Chappy News
Chappy News
Term 2 Parent Coffee Catch Up
Our next Parent Coffee Catch Up will be on Tuesday 10 June at 9am. Invitations will be sent out in the next few weeks.
Mother’s Day Gifts at Secondary Girls’ Group
Last week we made bookmarks for Mother’s Day. The girls had fun colouring in, collaging, and creating.
Choir Continues to Hit High Notes
Choir has continued this term, and some of the primary students have been joining us. We have had fun playing games and continuing to work on our song.
Essentials Hampers
More hampers have been given out over the past few weeks. Congratulations to Daniel and Henry and their families for receiving a $20 hamper, made up of pantry and household essentials. All school families are automatically in the draw, and special thanks to Vinnies Gympie for making up these hampers for us.
Family Matters: Slow Down to Create Margin for Family Time
The intentional act of slowing down to create a margin for family time provides benefits that will carry forward in every family member’s life. Many families today have a hard time balancing work, family, and personal time. However, every day is a gift you get to unwrap so don’t miss it! Reducing the speed of our lives gives us time to open and enjoy each one. As a way of life, not slowing down forces you to lose out on the extraordinary blessings around you each day, including your kids’ desire to be seen or heard by you. As parents, we may not have time to notice if we don’t regularly consider our priorities and intentionally reduce our pace. Though parenting is an amazing gift, it is also a demanding job! Its challenges are magnified when we forget to down-shift and breathe. In fact, if you accelerate, you may fly by important moments, missing them altogether.
The Gift of Slowing Down
Slowing down allows for some fantastic things to happen, far better than any toy you could buy your kids.
- Margin to play and build bonds: play creates joyful moments, quality time that strengthens your relationships. Research affirms that your playfulness and warmth provide your children with a safe and secure environment. In other words, your loving playfulness is great for your child’s day! It leads to deeper connection between you and can help decrease negativity and behavioural issues. Researchers have also discovered that the quality of play matters. Everyone is different, so take the time to figure out what high-quality play means for each of your children. Play is serious business for family health and identity. Both individually and as a family, play builds identity, helps kids learn to construct relationships outside the family, and cements social skills like sharing, collaborating, and being a good sport. Simply playing encourages physical activity, imagination, and creative problem-solving and fosters communication skills. It lowers stress and anxiety, too! Protecting time to play is a meaningful way to relax and restore your soul with fun.
- Room for meaningful conversation and deeper connections: rushed and distracted conversations can make people—especially your kids—feel unimportant. Meaningful and satisfying conversations, on the other hand, bless your relationships. They create opportunities for understanding, influence, growth, and closeness. Really connecting in conversation requires the discipline and challenge of carefully listening. Listening instils value. In fact, when people sense that they are heard and understood, they experience higher levels of ‘feel good’ connection hormones. Researchers have found that, when people dive into conversation, their brains begin to synchronise with one another. Lead your conversations in a way that surprises and interests the other person. Slowing down makes room for this gift in your family conversations.
- Time for learning and teaching: learning takes time and teaching requires patience. Slowing down is beneficial to both, though. Being in a hurry and busy all the time increases overlooking blind spots, making mistakes, oversights, and impatience. Too many families fall apart because of the relentless pace they are trying to maintain. Their constant hustle grows their impatience with one another and eliminates opportunities to learn from their mistakes. Foster a culture of growth and retention in your home by reducing the pressure of hurry whenever possible. It will allow you space to adjust your emotions and responses, provide opportunities to think more clearly and enable you to guide your children with wisdom. This provides a powerful model of self-control. Affording time to unhurriedly teach your kids how to tie their shoes, wash dishes, manage their money, treat others kindly, vacuum, cook, or cuddle for some closeness is never wasted. The fact is that your kids need you to slow down so that they can follow in your footsteps, relationally attach, and learn to trust your guidance.
Overcoming Family Obstacles to Slowing Down
When it comes to slowing down, most families face challenges. Extracurricular activities like sports, tutoring, music lessons, and time with friends create tension. Sometimes, it is as easy as learning to say, “No, thank you. We have other commitments.” As you work to manage the obstacles facing you and your family, think about these issues:
- Motivation: too many have bought the lie that busyness is a sign of success. But what is ‘success’, anyway? How you define it is essential. If you spend a lot of time in the car shuttling your kids from practice to events to lessons (frequenting drive-throughs for dinner on the way), it may be time to consider your motivations. Reflect on these few questions:
- Is this driven by you or your child?
- What beliefs and priorities do you and your family want to work on?
- Does your schedule build or detract from these?
If you are serious about slowing down to create margin for family time, start by modelling the values you’ve identified and revisit them often in family conversations. As you aim to develop strong hearts, souls, and minds within your family, make room to discern what activities and commitments will best serve you. And be sure to ‘keep the main thing, the main thing.’ This will help your family members learn how to balance necessary responsibilities and interests with intentional slow-down time.
- The drain of technology on family time: buy back some time in your schedule by turning off the TV, laptop, and smartphones. Technology drains time and interpersonal connection, so limit their interruption with some basic ideas to curb their use, including:
- Placing a basket in your drop zone. When family members walk in the door, have them leave tablets and phones there. This will take some monitoring at first but will get easier. Allow access to their tech to take calls, do homework, or enjoy a predetermined period of playtime, but when they’ve hit their limit, be sure the device goes back in the basket.
- Setting media guidelines suited to the ages of your children. The eSafety Commissioner and the Australian Parents Council websites have some good information on setting boundaries.
- Turning off all screens during family meals and outings.
- Removing screens and turn them off 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime.
- Adapted from Focus on the Family Australia
My role is to support the wellbeing of staff, students, parents, and others in our school community. If you ever need to have a chat or help with something, please contact me on the school number – 5480 2333. I’m at school on Tuesday (8.30am-11.35am) and Thursday (9.30am-2.35pm), and I can also be contacted via email – rsdri0@eq.edu.au.
Chappy Rachel
