HRI Blog

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

What’s the perfect recipe for summertime family fun, whether on vacation or close to home? Over the last two days, we’ve looked at two key ingredients that researchers have identified as helping children make meaning of their family vacations: (1) having fun and (2) trying new things. The third ingredient is perhaps the most important one: social and relationship connections.

For family fun and vacations, social and relationship connections are sort of like the glue that connects the other ingredients. You can do fun and new things, but if there’s not a sense of bonding and connecting, those new activities most likely won’t have as powerful an impact on your family’s relationships.

The children interviewed in Hillbrecht and her colleagues’ 2008 study mentioned the importance of social connections for their experiences of family vacations, and they mentioned relationships with their immediate families, as well as their extended family members and family friends. In other words, family vacations often present opportunities for children and parents to bond not only with each other, but also with other relatives and close friends.

For families who are able to take time to get away–whether for a week or more, or even just for a few hours–from their usual routines and environments, this vacation time can serve an important purpose for solidifying their relationships with one another. In addition, vacations often provide more extended time together, especially if they come with a break from work, school, and other normal family routines.

Now, most parents would agree that family vacations–and even shorter family outings–often don’t go as planned. We may go into the vacation or outing with an ideal vision that everyone will get along beautifully, be in good spirits, and express nothing but appreciation for the chance to have fun together. While it’s a good thing to be positive and optimistic about your family, it’s also unfair to hold an idealized version of family bliss as your expectation for your time together.

It’s normal for kids to melt down, parents to get stressed, conflict to arise, and other frustrations to develop, even in what are “supposed to be” the most fun settings. In fact, when children and families get off of their normal routines and into new and unfamiliar environments, it may be even more likely for these things to happen since you’ve got a lot of new details to figure out.

When these situations arise, practice good conflict management, communication, and stress management skills to help diffuse tension. Remind yourself that family bonding doesn’t always have to look perfect to help strengthen your relationships. And, keep in mind that your family relationships can grow through difficult times, just as they can through the fun ones.

This summer, as you’re planning your family fun, consider ways to build an intentional focus on connecting and strengthening your relationships. Treasure the time you spend connecting with each other and other friends and family members who are important to your family. And even in moments when things don’t go exactly as planned, remember that you’re helping your children create memories that will help to solidify what your family means to them to help guide them in the years to come.

Reference:

• Hillbrecht, M., Shaw, S. M., Delamere, F. M., & Havitz, M. E. (2008). Experiences, perspectives, and meanings of family vacations for children. Leisure, Vol. 32, pp. 541-571.

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

“Novelty and familiarity, therefore, meant not only a relaxation of normal responsibilities, but also new activities and adventures with more freedom and independence, all within a safe and socially stable environment.” (Hilbrecht, Shaw, Delamere, & Havitz, 2008, p. 560)

This week, we’re exploring ways to make the most of your family’s fun times together, and in particular, we’re looking at three important components of family vacations for children based on research by Margo Hillbrecht and her colleagues. Yesterday, we looked at ways to maximize fun with your family by setting boundaries to protect against the things that often block fun in families. Today, we’re focusing on the 2nd meaningful aspect of family vacations for children that Hillbrecht and her colleagues identified: novelty and familiarity.

Based on this research, it turns out that trying new things within the comfort and familiarity of your family makes a huge impact for children, and hopefully for the adults in the family as well! Vacations–and even staycations and new experiences in your own hometown–offer opportunities for families to step outside of their normal routines and activities and try out new ways to connect and have fun.

Children feeling safe to explore new experiences and environments in the context of stable, familiar relationships with their parents is what secure attachments between parents and children are all about! Summertime–and family vacations in particular–are a great time to do activities as a family that do two important things at once. First, new activities help family members grow and expand their horizons. Second, doing these new activities helps to further strengthen family bonds.

Throughout this summer, and especially when you travel with your family, challenge yourselves to step outside your comfort zone and try new and different things. Try eating a different kind of food together. Explore a new park or hiking trail. Test out a new activity that you’ve never tried–like kayaking, paragliding, ziplining, or doing something artistic together.

Adults, as you and your family step into new experiences, remember what a powerful role model you can be through how open you are to new things! Try to be open and positive. Show your kids that it’s okay to be uncomfortable when trying to new things, but to do them anyway. Help them to see that it’s normal to feel a little awkward when you’re trying something for the first time, and it’s okay to not be an “expert” when you’re just learning something new.

This summer, make a point to step outside your and your family’s comfort zone to try new things. Remember that this may be one of the best ways to make a lasting impact on your children, all while growing and bonding together at the same time!

