Stress and anxiety can often feel endemic to modern living, particularly if you are heading up a household with kids alongside your career. Sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day to find your inner peace – and the same goes for your children, who face the tribulations of modern schooling and examinations as well. But this also presents a key opportunity for you and your children to de-stress together, and get some quality time in the process!
At-Home Yoga Sessions
Yoga is world-renowned for its rejuvenating qualities, being a holistic form of exercise, meditation and expression that enjoys universal appeal for both its simplicity and difficulty. While your children might not quite have the attention spans for an extended yoga session, a short morning stint together could be a beautiful way to share your start to the day.
Learning an Instrument
Picking up a new hobby of any kind can be a mercifully distracting endeavour, especially in response to times of high stress. But there is one particular hobby that arguably has much more of a positive mental health impact than any other: learning an instrument. Music is truly a magical form of art, and sharing in the learning and appreciation of music with your children can be quite simply a stunning experience.
Choosing your instruments might prove difficult, though. The piano is one of the most intuitive instruments you can learn, and a great springboard for understanding theory – but if your family are more inclined to rock out, you might instead choose the guitar. Either way, instruments are an investment, and their potential loss or breakage can be causes of stress just as playing them relieves stress. With children a bit clumsier than everyone else, this can render music instrument insurance a shrewd decision!
Crafternoons
Of course, learning an instrument is as much a skill as it is an activity – and it is, indeed, a skill that not everyone has the same aptitude for. Still, expressing yourself is one of the best ways to counteract anxiety or ‘the blues’, and there may be a medium more befitting you and your children.
This is where the ‘crafternoon’ comes in. A crafternoon is exactly as it sounds – an afternoon for creative and crafty expression, whatever form that takes. Each afternoon you could pick a different medium or discipline, from plasticine sculpture to painting and even origami. Through this, you can enjoy the variety of different artistic endeavours with your children in tow, and potentially even find a special interest for one of you in the process.
Cooking Together
Lastly, there is little more soothing to the soul than a good, home-cooked meal. You could gather your children in the kitchen at least once a week for a joint cooking session, which presents an opportunity for you to teach cooking skills as well as a chance to bond over fantastic smells and tastes. The fruits of your labour will taste all the better for family collaboration!
