Judges 8-9 today........ Judges 10-11 tomorrow...

Read it.
Sandj

I was also reading about Structure for Family.

We hear that a lot of children spend 5-6 hours in front of the television with little or no parental supervision. Such reports reminds us of the NEED to structure our own and our children's time. What elements of structure are important?
1. Sleep
Children and adults both NEED a good night's rest to live healthy and happy lives. Establishing bedtimes and wakeup times is an imortant element of a family's structure. Structure doesn't need to rigid, but it should provide a framework within which all family members operate.
2. Study Time
Children of different aes will have differing amounts of homework. Also, one child will need more or less time than another child to master the same material. As you gain insight into your childen's abilities ad workloads, you can plan with them the amount of time needed for studies. Time should be flexible, it should be part of your children's daily schedule.
3. Play Time
Time to play is important to growing children. What consitutes "play" differs with age. Younger children may ride bikes or play with dolls. For girls in middle school, "play" might be sitting around with friends and talking. For teenage boys "play" is usually hitting the playground with others for basketball or soccer.
4. Chores
ALL children should have some work to do that makes a valuable contribution to the family. Ideally, this work will be done daily as a basic element in the structure of their day. Chores can include picking up their own clothing, making their beds, carrying out the trash, setting the table, helping to cook the meals or cleaning the kitchen after supper.
5. Family Time
Be sure to include in your structure some time when the entire family is together, at meal time for instance. Also, build in some private time for each child with Dad or Mom. Take a walk or drive to the ice-cream shop or prepare the evening meal together with one child. Spend the time together talking. Also, be sure to use natural times together, like riding somewhere in the car, to draw you child into conversations.
6. Phone and Television Time
When structuring the day, parents will probably have to sent limits on certains activities such as TV watching. Research shows that the physical and mental well-being af American children has been drastically affected by television. It is completely appropriate to set a limit on the number of hours your children may watch TV.
Use of phone will often need supervision also. As children move into adolescense, social relationships become increasingly important. And unless phone time is limited, literally hours each day may be spent chattering with friends to the exclusion of homework, chores and family time.
NOTE: Structure is not Restricting
Structure should never be rigid or inflexible. There shoudl be room for a child to stay overnight with a friend or for a teen to reschedule or skip study time now and then to go off with a friend.
Structure can prove difficult beccause it means that we as parents have to live within that structure ourselves. Sometimes when we're tired we'll have to make a special efforet to help a child with a task. Or perhaps we'll have to change a work schedule in order to keep an ice-cream date. But in a very real sense good parenting is always sacrificial. We give up thins we'd like to do for the sake of our children. And in the end, we're almost always glad we did.

Quote by Unknown
It's not easy to establish a healthy structure for the family, but an absence of structure in the home leads to boredom and even to undisciplined and unprofitable behavior.

Have a great night,
Sandj