Parents Seeking Better Relationships with Their Children: Experiences Required

When you think back on your most treasured birthdays, holidays, and other special times with your family when you were growing up, you probably remember the experiences you had with them more than you remember the gifts they gave you.

Granted, I got this line from a guy trying to sell me a timeshare, but I think he’s got a good point. Certainly there are some very special gifts we’ve each received that are particularly memorable, but generally it’s hard for us even to recall what we received on our birthdays even just a year ago.

So why do we (myself very much included) continually invest in more and more stuff for our children? These things have a tendency to clutter not only our homes but also our minds and our spirits, whether we realize it or not. This is not to say that we should never buy material things for our children, but we might want to consider investing more in memory-making experiences with them instead. Short on ideas? Try some of these recommendations:

• Instead of buying gifts for each other, use the money to take a special trip together.
• Give a membership to the zoo, aquarium, museum, or YMCA.
• Give movie passes or restaurant gift cards.
• Pay for dance, piano, gymnastics, martial arts, or some other sort of lessons. Or pay for the child to participate on a sports team.
• Go camping.
• Plant a garden together. Involve the children in the plowing, planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. Then cook together using the ingredients you’ve grown in your garden. Let the children create their own cookbooks, writing down their personal favorite recipes.
• Go fishing.
• Pay attention to what your child is interested in and then take him/her on an experience pertaining to that subject (ex: nature walk, bookstore/library, museum, park, etc.).
• Have family pizza and movie nights. Let each family member make his/her own personal pizza. Let the kids take turns choosing the movie for the night.
• Cook together–especially for Christmas, Easter, and family picnics.
• Have family board game nights.
• Attend a concert, ballet, play, or some other type of performance.
• Have “Black-Out Night.” Turn off all electrical items, including the lights. Have the family all sit in the same room together and use candlelight to read books, play games, and eat dinner–cooked on the grill, not the stove!
• Go bowling.
• Play miniature golf.
• Go skating.
• Go on a bike ride.
• Put together a large jigsaw puzzle.
• Write a story, poem, or song together.
• Look at old family photographs, scrapbooks, or DVDs/videos.
• Over the course of a few weeks or months, let each member of the family have a turn to choose a restaurant for the family to go and eat at together.
• Go to the state fair or to an amusement park.
• Attend a sporting event. (And it doesn’t have to be a professional event. Take advantage of local high school and college sporting events.)
• Make craft projects together (holiday decorations, cards or gifts for others, etc.).
• Take up a new hobby or learn a new skill together.
• Do service projects together in your community.

Besides making great memories with your children through these experiences, you’ll find that they will help you grow in your relationship with each other, and communication will be enhanced. You might even learn something new about each other!

Admittedly, it can be a lot easier just to go out and buy a new toy or object for your child. It’s nice to buy special things for them, and there’s certainly a time and place for this. (Confession: I love buying things for my kids!) But before you fork out the cash for the latest and greatest plastic thingamajig that you will only want to put in your yard sale a year from now, consider investing that money instead in an experience that both you and your child will remember many years from now.