Rhythms for Family Life

First, maybe you feel the same, I do not think I’m a great spouse, father, or friend.

I don’t mean that like “Woe is me…” – more so that I’m the personality type that I see gaps, areas of improvement, a long running list of things I could be doing differently and/or better. I will continue to experiment on various ways to become a better spouse, father, and friend.

To that end, this post is about sharing some of my family’s current rhythms in hopes that it helps others experiment too. Gives you some ideas. I also welcome your rhythms and ideas on this topic. Leave me a comment below or shoot me an email.

Have you ever given any thought to….

• When do you eat dinner as a family together?
• When do you get 1v1 time with each member of your family?
• When do you all hang out together?
• etc.

As our family morphed from just Rachel & I to include one… two… three… now four kiddos – having time to intentionally connect as a family became increasingly top of mind.

We had a choice… to veg in front of TV or to intentionally connect with one another. To let the business of life take over or prioritize ways that pull us back together as a family unit.

As an aside, I’m not aiming at TV here. We do have a TV. Not in the bedrooms or in our main living area. We made a choice to not focus our lives on endless TV; however, we do watch movies and shows pretty regularly.

That said, I want to dive into a handful of various things we currently do that, I think, help draw us together as a family.

1. Sundays (or rest days) are not meant to be rushed or stressful

For years we always prioritized the early services at church. Go for the 1.5hrs, get home, eat and have the rest of the day to do whatever.

Over the past handful of months, we’ve pivoted to not starting out Sunday in a rush to get out of the door.

We get up when we get up. Get ready and target getting to the 11am. It’s not perfect, our 10mo old sometimes is restless. But it’s better than stressing every single Sunday to get out of the door.

“Pretty sure” God doesn’t want you stressing over being at the 8am or 9am each week and sitting through service just frustrated.

2. Tuesdays are 1v1 time

With the growing complexity of the family, it became more difficult and important for me to find time with each person 1v1.

To try and solve part of that, each Tuesday of the month, after dinner, is reserved for 1v1 time with me and one of the kids.

e.g. First Tuesday = time with my First Child. Second Tuesday = Second Child, etc.

They’ve seemed to really appreciate that they know they’ll have special time with me. The other kids also seem to respect that too because they know the next week they’ll have time just us.

Here recently I discovered a side benefit of this approach. I was building a solar powered robot with my son, and I could hear my eldest daughter and youngest son in the other room playing together. In that moment I realized that by me having 1v1 time with my eldest son also enabled two of my other kids to have time together too.

3. Wednesdays are Game Night

My kids love playing games, so instead of defaulting to isolation and TV time… we decided to reserve Wednesday nights for Game Night.

At first, we struggled with deciding which game to play each week.

One kid wanted Monopoly while another one wanted Go Fish… eventually we came around to the idea of the kids cutting up a bunch of pieces of paper and each writing games on them.

We put them in an old tissue box and then each week, whoever’s week it is (e.g. the kid I have time with on that Tuesday), gets to pull from the tissue box and that’s the game we play.

There are probably 30 games or so in the box we’ve come up with. Anything from Chess, Connect4, Yahtzee, Monopoly, Go Fish, War… to Super Mario Kart tournament, wrestling, kickball, and hide & seek. Every now and again Rachel or I will add another in there and not tell the kids so it’s then a bigger surprise whenever it gets pulled.

Once a game is drawn, it goes into a ziplock bag so that it’s not drawn again until we empty the tissue box.

Over the last couple weeks we’ve played Scrabble Slam, Hide & Seek in the house, Mario Kart Tournament, and Monopoly Jr.

4. Fridays are Date Night

Growing up, my parents would have Tuesday nights for date nights. I don’t know if they went every Tuesday night… but here I am nearly out of the house for almost 20 years and I can remember Tuesday’s being date nights.

So… they either went on a lot of Tuesday dates OR they went on a few and made a REALLY big deal about it 🙂 I kid.

You don’t stop dating your spouse once you put a ring on the finger. Beyonce should update her song to something like “If you like it then you should put a ring on it… and pursue me the rest of my life”… I’m not sure how to make that catchy… but that’s the point here.

You pursue your bride constantly. Your kids grow up and move away, your bride is your ride or die.

