In my post on practical ideas for helping you have enough of you to go around, I said the majority of the activities we participate in are things our entire family can enjoy. Karyn asked me to elaborate, so this post is that elaboration.
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WARNING: This is either going to be one of those posts you love, or one of those posts you hate. Either way, I hope I offer some food for thought here.
Outside activities for members of our household are put under close scrutiny before we allow participation in them. We don’t just do things to do things.
So, what guidelines do we try to stick to when evaluating an activity? Here’s a generalized list…
1. Is the activity God-honoring?
There are lots of things to do out there; however, not everything is glorifying to the Lord. I won’t try to discern for you what is and is not glorifying, but I will suggest this verse as a starting point:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Phil 4:8
2. Does the activity have “lasting merit.”
An example of this is Scouts. In our family, Scouting is a worthy activity. Our oldest son has learned an incredible amount of pertinent and beneficial information through Scouts, and even saved his younger brother from choking because of what he had learned as a Scout.
There are other activities we don’t feel have lasting merit; and therefore, do not want to spend our precious time participating in those things when there are so many better activities out there.
A good question to ask yourself is:
20 years from now will the fact that a family member participated in this activity prove to be beneficial to them or someone else in some way?
3. Does the activity correlate with the family member’s particular giftings?
God has blessed each and every one of us with gifts that can benefit the body of Christ. We should pursue excellence in those giftings. We strive to hone the gifts our children were born with in order to “train them up in the way they should go.” (Prov 22:6)
This goes for adults as well as children. If I had a knack for arranging flowers (which I don’t), our family might consider it wise for me to take a class on floral arranging, make up arrangements to beautify our church, and further that aspect of myself in order to give of myself in my particular gifting (and possibly pass that knowledge on to other family members in the process). However, much of this could be done without me being away from my family for very long at a time. Anything that would take a family member away quite often and for several hours/days on end would need to meet the next criteria…
4. Does the activity benefit the family?
An example of this is my husband’s hunting. I know we’ve had a good laugh over the buffalo on my wall (which still doesn’t have a name, but may, at some point, need buffalo-plasty because of how often I run into her nose!), but my husband doesn’t hunt in order to bring home trophies. That buffalo provided us with a freezer full of meat…low fat, high iron organic meat. Sometimes it is a deer, sometimes it is a pheasant, but his policy is don’t hunt it unless you plan on eating it. And that’s what we do. Therefore, that particular activity, now also enjoyed by our oldest son, benefits the family.
5. Does it encourage family-togetherness?
As you can see from my examples above, not everything we do is done as a family; however, family ALWAYS takes precedence over all else. As I said in my practical ideas post, if an activity shows signs of tearing away at the family, it needs to go. If we are spending more time apart as a family than together, we will begin to lose family unity–something I’m not willing to sacrifice. Always look for the unified family version of an activity before signing up for the separated family version.
Some things we do not base our decisions off of:
1. Is it fair?
If I spent my entire life trying to make everything fair, I would be a crazy lady and our household would run a muck. Fairness is not a good way to make decisions because I would likely end up with 2 or 3 places to be per child per week, which totally goes against #5 on our list.
2. Peer pressure.
Just because a friend is doing it doesn’t make it right for your family. That doesn’t necessarily mean the friend is making a poor decision, but you can’t choose activities based solely on what your friend or your child’s friend is doing. For example, if my friend has decided to invest thousands of dollars in scuba lessons and equipment for her son because he intends to be an underwater archaeologist, it would be ludicrous for me to invest that kind of money on my own child, who more than likely has no interest or gifting toward that line of work. Make decisions based on your own family, not someone else’s.
3. What the child wants.
OK, that sounds harsh, but hear me out. Most children have two types of desires…those that are in line with gifts they possess and those that are not. My daughter may really, really, really want to take gymnastics and really, really, really want to take photography classes; however, I shouldn’t feel compelled to give her both simply because she wants both. The Bible clearly states children are foolish. Guide them to good choices, avoiding willy-nilly choices based on the whim of the day.
Now, Karyn asked about two specifics activities:
Music lessons
and
Sports
There is no way I can straight-across-the-board condemn or raise up one over another. My husband paid his way through college on a football scholarship. I had a music scholarship. My husband hasn’t played football since. I sing all the time. His football benefited the family, my singing had lasting merit. It’s a wash.
So, rather than saying certain activities are ALWAYS bad and certain activities are ALWAYS good, we go back to our list. We work our way through it, prayerfully. At the end of the day, your family is your family, and the activities you choose to engage in do not have to meet MY standards. Go to the Lord in prayer about what HE would have your family participate in. Then do it wholeheartedly, as unto the Lord!
A family slumber party in the living room.
