As the New Year approaches, it is a great time to sit down and make some goals as a family. You may want to change the overall tone in your home, or you may want to encourage your children to take on more responsibility in the home. You may want to focus on increasing the bond in your family or helping your family to feel the spirit more often. As a couple you should discuss some goals that you have in mind for your family and then you can discuss them with your children. If you have your children take part in the discussion and planning, they will more likely be on board with the overall goal. Here are three common goals and ways that you can work as a family to achieve them.
1) One common goal is to increase the effectiveness of family scripture study and family prayer. One way to do this is to have your children begin marking their scriptures. You can do this as a family. As you read you should speak about what happened, and ask your children to talk about any verses that stood out to them. You may want to find and mark the Seminary scripture references. As soon as your children begin reading they should each have their own set of scriptures that they follow along with as you read.
2) Another common goal is to improve your family home evening lessons. This can be done with careful planning. As a couple you may want to plan your lesson topics out several months in advance. You can also have your children begin to participate in preparing the lessons. The longer you have to prepare the topic, the more resources you can gather to support the lesson. You may also want to work on improving the children’s attention span or attitude towards family home evening. Remember that family home evening should be fun as well as spiritual.
3) Another common New Year’s goal for families is to address the distribution of chores and household work. We have been counseled to teach our children to work. We can do this through chores around the house. It is important to realize that this is most effective when you work together as a family. You may want to assign jobs that allow your children to earn money. This can serve the purpose of teaching your children about money management as well. You can also have family incentives such as a trip to an amusement park when the family works together and everyone completes their chores for a set length of time.
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