5 Ways to Bring Your Family Closer Together

October 31, 2015 by Tina Leave a Comment

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, or follow my work on Smart Parenting and Philstar.com, or read my posts on and , you’ll know that I’m a total advocate for intentional family time… for making meaningful memories with our families, and for cherishing our relationships with family members! 🙂

Preparing to “play Mass” as a family. 🙂 In preparation for our eldest’s First Holy Communion

Of course, neither my husband nor I are “perfect” at this yet — at making each and every moment with our family count. We have a looooong way to go, so it helps to get tips from other people!

This is why I am super thankful to my newfound acquaintances and collaborators at Marccx Media — they’ve come up with this guest post to share tips on how we can bring our families closer together. 🙂 I hope you’ll enjoy and be blessed by this!

5 Ways to Bring Your Family Closer Together

With work commitments, doctor’s appointments, parent/teacher meetings, playdates, errands, and more, it can be hard to bring the family together. Something always seems to gets in the way, whether your kids are young and living at home, away at college, or with families of their own, the challenges of living in today’s fast-paced society can have harmful effects on the family unit, and it’s essential that we do our best to stay connected even through life’s little obstacles.

According to the New Kids Center, children should learn the importance of family in their lives and know that they can always turn to them in their hour of need. Healthychildren.org advocates the importance of parents and children having genuine respect for one another. Even when there are disagreements or physical separation, demonstrating love, caring, trust, and concern is important at all times to keep the family close.

Here are 5 simple ways to bring your family closer together:

1. Eat dinner as a family.

It may sound simple, but with family member’s conflicting schedules it can be easy to let life take over. Make time as often as possible to actually sit down with your family and break bread together. Turn off the television, shut down your computer, and listen to one another as you ask about each other’s day.

If your relatives live close by, you could try making one day a week, such as Sunday, a family time and invite grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives other to encourage bonding with your kids.

2. Ban smartphones at certain times.

Gone are the days when the television was considered the unhealthy intruder at the dinner table. Now it’s more than likely at any mealtime that half of those present will be seeing how many “likes” their profile picture got. But chatting with friends who aren’t in the room can isolate us from the people who matter most.

If you’re having trouble getting the attention of your children or partner, or you yourself are constantly listening out for that unmistakable ping of a WhatsApp message, Facebook alert or chime of an incoming email, learn to turn off your smart phones at certain times of day. Make a rule that everyone respects and use that family time for real face-to-face communication.

3. Teach your children how to cook by making it a family fun time.

OK, so we’re not all Martha Stewart, but even if you hate to cook, it can be a fun activity to do with your family. You could ask Grandma for family recipes, follow a TV cooking show, or even ask your kids to come up with the idea and spark their creativity. Just remember to supervise your children in the kitchen at all times.

4. Create rituals and traditions.

Part of our family “rituals”: Read-aloud time every day! 🙂 These are some of the books we read aloud earlier this week — inspired by the kids’ questions about how babies are made! ;)

This might sound a little strange, but by creating your own rituals and traditions, such as Monday night cook-offs and Friday night games or movie nights, you can actually bond more closely with the family and won’t replace family time with other activities.

5. Don’t let distance defeat you.

If your family is separated by distance, whether it’s interstate or international, there are ways to use technology to bring your family together. Make sure that you schedule time every week to speak with your far away family members, and think about building family blogs, a family website, or photo albums.

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How do you make time with your family meaningful? Share your tips and experiences with us in the comments!

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*Special thanks to Michael Peggs for writing this post for us! Michael is the founder of Marccx Media, a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO and Content Marketing. Before Marcxx, Peggs worked at Google in business development, forming digital media and advertising partnerships. He is also a blogger and podcaster, hosting the iTunes Top 10 New & Noteworthy podcast You University – The Personal Branding Podcast.

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Photo credits: 2nd photo by stockimages / 3rd photo by nenetus / 4th photo by marin / 6th photo by Ambro — All on FreeDigitalPhotos.net. All other photos by author.

June 6, 2015 by Tina

I haven’t been “around” here lately, I know, and there are many reasons behind my “absence.”

For one thing, work and chores (well, life in general actually) have been keeping me busy, and while there are SO many things to write/blog about over here, they will have to wait for a while.

Another reason is that I have been struggling with something lately — and I’m “confessing” it again to y’all here, hence, the “keeping it real” part of this post’s title. (Read to know what it is, and the accompanying article. Then, please, come back here and say a little prayer for me, won’t you?)

This sin, this weakness that has been like “a thorn in my flesh,” as Saint Paul states in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, has been keeping me from writing here, because I feel very much like a hypocrite these days. (Again, keeping it real here.)

