You just got done working on your real estate business’s new marketing strategy using REI Blackbook, when you noticed it’s past dinnertime. It can be challenging to navigate owning a business and being a parent. However, having family dinners together is something that can have a big, positive impact on your children. If you’re not sold on that, we’re explaining 5 powerful benefits family dinners have on children.

Let’s get into it!

Quality Bonding Time

Quality time is incredibly beneficial to your children’s overall mental well-being. Research shows that children who spend more quality time with family are “less likely to participate in risky behaviors such as drug and alcohol usage.” An easy way to make sure that your children are getting enough quality time with you is by making family dinners a regular occurrence. The time spent around the dinner table is sure to make your children feel more loved and appreciated.

Learn More About Your Children

The dinner table is the perfect place to keep up to date on what’s going on in your children’s lives. As children get older, it becomes more challenging to encourage them to open up with you due to busy schedules and rebellious teenage attitudes. Making family dinners a priority every night ensures that both you and your children have a dedicated time and place to communicate and stay connected with one another.

Teaches Healthy Habits

Not only do family dinners help you to stay connected with your children, but it’s also an effective way to teach them healthy habits. Instead of rushing to eat, family dinners encourage your children to approach eating a meal as a time to slow down and appreciate their time while enjoying healthy food. In turn, this can help to prevent mindless eating later on in life – which is a big contributing factor to weight gain and subsequent health issues from that.

Minimizes Screen Time

When it comes to regular family dinners, it’s best that you keep it a screen-free zone. Otherwise, you miss out on the majority of wonderful benefits that it provides for both you and your children. Watching TV or using your phone at the dinner table could also lead to unhealthy habits and behaviors later on in life. Experts say that there’s a strong correlation between multi-tasking, like when you’re watching TV or on your phone, and weight gain. This could be because you’re not paying attention to how much you eat which could easily result in you eating more than you need or the amount you intended to.

Establishes a Routine

Regular family dinners are an effective and easy way to teach your children the importance of having a routine. Not only does it teach children the benefit of consistency and staying on a schedule, but it also allows them to have some type of structure to their day. It’s important that children grow accustomed to certain routines growing up, as it will help them to establish their own healthy routines as they get older.

Raising children can be expensive and challenging, but setting your child up with an allowance could provide valuable money lessons for the future. An allowance is a great way to teach children about managing and budgeting their own finances in a safe environment before entering adulthood. Parents should take into consideration the numerous benefits that come with giving their child an allowance, from developing financial independence to greater self-sufficiency. Ultimately, it’s up to you as a parent to decide what is best when considering allowances; however, this blog post will discuss some key reasons why giving your child an allowance could set them up for success both now and in the future. 

First, an allowance can help teach children how to budget and manage money. When given a set amount of money each month, kids can begin to understand the concept of saving, as well as the importance of not spending it all at once. Additionally, setting a budget and breaking it down into categories such as ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ can help kids understand the difference between responsible and impulsive spending.  Through trial and error, kids can learn how to make the most of their finances and be more mindful of their spending. 

Second, an allowance can also help prepare children for financial independence. Allowing kids to make their own spending decisions from a young age will give them more self-confidence in managing their finances as they get older. Having access to their own money can also encourage children to be more proactive in terms of finding ways to earn additional income, such as doing chores around the house or getting a part-time job. Furthermore, having an allowance from a young age can make kids more responsible and can provide an extra layer of financial security when they enter adulthood. 

Finally, providing an allowance to your child can also be beneficial in terms of teaching them the value of money. Kids can learn to appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into earning and managing money, which can help them become more mindful consumers. Additionally, an allowance can be a great incentive for kids to learn about the consequences of making irresponsible purchases and to think twice before spending their money. 

Overall, there are numerous reasons why giving your child an allowance can be beneficial in the long run. By setting up a budget and teaching them the value of money, you can give your kids the financial literacy they need to become independent adults, so they can budget for major expenses like moving services from Black Tie Moving. 

Perhaps Black Tie Moving just delivered your furniture, and you notice your child has been on their tablet nearly all morning. It’s hard to see the consequences of too much screen time for children until it’s too late. Yet, there are actions you can take right now to help your child limit their media use.

Here are 4 ways to limit screen time for your child.

Set a Time Limit

While some screen time is safe for children, you want to make sure that it’s limited. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that you limit your child’s media use to under 2 hours a day. While it may be convenient for you to hand your child the iPad when they are acting restless, you want to make sure you moderate this for yourself as well.

Setting a time limit can help ensure that your child isn’t engaging in too much screen time. Following the 2-hour rule, come up with a reasonable plan for when your kid will be allowed to use their electronics. This could be one hour each morning and one hour in the evening. Find what works best for you and your child and be consistent with their screen time schedules.

Encourage Their Creativity

There are plenty of educational resources available online. Yet, this doesn’t necessarily promote a child’s individual curiosity or creativity. In essence, the more information a child is fed through a screen, the less they are trying to figure out themselves. This provides a setback in a child forming their personal identity.

As a parent, work to encourage your child’s creativity outside of their tablet. You can paint with them, write stories, or sign them up for music lessons. Figure out which creative activity your child seems to enjoy and motivate them to practice it daily.

Spend Time Outside

Research has shown that American children spend a mere 30 minutes a day outside compared to seven hours engaged in screen time. This statistic is startling. It’s now more important than ever to make sure your child spends more time outside and less time on their devices.

