Family Harmony

Family Togetherness

For this write-up, for the time being, I am defining the family as consisting of husband, wife and their children. Therefore, family harmony will mean ever growing positive relationships between husband, wife and their children and within each one of them. This requires constant nurturing and looking after as well as constant renewal and constant improvement. In absence of this, the harmony will peter out or disintegrate over period of time. Thinking and planning is not good enough. What is essential is doing. So be careful.

Without making it too verbose, I will get down to the brass-tacks on how to maintain and flourish the family harmony. Here are some practical tips (not in any particular order) for you and your family; read on and implement:

•Choose your life partner with good thinking (but be warned that no system to select a life partner is foolproof or correct whether its love marriage, marriage by dating, arranged marriage or a good combination of dating and arranged marriage etc and there is nothing called a "perfect" partner). So, once you have decided somewhat reasonably well on your partner, get married and stick together forever; make it happen that way- it’s not automatic and one has to work for it. Various qualities one may be looking for the prospective spouse are given at URL (Qualities of Spouse) http://spouse-qualities.blogspot.com/.
•Maintain your marriage. Read all the other posts here. You may also refer: (Counseling) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/.
•Rekindle your marriage. Read all the posts here. You may also refer: (Counseling) http://counselingfamily.blogspot.com/.
•Find out creative excuses to honeymooning and re-honeymooning.
•Exchange praises for each other for the qualities you possess and at times just praise each other for no particular reason.
•Decide on the number of children you should have depending upon your readiness to take up responsibility for them financially, time-wise and emotionally. Having one child is OK in these days when both husband and wife are busy the whole day in their professional work and other reason being the limited resources of all kinds.
•Give each other his or her private space from time to time.
•Create an environment of open communication.
•Yet, think before you start communicating; what you speak should hurt no one in the family.
•Spend a good amount of quality time with your spouse and children.
•Take as many meals of the day together as possible. In today's situations, it may not be possible to enjoy all the meals together. Yet, try to maximize them.
•During the meal times create an environment where every member of the family shares the day to day activities and happenings with the rest of the members of the family.
•Members of the family should set out time during every week to play some outdoor games or other outdoor activities like gardening, jogging, swimming, shopping etc together.
•Members of the family should set out time every week to do some indoor activities like tidying up the house, vacuum cleaning, cleaning up the kitchen, washing clothes etc and recreation like movies, music, storytelling, reading, photography etc together.
•All the family members can jointly take part in cooking some special or regular recipes at home once in a while.
•Family should go on vacation few times in a year and enjoy an outing, long drive, excursion, picnic, sightseeing, museums, zoos, bird watching, theme parks, photography etc.
•Go to the nearby library periodically along with your spouse and kids; borrow the books as per their and your interest and then, share with each other what all of you read.
•Those of you who are religious types can perform religious activities together once in a while.
•There must be constant exchanges of appreciation for each other between the family members for having done something worthwhile and at times, just unconditionally. Just praise each other because they are your family members.
•Hug each other or hold each other’s hand from time to time to express your affection and care for each other and at times, for no reason.
•Help create an environment of excellence at home.
•Help create an environment at home for nurturing value based living. Refer: (Parental Responsibilities) http://parental-responsibilities.blogspot.com/.
•Create an environment for family such that the children, your spouse and yourself always aim at achieving better educational or academic qualifications, doing better in games and sports and in the hobbies and interests they have and will develop in due course.
•Continuous overall growth of every family member is very important.
•Create an action oriented family environment. Make sure that laziness does not set in.
•Establish some discipline around TV watching and computer related activities. Do them when and where necessary; addiction is bad.
•Create an environment of self help.
•Help promote habits of independence and self-confidence in each member of the family. Refer: (Self-confidence) http://self-confidence-improvement.blogspot.com/.

Shortlist of Vital Qualities in a Spouse

Must Qualities in a Great Spouse (Qualities Demonstrated towards One's life Partner)

•Respectful
•Loving and affectionate
•Caring
•Flexible (to change for better)
•Enthusiastic lover (sexually)
•Cultured and well mannered
•Supportive
•Appreciative
•Faithful
•Trusting
•Educated (higher formal education)
•Free of addictions
•Hygienic
•Balanced and composed
•Capable to earn adequate money

Secret of Happy Marriage

(In lighter vein)

Here is secret to happy married life: Do what your wife tells you.

Working Couples and Balance in Relationship

These days, both husband and wife work as professionals and earn money for home. Both remain busy for at least 10 to 12 hours a day, working in their respective offices. When they return to their home after a hard day's work, it is important that both of them should demonstrate empathy, care, affection and love to each other and then, therefore, share the household work.

The routine household work involves:

• Evening tea/coffee and refreshments
• Dinner
• Next day's lunch packs
• Dropping and picking up child/children from day-care/schools
• Bathing of child or children (when they are dependent on parents)
• Child's (or children's) home work and their studies
• Child (or children's) other development requirements
• Helping child/children to sleep on time; story telling
• Grocery
• Housekeeping
• Interior decoration and its maintenance
• Dish washing
• Laundry
• Paying bills
• Social calls/meetings
• Library
• Equipment maintenance
• etc
• etc (the list may be incomplete)

In case of couples where wife was not working, traditionally, she was expected to take up lots of these above-mentioned household responsibilities, though it also meant a considerable workload on her if her husband did not assist or help her in carrying out those chores.

However, in case of working couples when they are on par with each other in terms of their professional working hours outside their home, it is absolutely essential that they equally share all of the above-mentioned household responsibilities when they return to their home after their office work.

Since it is a husband-wife relationship, the household work should be done together as a team and not as a boss-subordinate relationship or as earmarked departments. At home they are life partners and equal; no one is superior and no one is inferior. So, they should share the household work while demonstrating empathy, care, affection and love towards each other.

That's called the perfect marriage relationship.