Five Bonding Activities For The Stepfamily
Let’s face it. Being in a family is hard, especially if you’re a blended family. Whether or not your family is tight-knit or struggling, it’s important to find something to bond over.
Here are five activities that may help bring you closer together.
Plant a Garden
Be sure to let everyone get involved and have an input. Remember, this is more about letting everyone participate than trying to have a professional gardening strategy.
If everyone wants to plant cucumbers or the entire family is set on a flower garden except for one child who wants to plant carrots, then that is just fine.
A garden can be a great activity, because, as it grows and is tended to, it can act as a living metaphor of your family.
Take a Hike
This is an activity that can be tailored to almost any fitness level, gets the family out of their usual environment, and forces everyone to put down their cellphones and tablets and interact.
Not to mention the fresh air and activity encourages healthy brain chemistry. It’s good for everyone no matter what.
Visit a Corn Maze
This is season-specific, but what makes this such a great family activity is it won’t raise competitive tensions the way some games might.
Not only does it require everyone to work together to get out of there, but it teaches a great lesson about cooperative problem-solving.
If you can find your way through the maze together, then you can find your way through life together.
Some corn mazes come with clues planted throughout them to help you find your way. Cooperative activities like this are an excellent way to strengthen bonds.
Tour a Stadium
For many families, sports is the way parents and children can bond with each other. If you’re a family interested in football, you can go outside and toss a ball around or watch a game together.
Even better, though, you can take tours of football stadiums, like the MetLife Stadium, whenever you’re nearby. Opportunities like that can be once-in-a-lifetime activities that everyone will always remember.
Volunteer
This allows you to do something as a family while teaching the value of helping others. Let the kids choose the activity or rotate through a choice by each household member.
Opportunities can be as varied as cleaning up a local park or waterway, helping out in an animal shelter, serving meals to the homeless and more.
This is also a great way to help everyone realize they have so much while others might not and that they should be grateful for what they have.
If you’re creative with choosing the service project, then it will become a unique memory in everyone’s minds.
Your blended family may have certain needs and tensions that a biologically connected family would not, but ultimately, you are a family. The same kinds of activities that strengthen connections in other families will do the same in yours.
Just have fun and embrace each other by incorporating and celebrating everyone’s likes and interests.
