CFN says: Thanks for the encouragement, Debbie! There's something special about eating together that maybe echoes Jesus' Passover meal with his disciples. Relationships are strengthened, lives reconnect after the day's work and there's time to relate to one another. No wonder Alpha has gone down so well! Scriptural standards for family life Always delighted to have your newsletter. Living in the kind of society as we do these days it is always good to know there are those who still believe in the Scriptural standard for family life and the biblical home pattern. May your ministry continue to be a blessing to many. Ron Salter, Kircaldy CFN says: Thanks, Ron. If we can help Christian families grow closer to one another and to the Lord, we'll be happy. My mum and I chew over the sermon! Hello. I'm Chris. My mum is a member of the CFN and we were reading the CFN newsletter together. In response to your query about the quality time spent with parents, I have to say my mum does quite well. This morning we were discussing last night's sermon about the nature of truth. This is an excellent way of taking the essential aspects of the sermon and using them to affect one's life. This time spent with my mother is a good way of sharing our faith and growing through encouraging each other. My dad's a workaholic but we'll not talk about that! Chris Ware, Sheffield CFN says: Keep up the theological discussions, Chris! © Christian Family Network is run by CPO, supported by Care for the Family, Marriage Resource, Positive Parenting, Care, Women Alive, Christian Herald and many others.