So, while I try to finish everything that I need to do for work this week and resolve to be a better person and mother, and take the necessary action steps to be such, please feel free to read my other articles that have been published recently elsewhere around the web:

On Smart Parenting:

Positive Discipline

Positive Discipline: How to Say No Without Saying No

5 Tips to Raising an Independent Preschooler

Back-to-School Preparations

9 More Books to Help Prepare Your Child for School

8 Tips to Help Your Child Prepare for the Opening of School

5 Ways to Help Your Child Set School Goals

On Make It Blissful:

The Power of a Praying Mom

On World Moms Blog:

3 Ways to be a More Intentional Mom: Beat Your Facebook Addiction

Ironically, most of what I have written applies to me perfectly right now — I need to practice positive discipline, need to get the kids back to a “school routine,” need to help them set goals for their studies, need to be a more prayerful and intentional mom! Ha! Talk about practicing what you preach, yes? 😉

Anyway, I pray these articles/posts will be helpful to you somehow! Till my next post here (hopefully, that will be soon!). God bless, everyone!

P.S. Before I “go,” here’s an inspiring image and quote from Kate of CentsationalGirl.com — yes to being offline more so we can live more fully!

What’s been keeping you busy lately? Let’s chat in the comments!

Children Are a Blessing

April 22, 2015 by Tina Leave a Comment

I’m praising God for the blessing of children today, for a very, very special reason! 🙂 Some people may consider having children a burden, especially under difficult, challenging, seemingly “impossible” circumstances — but God’s Word assures us:

No matter what the events that led to your becoming a parent…

No matter what trials you faced or are facing as a parent…

No matter what quirks or “special needs” or “different abilities” your child/ren may have…

No matter how tiring and draining child-rearing, child-raising and child-DISCIPLING can be…

No matter how many times you just want to throw in the proverbial {parenting} towel… (oh yes, I’ve been there too, my dear!)

Remember that children are a blessing. They are God’s gift to us.

So celebrate your child/ren today… and always. You don’t need a special occasion to do so. Our kids are part of the reason why we can call ourselves .

Love and prayers,
Tina

A Reminder for Parents: Tell This to Your Children Every Day

March 21, 2015 by Tina 7 Comments

It’s the weekend, friends! 🙂 For the parents out there, don’t forget to spend some time building beautiful memories with your kiddos (yes, even if sometimes you—like my husband and I—would rather spend it lazing about with your own individual interests)! I know many of you are celebrating your kids’ special milestones this weekend, too, like moving up and graduation. If that is the case, congratulations to you and your kids! 🙂

I attended or CFA’s Graduation and Moving Up Day yesterday and was once again inspired by Bro./Kuya Bo Sanchez‘s short message to the parents (one of the “perks” of my work as editor of CFA’s e-newsletter and blog is that I get to hear Bro.Bo speak a lot 😉 ). He told the parents present to help their children grow in confidence, to believe that they were born to do great things for God, but not to pressure them to be someone they’re not. He said (and I’m paraphrasing here),

“Tell your child, ‘You’re amazing,’ but add these three important words: ‘as you are.’ “

Sometimes we parents forget this (especially yours truly), so it’s always good to be reminded — each child is special in God’s eyes, and has unique talents, gifts and skills that God can use to bless the world. Part of being truly rich and blessed is learning to see the treasure we have in our own homes.

So go ahead — “spoil” your awesome kids today with LOVE. Tell your child/ren: “You are amazing, just the way you are.”

P.S.

If you’re looking for a fun family movie to watch with your kids, one that highlights their uniqueness in God’s eyes, here’s one from Veggie Tales (our kids love this!):

https://youtu.be/iHVeWf77Vas

(Image credits: Photo in image by David Castillo Dominici |)

11 Inspiring Messages for Families from Pope Francis

January 20, 2015 by Tina 2 Comments

There is no doubt about it — Pope Francis, who had even non-Catholic and atheist well-wishers during his visit to the Philippines, has truly been a source of inspiration, encouragement and hope not just for Filipinos, but for millions of people worldwide, too.

Locally, many of us found ourselves taking to the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope en route to his different appointments and activities. Our own little family did this, and were blessed to have seen the Pope whizzing by, even if it was just for three seconds! Too bad we weren’t able to take a picture! Well, at least other people did, like this one below:

Many more people waited patiently for hours to hear Pope Francis speak in person at various locations like the Manila Cathedral, the Mall of Asia Arena, Tacloban Airport, Palo Cathedral, University of Sto Tomas, and, of course, Luneta Park.

Others were content to follow the live telecast of the Pope’s activities and messages on TV or other devices, noting his bright smile and laughing along with his audience whenever he’d crack a joke.

There’s a touching story behind this photo — read it .

Indeed, the 78-year-old pontiff, who is agile even with only one lung, has definitely given us words (and an example) to live by. Read some of his most inspiring messages, especially for families, on Smart Parenting’s website.