WE’RE in the middle of the second week of school holidays, and for many of us the last two weeks have been a different lifestyle with the kids home all day. One welcome change is not going through the morning battle to get everyone out the door in time. Like a lot of kids, ours have been making up for lost sleep time, with mid morning considered as an early rise.

As our kids were growing up one of the enjoyable things for our family during school holidays was to spend them together because there is no pressure from homework, sport training, and all the other distractions of term time. Of course that meant we needed to practice skills such as listening to each other carefully, discussing various things and even taking the time to use the off button on the TV.

One of the things that we often decided to do was to get away for at least a couple of days together. That decision was based on breaking our routines so that we could enjoy doing something together that was different. Some families don’t have that chance due to work commitments, but with planning, even a day trip can be a chance to spend some quality time together.

We live in a very busy world and often our family relationships are only shallow because our busy lives mean we don’t get the time to build them deeper. Some people try to compensate by providing money for all kind of activities. However, a small amount of planned personal time together can be a significant building block in our family relationships. As one anonymous sage has said: “The best thing to spend on your children is time!”