Clara says
This is a really comprehensive, useful post… I mean we try to do things that are beneficial for our family, and we believe in holding the family together as a unit (we don’t do ANYTHING that separates us yet)… but I’d never really thought to sit and make a list to help me decide on activities like this… Thanks for doing it for me!! 🙂
Lisa~ says
Great list! One thing I always say, don’t do it twice or the kids will think it’s a tradition. We don’t do family slumber parties because it quickly gets out of hand.
I’m with you on the outside activities. We don’t do many of them. It draws time away from the family and home. Some things we do (like music lessons) we have a teacher that comes to our house so it keeps us here. Lisa~
Amy says
Sometimes even once constitutes “tradition!” 🙂 (and I would LOVE to find a piano teacher who would come to my home.)
Lori says
Love this post! Lots of good things to remember! Thanks for the encouragment!
Trudy McCleskey says
Very well said. Your examples like the scuba diving pursuit were great.
clarissa says
I agree!
Recently my husband joined cardio kickboxing/taekwondo and we plan to enroll our (almost) 6 year old in a month or two.. both my husband and 6 yo need something to do outside of the home as a stress reliever.. 6 yo needs something that is “his own” but will offer structure and resposibility in a fun way.. he has so much responsibility at home being the oldest and the next under him being terminally ill with severe special needs. we have a lot of stress in our life surrounding our daughter and her illness and 6 yo carries much of it on his tiny shoulders. needless to say, we have been thinking of ways for him to vent in a positive way, somewhere to direct his energy and frustrations. he has been talking about learning “karate” for a long time. Husband has always wanted to learn too.. so he joined first to see how it was taught and be sure that there wasn’t any conflicts with our Christian beliefs. Anyway, point is… we feel this is something that will benefit DH and DS and the entire family overall. music is another thing we are looking into, when/if we can get a piano in the home! musical talent runs in our extended family… we love piano music, and it seems to be a great stress reliever/way to feel close to God, especially when playing/singing the old hymns!
Ginger says
Having decided to only to activities we could do as a family, we signed all the kids up for AWANA. They were all together, which we loved and they were memorizing scripture. But after my son’s teacher cheated for him the 4th time (rewarded him for scriptures he’d never learned), and our 4th and 5th grade daughters’ leader asked the group: Who here has a boyfriend/girlfriend?, we were done.
Right now, our oldest is taking her second cake decorating class. And that’s it.
BTW, our kids love having living room slumber parties together. I really question the wisdom of buying kids’ beds. They really prefer to sleep ont he floor. lol
Suanna says
Amy, I think you did a great job on this post. I agree with most of what you said. Our family is #1 priority and we try to keep it that way. I’m hoping to soon start piano lessons with at least two of my kids, since I can play the piano I will start them out and then if they really like it we will invest in more lessons for them as they progress beyond where I can comfortably teach them. I’m not sure how a family slumber party in the living room would go, but we have talked about “camping” in the backyard.
Tara Carlton says
I totally agree. I think this area can be one of the biggest mistakes a parent can make. In our culture right now we seem to be pushing our kids to have a million activities, It does not leave time for them to be a kid or have family time. We are avid 4-Hr’s We have doing this since they were little. My kids have several projects they are involved in including livestock shows. My hubby takes his vacations when we have shows. So it is definatley a family project. I think this in an area that parents need to really think and pray about,
God Bless ,
Tara
Jessica says
I LOVE this post!
My kids are 15 years apart, and I’m determined NOT to do with the baby what I did with the older one – get over involved. We came to a point where he had something going on almost every night of the week. Music lessons, sports, etc. And you know what? Not only did we not have family time, it just made him think that he should get to do any activity that his his friends do. I do not want this to happy with the baby.
Kerry says
I have been on the fence about Scouts for quite some time, and would love your thoughts. My friends who are in scouts say it takes up ALL of their time. They don’t have time for anything else except scouts. You live, eat, breathe all things scouts. That seems like it would pull away from the whole family thing (especially for us with 1 girl). I actually had one friend tell me to stay away from it as long as I could. :-s
Does your husband leave a pack/troop? That was my other concern. My husband is not a pack/troop leader type, and I’m hesitant to send my boys to something without knowing what is being said or taught. I would love any input from anyone on scouts, how it works, and has it put stress on your family.
Thanks so much! Love the post, by the way. Lots of good things to think about. I do put them in sports activities, but it is once a week for an hour through our park district, which is only 2 minutes away. It’s a nice P.E. supplement for our homeschool. 🙂
Tammy says
Scouts DOES take up an extraordinary amount of time. My oldest was an Eagle Scout. People in Scouting will *rave* about that. While my son is glad he earned the award, it really isn’t “all that.” It isn’t nearly as difficult, nor as prestigious, as most BSA scouters would have you believe (I think they’re trying to convince themselves that all the time was worth it??)
