Bad habits are hard to break, especially when they’ve been a part of our lives for a long time. It’s hard enough when they’re just our own personal bad habits, but once we have a family of our own, new habits form, and that’s when things get even more difficult. Busy schedules, growing children and even changes in lifestyle can create these habits. Although you can’t put a sudden halt on them, you can create changes with time. Listed below are some of the bad habits many of today’s families struggle with, along with some ideas on how to change them.
- Overscheduling. So many great extracurricular activities in schools and communities are available nowadays, and we don’t want our kids to miss out, especially if they really want to participate in them. However, when our kids are in too many activities, stress takes over the household, and the entire family eventually goes into survival mode. To avoid overwhelming the household with a daily demand of being somewhere on time, take great care in choosing which commitments you and your children take on. By doing fewer things, your household will experience a much lighter, happier feeling, and you’ll have more time to spend together.
- Arguing. Households with teenagers often find themselves snared in daily battles of bickering. To curb this habit, make a conscious effort every day to avoid arguing with your teens. Abstain from the use of sarcastic and argumentative comments and, instead, demand everyone speak to one another with positivity, love and respect.
- Not eating together. When everyone has places to be, the family dinner table becomes barren and lonely. Making time for a few family dinners each week, where every family member is required to sit around the table together, is worth it. Statistics show that families who have regular family mealtimes have happier, healthier households!
- Fast food. When you’re running from Johnny’s soccer game to Anna’s swim practice, drive-thru windows are a true blessing. However, drive-thru windows should be saved for family vacations and other occasions. Nothing in the grease-laden bag is nutritious, so if you find yourself feeding your family from a drive-thru more than a couple of days a week, it’s time to cut back. Dust off your crockpot and fill it up in the morning so it’s ready for dinnertime or spend a couple of weekend hours making a few dinners for the week and pop them into the freezer for later use. Keep your family fueled the right way and pass on the importance of healthy eating to your kids. They’ll remember.
- Messy home. Does this sound familiar? The kitchen is piled with dirty dishes, the carpets need vacuuming, and stuff is piled on top of every piece of furniture. If your house has become disorderly due to everyone’s busy schedules and no time to clean up, you’re sending the wrong message to your kids. Although hiring out the task of house cleaning may seem easier, your kids will never learn how to care for a home or what goes into doing the chores. The best way to battle the mess is to have a weekly family cleaning day. Assign everyone a couple of chores, turn on some music, and everyone work together on cleaning up the house. After all, everyone helps make the messes, so shouldn’t everyone be responsible for cleaning up? The answer is yes.
- No family time. Time spent together as a family is important in keeping up with what’s going on in each other's lives. Make family time a habit by making time for each other every week. Before your calendar fills up, plan some days or evenings to spend with only each other. While away an evening watching a movie together or playing a board game you haven’t played in ages. Evenings like this are much more important than all the other activities during the week.
- Too much screen time. Are you or your kids spending more than an hour or so a day in front of a screen (TV, video game, computer, phone, etc.)? If so, you’re probably spending too much. Families with major addictions to electronics have higher rates of obesity and other health problems, not to mention they’re missing out on so many other worthwhile things. So turn off the screens (or use a screen time app on all devices to help control the time spent each day), and revisit books, playtime in the great outdoors, board games and conversations with each other. These are the things that matter most, and you will reminisce years down the road.
- Wasteful spending. It’s amazing how fast money disappears. Making everyone aware of how the smallest expenses add up can help the family budget substantially. Help your kids break their own bad habits, such as buying soda or bottled water when out and about, by carrying along a reusable water bottle. Have your kids take their lunches to school a couple of days each week rather than buying them every day, and as a family, eat at home more and dine out less. It all adds up!
- Exercise. When your schedule is full, there’s little time for workouts. But when there is time, we often fail to do it. It’s up to us parents to set a good example for our kids. So, if we aren’t exercising, the example we’re setting is not a good one. Leading a sedentary lifestyle can lead to all kinds of health problems, so mark a day on your calendar that’ll work for everyone to go for a hike as a family. Look up hiking trails in your area and try out new locations each week or month. You can also change it up by including other activities, such as hiking one week and doing something sporty the next week (e.g., playing a family soccer game, ice-skating, swimming, biking, etc.). Have fun with it!
Changing habits is never easy, but most of the time, it ends up being the best thing a family can do. Although families sometimes make many not-so-great choices with no major consequences, when those choices become habits, problems eventually arise. If you see some of the negative habits mentioned above making regular appearances in your household, your best bet is to act fast to correct them. With a little work, you can replace the bad habit with a good habit and together work on making it the norm instead.
Kansas City mom and author Gina Klein loves going on hikes each weekend with her husband and girls, playing board games a couple of nights a week, and spending time at the dinner table each night together. Time together creates fun memories!