Page 2Module 5- Family
FAMILY TIME
The concept of Family Time was started by the Million Dollar Round Table in America in 1976, and was seen not as public relations but as a public service. This service has grown with the publication of the Family Time book, as well as many other projects.
‘With grateful Thanks to Arthur E Kess whose presentation this section is based on.’
The Kess family or “Kess Klan” has always been a group of five that could be described as at least average, or above, in terms of family life. We did things together on occasion, had fun, and then did our own thing. Doing my own thing was the priority, although I realised the importance of a family unit being close. I grew up in a broken home, where Mom was both Mom and Dad. I can recall many times in my childhood thinking to myself, “I will never treat my kids like my stepfather treats my brother and me.” I was going to be the perfect father. Give my kids all of the things I never had. That was going to include time and love.
When Karen and I had our three K’s: Kristy, Kevin, and Katy, I was knee-deep in my business which entailed a lot of extracurricular activities. As our trio of children got older, Karen got very involved in church work, junior league, plus the increasing everyday chores of homemaker, mother and wife. Being active in all these different circles, it suddenly dawned on me that we were not spending enough quality time with our children. Coupled with my memory of growing up in a broken home, I did not want my kids to grow up away from me.
Then the dawn turned to light. I saw my then associate and now dear friend, Rulon Rasmussen, at a company convention. He asked me to be on a committee. Another committee? I didn’t need that! But when he explained the concept of the Family Time Committee, I was sold in one interview.
My first meeting with the national committee was more beneficial to me than I could have conceived. I saw a tape slide module and knew Family Time had a lot of application in my own home. So we read the Family Time book and made a commitment to spend time together. It went over really well at first and we had some fun. But when the children started getting busy with their own friends, with soccer and piano lessons, and their own activities, Family Time started to slide. Yes, we talked about it inside our home. Karen and I talked it up around Reno, Nevada. But the clincher came one year ago in Hawaii. Rulon said to me, “You guys are really doing great, but are you doing something together regularly? Like once a week?” We decided right there in Honolulu to restructure our commitment and designate one night each week specifically for Family Time.
What a difference that slight adjustment has made. We set aside Thursday as our night to be a family together. Late in the summer, Kristy got a phone call and was invited to spend Thursday night with a friend. Without any prompting, she said it was our family night and declined to go. Family night was special to her.
A key for the Kess family is that Family Time does not have to be anything fancy. It can be simple things like sitting around the dinner table for an extra half hour just talking. We can play fun card games, or even do something non-competitive like play a game we enjoy which is called the “UnGame.” When you land on a certain place on the board you get to answer a question about how you feel. One is an adult feeling, one is a child’s feeling, and the other is Christian beliefs. No-one can interrupt when a person answers their question. Nobody wins, which is good because we tend to be very competitive in our family. The Kess Klan highly recommends the “UnGame.”
I mentioned our family’s competitiveness. About two years ago I became a long-distance runner. After my family saw me finish my first marathon, they became runners also. In fact, our family competed in a five mile run last October which attracted nearly 1,000 runners. We finished the race hand-in-hand, the only family who ran that way. We trained together and made it a long-term Family Time project. For Christmas our very best friends gave each of us a T-shirt with “Kess Klan” on one side in bright blue, and our names listed next to that title with an appropriate check-mark identifying each of us.
During one of my training runs a thought occurred to me that was almost like a vision. I could see our family in slides, telling our own story to a very special song. The more I saw this idea coming into focus, the more I saw another Family Time project. So for three months we worked on this idea with a professional photographer friend. The result is the story of a family that believes in Family Time and has come a long way. And yet, we have just touched the tip of the iceberg. As the song in our presentation says, “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
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Robert H Harmon
One of my contributions to Family Time was that we had all of the kids and parents sit around the living room floor. We took a soda bottle and spun it, then the person who spun the bottle had to say something nice about the person that it ended up pointing to. And then that person would spin the bottle and say something nice about whoever it pointed to, and so on. I can tell you it really is refreshing to have your kids sitting around and saying nice things about each other. That is a lot of fun.
In my over 20 years of marriage, those 20 years have been sparked and kept together by a weekly family home evening. I would say that from this experience I found out several things to do and several things not to do to make that experience a success.
As I shared our family experiences with others and told them about this idea of spending a night together, I found a wide acceptance for the idea and a genuine desire on the part of parent to do it and do it right. So here are some do’s and don’ts on how to get started.
There is no doubt in my mind that strengthening the family unit is the most important contribution to the preservation of our society that any of us can make. I am also convinced that the best way to strengthen our family is to establish a regular family home evening where we can teach our children, do things with them, and have the opportunity to do something and give them something that no-one else can – our time. And the promise to those who hold a weekly family home evening is very clear. It is going to develop personal worth, family unity, love for our fellow men, trust in God. I believe with all my heart that the greatest blessing will come into our lives if we consistently hold and plan these family home evenings.
