Family Survival Kit - part 2 - Build a Fort!

So many of us are stuck at home with kids who feel bored, frustrated and anxious during this pandemic. What do we do?

Your family survival kit may contain toilet paper, hand sanitizer and masks…but are you saving any room for having fun? This version of a family survival kit is focused on strengthening connections and helping families thrive by building resiliency through our activities together. Rather than let the coronavirus squeeze us into an unrecognizable shape, we’re pushing back and deciding to make our families a great place to be, even in the midst of a pandemic. Thanks for going on this journey with me!

Let’s start with a foundational fun activity…let’s build a fort!

You might need a fort for each member of your family to get some space from each other by the end of a day! They can also be a great gathering place for the family to reconnect or band together.

Just in case you need to make an academic argument for it…here’s some other benefits:

• It fosters maturity, independence, and confidence. 

• Increases cognitive skills, problem solving, planning, and imagination!

• If building together it increases social skills, like cooperating and negotiating.

• Practical skills; it’s like taking a construction 101 class!

• Lots of exercise, from all that building and play!

• Stress-release: A fort is, literally and figuratively, a defense against all the forces of the outside world (and one of the best for daydreaming).

What Does Angry and Aggressive Play Mean?

I spend a lot of days getting put in jail, pretending to negotiate standoffs, battling monsters and villains. This is all part of kids processing feelings and experiences of anger, revenge, powerlessness (or figuring out how to be powerful). Does aggressive play mean kids will become more aggressive? How can you tell if it’s going too far? Should you let them do it?

Here’s my latest video helping to unpack what kinds of things happen in kids’ play.

Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash

Having Fun with Your Family Changes EVERYTHING!

Have you ever seen those ads that say things like “If you do this ONE thing, you’ll get rid of all your debt” or “you’ll lose all your belly fat” or whatever other not likely scenario someone is peddling? Well, let me give you another one that sounds unlikely but actually works…having fun with your family can change everything about it! Research shows that it can:

• Increase the resilience and resistance to stress (helps disarm the power of stressors and temptations to turn to harmful things)

• Create relational safety and security (which makes everyone want to connect and share about their thoughts, feelings and needs)

• Transmits the values you’re trying to establish

• Teaches healthy boundaries and how to make relationship repairs

• Helps process and heal the results of stress and trauma

However, it comes at a high price. You will not find the time to do this. If you want the reward, you’ll have to give up something to create the time. But I can’t imagine you’ll regret it. At the end of my life, there will be many extra work hours, meetings, seminars and events that I will never remember. I’ll bet I would trade almost any of them for an extra hour to play with my kids…

Check out my latest video on this and see where you can begin this journey!

Here are some helpful starters, too:

50 Ways to Have Fun as a Family - TREEfort Child and Family Therapy

40 Dinner Questions - https://www.encourageplay.com/

Would you Rather Questions - https://www.encourageplay.com/

Photo by Sophie Elvis on Unsplash