Reference:

• Hillbrecht, M., Shaw, S. M., Delamere, F. M., & Havitz, M. E. (2008). Experiences, perspectives, and meanings of family vacations for children. Leisure, Vol. 32, pp. 541-571.

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

As we mentioned yesterday, research tells us that having fun is one of the most meaningful aspects of family vacations for children. Common sense would tell us this, too, in that vacations are often synonymous with family fun.

It may seem kind of silly to think about needing to be intentional about having fun on a family vacation. You wouldn’t want the family fun to be or feel artificial, so shouldn’t you just try and let it happen naturally? While we at HRI do hope that you naturally have plenty of family fun this summer, we also know that there are plenty of things that can get in the way of your family’s opportunities to have fun.

Some of the things that might block you fun during family time–whether on vacation or closer to home–this summer include the following:

• Technology: Too much time spent on technology that distracts you from the in-person connections
• Unresolved conflict: Lingering conflict, anger, or hurt feelings that get in the way of positive connections
• Limiting beliefs or expectations: Believing things like “It takes a lot of money to be able to do really fun things as a family,” or “Our family is just too serious to have much fun.”
• Being over-scheduled: Rushing from one place or activity to the next, which puts too much time-pressure on everyone that there’s not time for relaxing or spontaneity
• Lack of mindfulness: Fun moments may be right in front of you, but you miss them because you’re distracted or not paying attention

Any of these things can seriously suck the fun out of your time together. They can even turn what should be fun moments into a big heap of stress and frustration!

So, what’s the key to maximizing fun with your family this summer? One of the best things you can do is be intentional about setting boundaries around these potential fun-blockers. In other words, maximizing fun with your family is often less about creating fun experiences than it is about protecting those experiences from being hurt by one or more of the things that threaten to derail your family’s fun together.

For each of the above potential blocks to fun, setting boundaries to protect your family’s fun potential might look like the following:

• To prevent technology from taking over your family time, be intentional about unplugging! Take some time when you leave your phone, devices, etc. away from you so you can really focus on your family. Use tools like email auto-responses to let people know when you’ll be available again. If you need to stay connected for any reason, such as work or personal obligations, consider scheduling brief, designated times to check in, rather than leaving yourself connected all the time.
• To protect unresolved conflict from hurting your time as a family, decide when and how you’ll work through the conflict in a healthy way. Ideally, you can find a time before your vacation or other planned family time to practice good conflict management skills so you can reach a workable resolution. However, some issues can’t be solved easily. In these cases, agree to set the issues to the aside for a reasonable time-frame, and use that time to focus on the positive aspects of your relationships. Chances are, by focusing on the positives, you’ll be in a better place to address the conflict when you come back to it!
• To work through limiting beliefs or expectations that create a perception that family fun is out of reach, identify and work to replace these limiting beliefs with more accurate ones. First, spend some time examining your values and beliefs about fun in your family. You may believe you’re too busy to have fun, that you don’t have enough money to do fun things, or that your kids would rather have fun with their friends than spend time with you. Once you’ve identified the specific limiting beliefs that you hold, challenge them and consider ways to reconstruct alternative, yet realistic, beliefs that support your goal of having fun with your family. So, instead of believing that you’re too busy to have fun, focus on how you can carve out even small moments of time to do fun things together. Rather than letting a belief about limited financial resources equating limited fun, think through low-cost or free ways you can have fun together. Or, if you believe your kids would rather have fun with friends than with you, consider that they may actually value both sources of fun in their life.
• To keep an overly-packed schedule from sucking up time for fun with your family, make fun, relaxed time together a priority. You may need to cut out some more structured activities to leave time (and energy) available for just relaxing with some fun down time together. If you’re on a family vacation, consider scheduling just one major outing or activity per day, and then leaving some more relaxed time. Especially during vacation, try to avoid being too rigid about your family’s schedule. Breaking out of your normal routines may open up some new possibilities for having fun. (More on this topic tomorrow!)
• Practice mindfulness to keep distraction and a lack of attention from making you miss out on family fun. Practicing mindfulness can be as simple as noticing what’s happening in the moment–how you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, what your senses are experiencing, and what’s happening around you. This sounds simple, but with all the competing demands for your attention, it’s likely more difficult than it seems to maintain mindfulness throughout your day. To stay more mindful of fun and enjoyable times with your family, be intentional about paying attention. It’s normal for your mind to wander, but develop ways to remind yourself to come back to the present moment. Look into the faces of your family members. Notice what they’re doing and how that makes you feel. Take a deep breath. Pay attention. The beauty of the present moment is that it’s always right there before you, if you just pay attention!