I think the most important thing you can do to make it successful is to set aside one night a week designated as family night. We have set aside Monday night. The children all know that nothing is to be planned on that evening that would interfere with our being together. I hold no business appointments or social contacts, the children don’t accept dates, they plan for their homework to be done before 6.00pm or after 9.00 pm. The big secret to a successful Family Time is setting aside this one night a week. It doesn’t matter what night, just as long as your family agrees. The rewards of doing it, I guarantee you, will far outweigh any sacrifices you may have to make in social and business activities.
The second thing I would say you should do to make it successful is, prepare. Unless you can do something that is going to involve all the members of your family and interest in topics or activities that they really like, you are going to have a tough time getting them to set aside that one night a week. In my opinion, the parents are responsible for this preparation. It is amazing to see how much the children imitate the parents in terms of time spent in preparing for family night. You know, if Dad’s in charge and he waits until he gets home from the office to try and figure out what he is going to do that night, you will see the children spending the same little bit of time in planning something when it is their turn. Ask yourself these questions: Do you spend as much time making your family and home successful as you do in being successful in your business? Are you devoting your best, most creative energies toward the most important thing in your life – your family?
Another element to a successful family home evening is to include a surprise element. Sometimes it is important to let the family know in advance just exactly what you are going to do. For example, our family loves to go miniature golfing together. I have five children and four of them are girls, and those girls are just as competitive as my son. We handicap the younger members of the family. We made up a traveling trophy of an old golf ball with the cover half-off and it is stuck on a tee which is stuck into a little rock with a gold plate on it, saying “Miniature Golf Champion.” The child who wins that gets to display it in their room until we have the next tournament. It is a lot of fun for the kids and they really look forward to it.
One of the don’ts that I would like to pass along is, don’t make lessons too long, especially if there are little children involved. There should be a lot of flexibility in the length of your Family Time together. Sometimes 15 or 20 minutes is all it’s going to take. With older children or adults you may want to take a full hour in discussing something of mutual interest. Good planning can shorten the time and heighten the interest.
Our most successful times have been when visual aids have been prepared. If you put a little preparation into this, visual aids and a flannel board story are just as much fun and interest to adults as they are to children.
Our attitude about Family Time probably has more to do with its success than anything else. It is not something we have to do but is rather something we want and get to do. Remember, the home is the first and most effective place for children to learn the lessons of life: truth, honour, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of the home in teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home. Another person put it this way: the greatest work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home. A prominent religious leader recently said that most fathers concentrate on material security for their children. Security stored up for this lifetime, with the world’s situation as it is, could and probably will, vanish. To really secure one’s children, give them the memory of a happy home life. This is a pattern, a blueprint for them to follow, an image for them to create, an ideal for them to realise. In the twenty-second chapter of Proverbs we read, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart therefrom.” Family Time gives us the very best opportunity to do that.
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K Wayne Scott
I believe in the concept of Family Time because we have done it. The other day I went into the bedroom and one of our children was sitting on the floor looking through an album that we have. This album is one of the best things we have ever done. We put a family yearbook together each year, capturing our experiences and letting the kids help caption those pictures, along with news clippings as to what was happening around us when our family was making its own history. Our kids love to look back on our Family Time experiences together, so I know that it works.
Can you imagine for just one moment the tremendous insights that we could gain if there were time to ask each of you to share some specific thing that you had done in bringing your family along? That is what family society is all about. We are like a bunch of honeybees going around gathering pollen and sharing ideas with other people. Ideas are transferred from successful families to other families who might like to borrow the ideas, adapt them to their situation and then move with them. We say that the home is the basis of society, and if we really believe that, then we have to believe that the head of that family has a very important leadership role in society. We know that the more options that you are aware of, the more effective you can be as a leader in sizing up the situation and then dealing with it.
I will outline a couple of quick ideas. Sometimes girls seem to be on the losing end in families. I was speaking to a group one time and somebody said that her husband had come up with a Family Time idea that helped correct the situation in their home where they had one girl and four boys. The father was concerned about this because the boys kept making fun of the girl and she was just like the fifth wheel. So they talked about the importance of the thumb in respect of the five fingers on the hand. They taped everybody’s thumb down. Then they gave them some dessert for dinner requiring the use of a fork and said, “OK, you eat your dessert but you have to do it without your thumb.” They quickly made the point that the sister in the family was very important to the rest of the family. I thought that was a beautiful idea.
I learned of another situation where the home was a mess and had become an issue. We have that problem too with our kids letting things get messy around the home. We tried an idea and said to the kids, “When they built the Metro System in Washington, they brought some contractors in and asked them to look at the situation of the transportation problem in Washington. The group that came up with the best solution got the contract and went ahead with it. So tonight we are going to divide you into two teams to analyse the situation in our home and come up with solutions.” I had brought some large chart paper home from work and we had a delightful time with our kids, making an analysis of what we needed to do as a family to make our home more attractive. They were committed and it was a delightful Family Time experience. There are so many different options available.
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Lou Holtz
I think Family Time is important for a number of reasons. My Family Time is strictly the relationship between myself and my family. I know that when I have a good relationship with my family it enables me to function better at work. I can go to work with a clear head.
