1. Enjoy Each Other
The essence of a happy family is that they truly uplift each other and that all comes down to how they treat each other, One example "Parents come home and children are happy to see them and when children go home, parents are happy to see them. "
2. Swap Stories
"When your children come home, ask them what happened at school and have a story for them," he said. "If you go down and does not really care and then five minutes later, the TV is on, why would they be happy to see you?"
Line, he says, that when you get home, the child is a priority. "You have to drop everything and go home with something to share with your children, if the story or even a small sticker," he says. "I saw your children give you something to look forward. Large family eternal life, boredom, and leads to dysfunction, affairs, and children want to stay with family friends."
3. Place The First Marriage
The establishment of a concrete example of love, "Boteach said." Relationship and the marriage must come first. "Think Carol and Mike Brady of the Brady Bunch and Cliff and Clair Huxtable Cosby Show.
There are many families where children always come first, says Boteach. Then they become substitute providers of love, "he said. "It's an unfair burden to place on a child." It is also bad for families, he said, "because the children will leave home one day."
4. Breaking Bread Together
Families who eat together, stay together. It 's so simple. "Family dinners are essential," Boteach said. "It is time to unite." There are at least four family meals per week, he suggested.
5. Playing Together
"There are one or two unifying activities that the family is not a night," said Boteach. He suggests bedtime stories to children or reading a chapter of the novel is an older child.
6. Put Family Before Friends
"In happy families, family comes before friends," he says, "an adviser to the field to understand something that parents say that children treated and have fun. Let the rules, but understand that children need a lot of fun. When children are bored and listless, that start looking for the fun away from home and where friends become more important. Friendship is important, but subordinate to the family. "
7. Limit Children's Activities After School
Today, increasing numbers of children have marched and participate in six or seven after-school activities per week. His mother is a driver and children are never home at the same time. This is not a recipe for a happy family, Boteach says. "If your children grow up without knowing how to do ballet, they will be OK. No after-school activities are an extreme and too many is the other extreme, but moderation is where we should aim for." Create your own activities after school like a family, he suggests. For example, take your kids rollerblading, cycling or swimming after school as a family.
8. Building Rituals And Honor
"Families need rituals," Boteach said. Rituals can be religious, national, or even single-family, "he said.
Barbara Fiese, PhD, professor and director of psychology at Syracuse University in New York, agrees. "Happy families are important and rituals are not affected by them," he said. "They may be unique to your own family, how to make muffins in the morning of Saturday, a night of pizza per week, or even a family song. Rituals often bring family members together, as they are repeated in the time. "
Work, rituals, flexibility is needed, he added. "They should not be rigid," Fiese says. "If the bagel place is closed, you need to go somewhere else."
9. Keep Your Voices Down
10. Never Fight In Front Of Children
TV viewers never saw Carol and Mike Brady to make it better? Even if the fighting or bickering may be inevitable, try to keep it away from children, Boteach said. "If your kids see you fight and argue, apologize and say," I'm sorry you had to see it. Dad and I just had a different view, but everything is now OK. "
11. Don't Work Too Much
All work and no play makes things worse for families that make it boring. "If you're not all the time and do not give your children, your children internalize a sense of insecurity," says Boteach. They will start to believe they are not valuable enough.
12. Encourage Sibling Harmony
Sibling rivalry can be divisive. "I try to tell my children how lucky they are to have siblings," Boteach said.
13. Have Private Jokes
Happy families are jokes, Syracuse Fiese said: "Jokes and nicknames symbolize that this is a group you belong to and serve as an abbreviation for a greater experience," she said.
14. Be Flexible
"It is easier said than done," Fiese says. "But by their nature, families change so one must be open to changes in the composition and age," Fiese says. "Someone gets married, somebody dies, somebody remarries and teenagers are no longer children and young adults are no longer teenagers, but they are all still part of the family."
15. Communicate
J. Rose Perkins, EdD, associate professor of psychology at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, said that a happy family communicate. "Often families come everyone says the mother, the mother sends the message, but in a happy family, there are more flexible lines of communication open."
In happy families, all members of the family unit are able to communicate openly, "he said.