We pulled my second son from Scouts when their policies started to change toward PC nonsense. (And, this is a hill I think they will continue to slide down.) My second son trained for Search and Rescue instead, and I think he actually learned far more “real life” skills than my first son did in Scouting.
My daughter is an American Heritage Girl (Christ-centered Scouting for girls). It too takes up a lot of time, but we (fortunately) belong to a troop where it is OKAY to miss meetings or activities without judgment. So, now that I bowed out of being the Coordinator (8 years was enough!) our family has a bit more time.
Scouting is nice. It works for many families. But, it is a HUGE time stealer, and — especially if you have both boys and girls — they will be pulled in different directions and the family will be split up. So, you will want to decide if you want to be a “Scout family” or not. Pretty much (unless you do try to do too much — I’ve been there) it is Scouts and nothing else.
Morgan says
Great post. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may not have kids of my own (yet) but I help with others a lot, and knowing things that they will enjoy doing is good. 🙂 It’s also learning for when I do have a family. One funny thing about scouting though. My dad use to be a boy Scout, only…he quit because he was too busy camping and fishing and hunting with his family! 🙂 He was too “boy scout” for the Boy Scouts. 🙂 He’s taught me a lot, and we’re going squirrel hunting today! YEAH!
Jamie (@va_grown) says
This is an excellent post–thank you for sharing! I think I’m going to go over them with my husband and maybe put them (or something similar) on our family bulletin board as a helpful reminder/prompt. I have the same thoughts/feelings, but had not thought them through in such an organized fashion.
I think rushing kids to this and that, regardless of the impact to the family’s life also gives them the mentality that it’s “all about them.” Sports and music are like anything else–beneficial if you keep it in perspective, dangerous if you don’t. Unfortunately, most of our culture doesn’t.
Jennifer says
Great job, Amy, with such a wonderful, God-honoring post! In growing as a mom, it has become clear to me that many of our family committments have come about because of my own expectations or thinking my kids will “miss out” if they don’t at least try everything. That only produced unhappy kids and unhappy parents and a lot of fast food meals! Last year we cut out literally all our extracurriculars and slowly and deliberately made choices of what was beneficial and what was not. It turns out my older son hates team sports and loves violin. So that’s what he does, along with his younger brother who is indifferent about the violin; but the lessons are back to back and they can practice together. We also do scouting, but we absolutely do not feel obligated to attend all the extra scouting opportunities during the week. This may make us unpopular scout parents, but we only participate at the level that our family can support. It is so much freedom to be able to cook dinner at home without rushing to the next activity. Every activity, even “good” activities through the church, need to be assessed for their true value; they very well could be causing more family strife than we think. I know that was the case for us!
Amy says
This is EXACTLY what I was going to say about Scouts. You absolutely are not required to attend every single function they offer. Glad to know there are other parents making the same choice!
Katie says
This is one of those posts I love 🙂
angela says
Thank you for this post. It is a good reminder, as I am currently planning our spring semester activities. I am sharing this post with others!!
sabrina says
Thanks! I’m dealing with this kind of decision right now about putting our daughter in team gymnastics. Its a hard decision as right now she is the only one old enough for outside activities but she won’t always be and each year requires a larger time commitment. Thanks for the tips!
Judy says
For our family it seems the more children we have the less activities outside the home we do.
There was a time when my oldest was in a sports activity each season PLUS scouts and Awanas (all at the same time). On top of that, other activities came and went. With 7 children now, I could never keep up with that schedule if each one of them did that.
Now, the only sport the boys do is baseball (which is plenty since 3 of them do it). Baseball season can get a little crazy still. The field is only a half a mile down the street and hubby is the coach to 2 of their teams. That along with the fact that hubby is home from work by 1:30 in the afternoon does help.
4 of the kids do take music lessons. I have 3 that take piano. Their teacher actually comes to the house to do lessons. My oldest (who is 17) drives himself to guitar once a week (only a few miles down the road).
p.s.–I just started up a new blog!
Amy says
Yay! Congrats on the new blog, Judy!
karyn says
This was a great post – exactly what I was looking for. I get so caught up in running here or there or trying to keep up with my kids’ friends that we start pushing aside more important things. I particularly like your idea of thinking twenty years into the future – will having a strong prayer life be important for each child twenty years from now – very much so. Will knowing how to play soccer – not so much. Thanks for this post!
Amy says
Great! I’m glad it answered the questions you had.
Roan says
Good points and well said. You are so right about not doing certain activities just to be doing them.
