I read somewhere a while ago that we can’t be the “Fun Mom” all the time.  Our children need parents, not friends.  We must discipline and provide order and direction.  There will be time when they are grown to be friends with our children.  While I technically agree with much of this, I think sometimes we take it too far.

Lately, I have been spending a lot of time thinking of what kind of a mom I want to be and it comes down to this:  I want to be the fun mom. For them, and me.

I want to enjoy my family.  The more I think about it though, it is more than just wanting to be the fun mom because it sounds…fun.  I believe it is necessary to save our families from a negative culture.  If you want to form close relationships with your kids, be the fun mom.  If you want to bond your family together, be the fun mom.  If you want to enjoy your own life and have a family that doesn’t just get through life, but thrives, you need to be the fun mom.

Parents spend so much family time being enforcers of rules and disciplinarians.  We need to take the opportunities to do the fun things too.

Go to the movie.  Buy the ice cream cone.  Take an hour to play with play dough or build Legos with your kids.  Sometimes it is more important to spend the quality time, than to do that thing you “should” get done.  They will remember the time you did something out of the routine.  It obviously can’t happen all the time, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it happen when we can.

If we are thinking about it logically, we as parents want to enjoy our lives too, not just work, cook, clean, homeschool (in my case), and repeat.  That kind of cycle has the potential to make us resentful of the very people and life that we love.  Let’s make our homes places that we want to be.  Be honest.  If you were your child, would you want to hang out with you when you are stressed out, grumpy, and constantly ordering everyone around?

I am not advocating being your child’s “best friend” or not disciplining them when they need correction.  I am, however, saying that whenever we can, we should be someone that they enjoy being with – someone who is always there for them and who wants to be with them and who is fun to be with.  Rather than someone who only tells them what they are doing wrong, or what they need to be doing.  We should be doing fun, joyful things with the people we love.  When you pour love on the people in your lives, it usually produces joy and relationship with those people.  It is hard to be negative to someone that you know genuinely shows you love on a daily basis.

Parents sometimes segregate their lives in ways that can hurt their families.  When we are at home with our kids we often slip into “getting stuff done mode.” Then we have our fun with adult friends or on date nights with our spouses.  It is good and healthy for us to nourish our friendships and our relationship with our spouse, but do your kids believe – do they know – that you enjoy spending time with them too?  That they are a joy to you rather than a burden?  Society often fixates on what kids cost in time, energy, and money.  But God sees our children as the blessings that they are. They add to our lives, rather than subtract from them.  Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

We need to overcome the negative cultural vibe and acknowledge the incredible blessing that children are to a family.

I hate to think that my kids would ever think of themselves as a burden, rather than a blessing – but this is the message that they see often in our world.  They see this portrayed on television, movies, books, social media – our culture is focused on self.  Anything, or anyone who gets is the way of self gratification and self fulfillment is seen as a negative.

We know that this is not truth.  But I am not sure that I always communicate the truth to my children very well.  I am not sure that I express their full worth and what a joy they are to me.  Especially when I am harping on them to get their schoolwork done, do their household chores, or practice their extracurricular activities.

I think that homeschoolers deal with this in double measure as mom or dad is not just enforcing the household stuff, but the school stuff as well.  They also need to be told how much we enjoy going places with them, or hanging out with them. We need to actively seek to do fun things with them, as we would with anyone we want to spend time with.  We need to provide a “home,” not just a house.  A refuge from the outside world where they can just be and be loved.

Here are some practical ideas for engaging your children in a fun, relaxed way.  Try and make sure it is something you all enjoy or they will feel the lack of enthusiasm.  It is OK to occasionally play super hero figurines, but if you aren’t having fun too, you probably won’t want to play with your child very often.  When my boys were little, my husband bought me a Wonder Woman figurine so I would enjoy playing pretend with them.  Still not my favorite activity, but it sure helped to be able to have the magic lasso of truth.  Use your imagination and make it a good experience for everyone.

11 Ideas for Family Fun

1.  Play a video game with them.  I can’t stand the new games – the screens make me motion sick.  But I can rock Ms. Packman or old school Super Mario.  And my kids LOVE playing any video game at any time.  They don’t discriminate.  Retro is good, right?
2.  Double your exercise time with your family time and play some Just Dance.  As long as we can all laugh at ourselves.  Two birds, one really uncoordinated stone.
3.   Have a slumber party in the living room complete with popcorn and a fun movie.  You can even try an old flick with them for something different.  My kids actually liked The Ugly Dachshund, The Court Jester, The First Olympics, and The Absent Minded Professor.  Who knew?  There are so many options.  Make a list as a family of classic movies that everyone should see.  To be culturally relevant, of course. 😉
4.   Play a board game as a family.  Some good options are Settlers of Catan, Life, Monopoly (as long as you all have even tempers), and Sequence.  That weird game with the dental mouthpieces.  Even Candyland can be fun – especially if you have theme snacks you can dole out when people land on the picture game spaces.  Bring on the gumdrops.
5.   Bake something sweet together.  Chocolate can bridge pretty much any age gap – just saying.
6.   Have a tea party if they are young – take them out for a coffee or cocoa just because (maybe even stay up extra late) if they are older.
7.   Go for a walk.  Explore a part of your neighborhood or town that you haven’t before.  Or just walk.  And listen to what they have to say.  Sometimes moving the legs loosens the lips.
8.   Go get a dinner at a favorite restaurant or fast food joint.  Or have a food pantry/chopped challenge at home and make something for dinner out of weird ingredients that you have on hand.
9.   Find a place to go swimming or hot-tubbing.  Maybe go to a water park, a gym, or a local lake/ocean.  Especially if you normally just supervise and don’t get wet – get in the water with them.  You can splash them back when they tease you for being too chicken to go down the big water slide or jump off the diving board.
10.   Go window shopping.  My kids favorite place to window shop?  The pet store.  (I am pretty sure you get bonus points if you bring home the 25 cent goldfish.  And the fish tank.  And the food.  Pro tip:  A 25 cent goldfish is actually kind of pricey.)
11.   Wake them up super early and take them out to breakfast.  This would floor my kids.  I hate getting up early.  They would never see it coming.  (Side note:  Once we woke our kids up at 5 a.m. to take them on a surprise family vacation.  In the early morning mental fog they literally thought that the apocalypse was upon us and we were fleeing for our lives.  We have some pretty dramatic older children.  It took a few full minutes of convincing before they realized we were actually doing a fun thing.  It was pretty darn funny for the parents and a huge, joyful blessing to my children when they figured it out.)

Don’t grow distant from your precious children.  Play with your kids, spend time with your teens.  Include them in your life.  Realize the joy that they are.  I am trying to make a new habit of doing at least one unexpected fun thing a week.  It may not happen every week, but I am going to try.  Will you join me?  Take the time – you won’t regret it.  If you have any other ideas for family fun, please leave a comment as I am always looking for new, fun things to do with my tribe.

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