Family Unity Through Traditional Family Games by:Andrew Low
Do you want your family to spend more time together
? Is a deeper family relationship on your wish list? Does this dream seem unattainable?
Many families spend much of their weekend time going to a variety of sporting events, while television and the internet provide much of their weekly entertainment. With all these activities, there doesn't seem much time to build family unity.
A desire for quality time with our children is wonderful for building healthy family relationships. A key way to achieve this is simply to spend lots of time together. Often, quality time arrives unannounced when we are sharing everyday events together that have been designed to promote unity, such as a weekly famly games night for the whole family.
On a personal note, our family attempts to set apart every Wednesday night with a special meal followed by an hour or two of family games. We play many traditional games; some old favourites and some new ones. There are many commercial games such as Monopoly, but there are so many simple games you can play with nothing more than a few dice of a deck of cards.
Earlier this year, we played a simple game for the whole family which only used one die (you have one die but two or more dice). The aim of Pig is to be thr first player to reach fifty points, and it can be played by any number of players. A player throws the die and adds the number of spots shown, throwing again and again until they either throw a One or decide to end their turn. A player who decides to end their turn keeps their score and can add to it next turn. Anyone who throws a One cancels their score for that round.
It was very amusing to see the different strategies of two of my sons. One played carefully and stopped if he got to ten points in a round while the other tried to score the full fifty points in every round. He would often score over thirty points before throwing a One and crashing back to zero for that round. We had so much fun watching them that we decided to continue to 100 points. At the end of the game, neither son actually won!
Many other activities are useful in building good family realtionships, but family gameshave the advantage of allowing the whole family, no matter what their age, to participate together. It can be a source of great fun and amusement to see a six year old beating an older brother or sister, or even an adult. As the game proceeds, the players may also be learning life skills (such as reading and counting) as well as social skills like conversation and how to win/lose graciously. While this is happening, they will learn to be part of the family as well as learning to enjoy each other's company. And that's what family unity is all about.
About the author
Andrew owns Family Games Treasurehouse which has rules for over a hundred family games. Visit
http://www.family-games-treasurehouse.com and sign up for our free newsletter to download our ebook, "25 Family Dice Games". This article is copyright but may be freely republished provided the text, author credit, site links and this copyright notice remain intact.
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