We have four children. When we had our first daughter I said to my wife, “Honey, we are going to raise the first perfect child this world has seen in 1,962 years.” She was going to be perfect. She was going to have manners, she was going to be quiet, she was going to have personality, she was going to have self-confidence. After that, we threw away the ‘book’ and everything else and tried to get rid of some of her inhibitions! The fourth child came along and just sort of raised herself, in a free atmosphere where you can just relate to everybody else in the family.
It is so important to be able to communicate. I think communication is the key to spending Family Time. Children and everyone else are not going to just communicate with you. You have to work at it. You may go home and for the first two weeks say, “I am going to communicate with my children.” The first thing you are probably going to say is, “What did you do today?” Answer, “Nothing.” “Are you sure you didn’t do anything?” “No.” You are going to get discouraged but you have to hang in there. It is going to happen. What we did was we played “interview”. We would all sit at the table. I would say, “This is Howard, who cares. I am right here at the home of KR Holtz. KR just had an exciting day today and he is going to tell all you listeners the most exciting thing that happened to him today. What happened to you today KR?” The answer, “Not much.” I would say, “Oh surely there had to be something. What was the most exciting thing that happened to you?” The more you talk, pretty soon they will bring it out and start talking to you. But it didn’t come easy. It can’t be a one shot thing. Then finally, “Hey Dad, let me tell you what happened to me today. I’ve been waiting all day to tell you.” You do this and hang in there, and then they are going to do it to you. “What happened to you today Dad? What was the most exciting thing that happened to you? How did your day go?” It is second nature when you start talking about what they did. “What is the worst thing that happened to you today? What made you unhappy? What made you happy?” Ask them questions and probe and they will talk, but it isn’t going to come easy. I guarantee I can now walk in the house and my children will say, “How was your day?” We sit down at the table and say, “What exciting thing happened to you today?” Be prepared for it. On the way home plan on what you are going to talk about with your children.
I had difficulty communicating with my wife. When I walked in, all I wanted was peace and quiet, a drink and the newspaper. I didn’t want anything else. All my wife wanted was the same thing our dog wanted! She wanted a kind word, a smile and a friendly touch, and that was not what I wanted to give her. When I went home and was not in a real good mood I just wanted peace and quiet. It is all about communication. Caring about someone. Once you establish the line of communications everything else can happen.
I now have three teenagers. I was not one that was with my children from the time they were born and all the way up. We did not establish our lines of communication until about three or four years ago because I was too busy going here and there. It can be done, but you have to work at it.
Three teenage children always want something. When it is something that I think is really worthwhile, I make them first read a book. “Ok, you want this dress for the dance, fair enough. I tell you what, read this book.” And I have them read a book on positive thinking or something else to challenge their minds. Afterwards we discuss it. They are going to get the dress anyway, but it is getting them to do things and then be able to communicate.
We think we have so long to mould our childrens’ lives. Until the age of seven children don’t really understand what you are saying. Until they reach the age of reason, they don’t know what is going on. When they reach about 15 they stop listening! So you really only have about eight years. You have to make maximum use of that time.
When spending Family Time we do things that both the children and we like. I think the worst thing is when someone says, “I am going to do this because I think I ought to do it as a father.” I can’t do that. I hate to fish. I can’t stand to take the fish off the hook. I don’t want to go fishing. Now, my boys love to fish so they go fishing with their friends. There are enough other things that I like and they will also enjoy. It’s a matter of spending time with them. It is the greatest thing in the world and it is the only way you are ever going to establish a good line of communication.
When I used to give talks a long time ago, I used to talk about raising children. One of my favourite stories is about the father who came home and was too busy to spend time with his five year old son. The little boy kept bugging him saying, “Play with me Dad.” The father said, “It’s been a long hard day, beat it son.” The boy persisted and finally the father took a magazine with the map of the world on the cover. He ripped the map into about eight pieces, gave it to his five year old son and said, “Son, you go and put this together, then come back and we will spend some time together.” He figured it would take him at least eight or nine years to re-assemble the map of the world. No more than five minutes later the boy was back with the map assembled. The father said, “That is fantastic. How did you do that at age five?” The boy replied, “Dad, on the other side is a picture of a boy. You put the boy together properly and the world will come out properly.”
I have had to work at being a good father. There isn’t anything more important in this world than your family. You won’t realise that until you have all the money and all the success in the world, but no family relationships. None of it is worth a darn except the relationship you have with your family.
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In the final analysis, do we choose our families or do our families choose us? You be the judge. The age-old question of who are we, where do we come from, and where are we going to, slowly unfolds as you walk the journey of life. Our creator imbued in us a freedom of choice and it is up to us to learn how to deal with inter-personal relationships with those around us who are either direct family or the greater family of humanity. Love, joy and happiness are not bought. They are earned. The gift of giving without expectation is a basic human trait and we often neglect to listen to everything around us , and enjoy every moment possible during our lives.
There is a saying that “no man is an island” meaning that we should learn to interact with our families and fellow human beings to enrich each others lives.
Awareness will switch the light on in your brain that we are a community of souls that need each other to create and fulfil our potential from birth to death.