For our family, we have chosen a few outside activities:
1. Keepers of the Home–for our daughters ages 6-14. This teaches life long homemaking skills, and the meetings are 2 hours one night a month.
2. piano lessons–once a week, 1.5 hours total for three kids.
3. running–this is only an “outside the family” activity during cross country season in the fall. However, we run as a family year round. We run together, travel together for races, and we have treadmills to run on at home. This is the sport we chose for our family because we all can do it, no matter our age. Plus, running is a lifetime sport. And it keeps all of our hearts healthy (important to my husbands).
That’s it for us. We attend church services as a family on Sundays and Wednesdays, but that’s all.
Have a great day!
Roan
Christy dR says
I agree family unity is very important and IS a priority, but I’ve started seeing an unforeseen “problem” sprouting up with the children from large families ( I love big families I am from one). Parents forget to let there children become their own person as they get older. God created the family to raise and let go of children and they have to be there own person when they are let go. I think this is something many first generation ” large families” are unaware of and caught off guard ( my own family as well).
Amy says
I’ve not really seen that firsthand, but I have heard of this issue. I was just talking to my son yesterday about how each family member brings his/her own individual giftings to the family and how there is a give and take relationship in a healthy family…not an all give or an all take relationship. It’s hard for me to fathom NOT reveling in your child’s uniqueness, but I am sure it does happen, especially in families that don’t truly enjoy their children (yes, even some large families don’t enjoy their children. 🙁 )
Christy dR says
It’s not always because parents don’t enjoy their children, like in the case of my family. As you get older you want to be recognized as “YOU” not just “one of the family”. It’s not a REAL problem if you are aware of it and plan ahead to raise them as individuals in a family. But I do think lots of parents who were not a part of a big family doesn’t realize that aspect of being raised in a large family. 🙂 I would say it can be a “surprise” factor that is not mentioned often.
Amy says
Very interesting! Thank you for that perspective. 🙂
Sherley Jackson says
Great article! Hope the truth didn’t offend anyone. We recently looked into tumbling and the coach said beginners class is 7-8pm during the school year. I told her are girls (6 and 4) are in bed by eight on school nights. She said many parents do it but she understood and she was really nice and offered other options. That would not be good for the kids or mommy!
Gaby says
Amy, I was linked back to this old post from today’s. It is so good, I am so happy to re-read it. Indeed, I feel this applies to everything I do individually as well; is is God-honoring, does it have lasting merit, etc. I am going to print out your headings and put them on my fridge to help with daily decisions. And now I am going to stop surfing the Internet and get the work!
Gaby, Montreal
Amy says
I’m so glad you found “lasting merit” in this post! 😉 It really is how we measure everything.
Many blessings,
Amy
Keesha Doss says
Great thoughts! I have to give you a mommy-to-mommy pat on the back for running to the Scripture for everything. More of us should do that!! (Not that homeschoolers who are always on the go, go go are wrong… but it’s about stream-lining and about purposefully planning to teach your child lasting values…). I love your website. You are such an encouragement to me! I do not homeschool right now (altho I was raised homeschooling), but I intend on it when my baby reaches that age. Thank you so much for this website! Your details are amazing! Your focus is stellar! You are being a blessing to us. God bless you!
Amy says
Thank you so much, Keesha. 🙂
Shannon says
Hi Amy. This post was great! I know it’s an older post. It has giving me so much to think about. I often feel guilty if I don’t run my kids to field trips or play dates. I worry about them making lasting friendships. How do you handle your kids making friends outside of the family? Do your children see friends often? I think my questions are because I do worry about it and we have been homeschoolers for 13 years! Haha
Amy says
We tend to make friends in families, so we ALL go to visit friends. As my kids have gotten older, they have made friends outside of families we are already hanging out with, but even that is rare.
Marilyn says
Thank You for this interesting and inspiring post.
Marilyn
Marion says
Thank You for this post. I love seeing photos of your family. You have a beautiful family.
Marion
Jessica Mendez says
Thank you so much for sharing!
Laura A says
I love these! Our family struggled early on with pressure from church friends to have our children involved in multiple sports. But with five children I just could not see how to make it happen and not hate being out of the house more than one night a week and most of the weekend doing multiple games and trying to be in two places at once.
When I heard of a Trail Life USA troop starting in a church that already had an American Heritage Girls troop and that they would be coordinating their regular troop meetings we jumped at the chance to see our children grow in the Lord and in practical life skills! Now my husband and I are both in leadership and plan to continue to support the troops for years. We are all out together and often do our service projects and fun activities together as a family while earning work toward badges. We do have separate activities but do not feel stressed, and are usually together as a half-family at least with Dad having all the boys at a camping trip, or Mom going out with the girls to a special evening of service.
Amy says
This is fantastic!