My Favorite Family Routine

A few years back, my family began a tradition that is one of the best things we've ever done.

Every alternate Monday and every Saturday, my parents will have a family meeting, and every Sunday to us is a Family Day. We've become so much closer as a family as a result, and I highly recommend it for families of any size.

Before Family Days, my weekends were filled with going out to the movies, clubbing, and many friends parties. It was hard to find good chunks of time to spend together, as a family.

Then I thought it was not right for me not to spend time with my family. So every Sunday, early in the morning, my parents, my sister and I will go for morning jog at the tracks of Jurong. Not only we get to spend time with each other, we get to exercise to be healthy. Isn't that killing two birds with one stone?

In the afternoon, we will always go for a buffet at Royal Plaza Hotel. Having a meal together bond us. Having a buffet together makes sure there's no small gap in our relationships. We talked, we laughed and even share secrets with one another over buffet.

And then we proceeded to the cinema for a movie of our choice. Of course my sister and I had the pick while my mum and dad agreed with what we choose.

These are the kind of family bonding I have and looking forward every Sunday.

Then we had another idea, almost simultaneously: we created family meetings, usually held on Saturdays, but sometimes on Friday night, where we would all sit around the living room and discuss things as a family, and plan family day. It’s a really fun and uniting activity that we all look forward to.

Family Meetings
We call the family meeting to order, usually on Saturday afternoons, and we all gather in the living room. We get out our family notebook, which has a record of each family meeting, among other things. And we take turns being Leader and Secretary (the person who takes notes for that meeting)

The Leader starts every meeting with compliments. We each say a compliment about another family member. This is a nice way to show that we appreciate each other, and a good exercise to think about other family members and the good things they’ve done.

Next is Issues: the Leader asks if anyone has any issues to discuss. These can be things like, People need to put the toilet seat down, to things like, how we’re going to try to be more frugal this Hari Raya or Chinese New Year, to things like suggesting that we all work out together. The issues are discussed by the whole family, and it helps smooth out any problems that come up during the week.

That is my favorite family routine.