Have you ever noticed that you can find a lot of material on how to get married, but very little on how to stay married? What can a family do to increase their bonds? There are three aspects to family life which can be used to strengthen it: family meals, family projects and family rituals.
The Family Meal - The family meal is a recurrent and fundamental aspect of the family's life. And what happens in its course is more than a dietary procedure. It is while seated around the dining-room table that the family may be at its greatest ease, both physically and psychologically; that it is held together for definite periods of time; that it becomes engrossed in common objectives; and that it has fewer distractions than at most other times.
Family Projects - If most contemporary families no longer work together in the common task of operating a farm or small business, there are many leisure-time projects in which they may engage as family groups. Modern life is rich with a variety of such projects that are available, and the automobile combines with the shortened working day and week to make feasible participation in them.
The list of such projects is endless: a family orchestra, a camping trip, a family basketball team, a family art exhibit, barber-shop harmony around the piano, father-son workshops in the basement, a family reading circle, the breeding of dogs or other animals, church activity, a golfing foursome, family games, a flower or vegetable garden.
Family Rituals - There is a form of family behavior which is so recurrent as to suggest the term habit and yet it has additional aspects or features not usually associated with that term. They are habits, plus. The plus includes two things. First, the repetition has to be exact. It isn't enough to do the thing about or approximately the same way each time; it has to be done exactly the same way. Second, this exact repetition is accompanied by a definite sense of approval. This is the right, the proper, way.
These habits plus are called family rituals, and are patterns of family life, noticeable for their precise repetition, even to the point of becoming quite rigid, like a rite or ceremony in religious worship. Rituals are of many different kinds. They grow out of the family's collective experience, and may develop in connection with almost any aspect of family life. Most of them, however, cluster around holidays, anniversaries, meals, vacations, religious worship, entertainment, and group ways of using leisure time. Often they are a heritage from the preceding generation, modified perhaps to fit into altered circumstances.
Following the above guidelines, family life can be greatly strengthened if a little time and effort are put into family meals, projects and rituals. (Adopted From http://www.articlesbase.com)
