I read an article recently titled, "Living the Play-Full Life" by Andrea Ludlow Christensen. Andrea talks about the importance of playing and recreating as a family. Here are a couple of paragraps:
In a 2009 article Freeman and other BYU researchers explored the impact of both common, everyday family interactions and more-novel, less-frequent family experiences. Both were beneficial and contributed to improved family communications, but the study found that youth perceived the everyday activities as being more significant to their family functioning.
"The things that don't cost much money and don't take much time are often the most powerful--things like playing in the leaves, jumping on the trampoline, walking to the park," Hill says. "We don't have to spend a lot of money or take long trips to get benefits from family recreation."
The vacations and family reunions that we had with our children are special memories, but so are the normal, seemingly simple times; when we hit plastic balls in the backyard, or the summer days that the children made little forts out of dirt and sticks, or when we set the sprinkler to spray on the trampoline, or the snow forts that Dad helped them make, and the volleyball and badminton games we had under the lights. Yes, I see that the "everyday" activities are just as meaningful as the big trips.
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