Spending time in nature allows your child to be creative, become familiar with their surroundings, and engage in healthy play. The health benefits are astounding when it comes to your child playing outside. Even playing in dirt can help a child’s immune system and heart health – along with increasing happiness and learning ability.

Consider Sports and Physical Activity

Too much screen time has been linked to obesity in children. This could easily be attributed to children being less physically active and overconsuming snacks while they watch their favorite TV cartoon. Less screen time will help them to not be at risk for obesity, but it’s also important that you encourage your child to be physically active.

Sports and playground activities are a great way to teach your children the importance of being active. Both experiences allow your child to have fun while also learning to enjoy exercise and moving their bodies. It’s best to teach your child, at a young age, the benefits and joy that can be had while being active.

Mindfulness is one of the best techniques to help combat mental health issues such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Take a break from scheduling your fishing trip with Outdoor Solutions and read about how to help your children be more mindful.

Here are 4 tips to teach your children mindfulness in everyday life!

Easy Meditation Practices

One of the wonderful things about meditation is that it is designed for everyone – kids included! Mindfulness meditation has a slew of positive benefits like teaching kindness, compassion, and self-awareness. Incorporating this ancient practice into your daily routine with your children is sure to help their mental health as they navigate through childhood and beyond.

Once your child reaches the age of 7, you should begin to help them learn simple, mindfulness meditation techniques. The easiest would be to have them become aware of their breath – the inhale and exhale. As they get older, you can incorporate some more meditation techniques like awareness of the thoughts that enter their minds.

Mindfulness Journaling

Journaling is a great resource, for children and adults alike, to help incorporate mindfulness into everyday life. Writing down feelings and thoughts helps children to acknowledge and organize what’s going on inside of them. In doing so, they will be more well-equipped to handle stressful situations that come along as they get older.

You’ll want to teach your child to journal in a way that helps them conjure up peace and awareness. It’s important to not put too many requirements on their journaling time. This is meant to help them have a safe space to express how they feel. This also means that you shouldn’t try and sneak a peek at their daily journals. You want to give your child the privacy that they deserve.

Encourage Creativity

Creativity has shown to have a profound impact on mental well-being. Encouraging your children to tap into their creative sides is an easy way to help teach them about mindfulness. When we create, we put all of our focus on what we’re making. It allows us the freedom and space to use our imagination in a way that promotes mindfulness and focus.

There are many methods in which you can explore with your children to help them be creative. Writing, painting, and drawing are common and easy ways to get your child to express their creativity. Just be sure to find something that they enjoy doing. After all, you don’t want to force something on them that they don’t find pleasure in during. This could backfire and cause more unease and stress on them.

Spend Time in Nature

There’s no better way to fully embrace the present moment than by stepping outside. Research continues to show that nature helps to regulate our emotions, lower our heart rate, and feel less stressed. By doing so, it’s a great way to tap into our mindfulness.

Spend time with your children outside and invite them to connect with their surroundings. Help them to learn how to appreciate the singing birds, the falling leaves, and the blue sky. Nature offers a perfect place to teach your children the healing practice of mindfulness.

You and your family just moved into your new home with the help of Black Tie Moving. You noticed how compassionate your oldest was with one of the movers, and you were wondering how you ensure your youngest will have the same compassion.

Here are 4 steps to teach your children compassion!

Step 1: Lead by Example

Children learn best by mirroring what’s around them. This is why it’s so crucial that you don’t inadvertently teach your kids bad behaviors, as you never know when they are watching. However, this works the other way around too. If your child sees you acting with compassion, they will begin to learn how to mirror and mimic this behavior.

While it will take more than just having your child observe your compassion, it’s vital that they become aware of it while they’re too young to understand it fully themselves. This way, when you go to teach them more about the meaning of compassion, they will have an idea of what it looks like from when they were much younger.

Step 2: One Good Deed a Day

Once your child reaches the age of 6 or 7, you should consider adopting a “one good deed a day” method with them. The idea of this method is simple. You and your child make sure that you do one good deed a day that helps someone else. This could be as simple as giving a stranger a compliment or picking up a piece of trash.

After your child turns 10, start to encourage them to practice their one good deed on their own. You want them to build that awareness of how and when they can help someone. How you keep track of this is up to you. You don’t want to make your child think you don’t trust them, so perhaps going over their deeds once a week is a good starting point.

Step 3: Teach Them the Meaning of Compassion

Once your child is old enough to truly comprehend compassion, it’s time to start teaching them about the importance of it. You want to show them how compassion helps and heals the world. There are many resources to help you accomplish this. It’s important you figure out what will best encourage your child to learn more.

Books are a wonderful resource that can help children learn about compassion. You could either read these with your child or have them read alone. It’s best that you ask your child what they prefer. After learning about the meaning of compassion, be sure to have regular conversations with your child about their understanding of it. Oftentimes, you will find even you can learn something from them.

Step 4: Compassion With Themselves

The last, most important, and usually most challenging step is to teach your child to have compassion with themselves. You should start this early, but it becomes even more crucial as they reach the teenage years.

In order for a teenager to learn to have compassion with themselves, they need to believe they are worthy of it. This is why encouragement and compassion from you to them is vital. Teach them to love themselves for who they are. Consider having them journal and recite positive affirmations that are true to them.