Spiritual Parenting Tips and Techniques for Family Nights

Redefining devotions to Fun and Fruitful Spiritual Training

Family Nights are a time set aside each week to spend time as a family to intentionally impress upon them spiritual truth. The power of family nights is twofold, first it creates a formal setting where dad and mom can intentionally instill beliefs, values, or character qualities within their children. Rather than defer to the influence of peers and media, or abdicate character training to the school and church, parents can create the opportunity to teach their children the things that matter most. The second impact of family nights is perhaps even more significant than the first.  Twenty to sixty minutes of formal fun and instruction can set up countless opportunities for informal reinforcement. These informal impression points do not have to be created - they just happen at the dinner table, while driving in the car, or watching television, or any other parent/child time together. Once you have formally discussed a given family in a topic, you and your children will naturally refer back to those principles during the routine dialogues of everyday life.

The truth be known, many of us hated family devotions while growing up. We had them sporadically at best, usually whenever parents were feeling particularly guilty. But that was fine since the only thing worse was a trip to the dentist. Honestly do we really think that it was what God had in mind when he instructed us to teach our children? As an alternative, many parents are discovering family nights to be a wonderful compliment to or replacement for family devotions as a means of passing their beliefs and values to the kids. In fact, many parents hear their kids ask at least three times per week: can we have family night tonight? Music to dad’s and mom’s ears!