When kids get added into the mix, it’s harder to prioritize time with your significant other. You quickly realize you need to budget not only for Restaurants but also for Babysitting. Double whammy. Longer term strategy here is your eldest becoming babysitter age 🙂

People have all sorts of excuses:

• Baby is breast feeding.
• Kid isn’t potty trained.
• Sports become your family’s new church.
• You’re exhausted at the end of the day.
• Babysitting costs money.
• House needs cleaning.
• Work is stressful.

We don’t make it out every week. We probably average 2 date nights a month in our current season of life. The main reason (excuse) is we have a 10-month-old that is still breast feeding and also doesn’t yet go to sleep too well on her own at bedtime.

To eliminate that excuse, we currently do two things:

1. Sometimes Rachel has a babysitter during the day & comes to have lunch with me at work.
2. When we can coordinate an afternoon/evening babysitter on Friday’s, I’ll try to wrap up around 4pm and we’ll do an early dinner together and get home by bedtime routines.

Go ahead and work Babysitting & Restaurants into your budget now.

5. Have a Family Calendar & put things on it.

We have a family shared calendar that I can see at work too.

For both Tuesday and Wednesday events, they’re on the calendar so I know whose week it is and also if something steps on it, I can proactively reschedule and discuss with the family ahead of time.

Just like I would at work, I tell people the reasons when something needs to move… why would my family be any different?

When we can coordinate babysitters and date nights, we put those on the calendar too.

In our minds, some things are “moveable” and some things are “delete-able”.

For example,

• 1v1 time w/ Kids is move-able. It’s going to happen each week regardless. If I’m traveling, I’ll make up for it later that week or sometime the following week or weekend.
• Game Night is delete-able, we’ll just pick up the next one the following Wednesday.

We also generally try to deploy “Whatever is put on the calendar first, wins.” – back to let your yes be yes principle we try to live by.

6. Dinner around the table each night

To me, there is something special about gathering around the table and eating. Quick catch up on how the day has went… a bunch of random chatter.

For us, usually around 5:30-6pm each evening, Dinner is on the table. Rachel is a fantastic meal planner and cook. Most nights she’s created something for us to enjoy. Every week or two I’ll cook on the grill.

• Mondays typically are Pasta nights (ravioli, spaghetti, lasagna, …)
• Tuesdays are Taco Tuesday (beef, chicken, fish)
• Wednesdays are “Simple” given we’re doing game night. (Hammie Sammies, Chicken Nug Salad)
• Thursdays are flex.
• Friday or Saturday are usually reserved for a Pizza Night (frozen or take home)
• Sunday after church is often Leftovers but sometimes your traditional Southern lunch (fried chicken, mashed potatoes… ham… kind of lunch).

7. Who sits where? and Who gets to pray?

The other nuance about eating around the dinner table, at least for us, is “who sits where?“. Rachel and I have our spots but then the two oldest kids often want to play the game of “I want to sit by …“. For that, we just created a rotation – Odd days are one, Even the other. Creating a system that they understand has taken the emotion and battle out of it.

The other “game” they often like playing is “Who gets to pray?“… for that we created another rotation.

• Sunday – Rachel starts the week
• Monday – Oldest
• Tuesday – Second Oldest
• Wednesday – Second Youngest
• Thursday – Baby (which currently I randomly pick someone)
• Friday or Saturday – Pizza Night = Daddy
• Whichever isn’t Pizza Night = Random/Math Problem for the kids

8. Lastly, our general daily routine is pretty set too:

Most every weekday, I wake up at 6am. This is typically about an hour before anyone else rises and I get to have some quiet time to myself. To read, drink coffee, write.

Rachel often gets up and going 7:30am or so.

Rest of the kids do not come out of their rooms until around 8am.

chaos ensues for the day… <- in a loving… caring… 4 children… 2 that are homeschooled & 2 in diapers kind of way…

I’m usually home by 5:30pm for dinner.

Come 7:30pm, Bedtime routines start. Basic process is -> get ready, quiet time/read books, pray.

• Two oldest generally have their routines down pat. Go to their rooms around 7:30pm, read and spin down by 8pm on their own.
• Our toddler is in the phase of dressing himself but still in diapers/pull-ups with us reading with him each evening.
• Our 10mo old needs her milk, rocking, and is currently in the phase of “may go to sleep by herself… may need cuddles”.

In the end

I share our current stage of day-in and day-out life so that it might give you some ideas. It’s not perfect… sometimes game nights are heated, or I completely space on a 1v1 night, or I’m spun up from work and just want to isolate.

We’re not perfect, we’re just trying 🙂