Children don’t just accidentally “grow up” to be emotionally healthy, mature individuals. They need to have their parents around often so they can see their values put into action. We need to share our life stories and experiences with our children, and most of all, we need to encourage, love, and respect them.
Having an “All-in Night” tradition in your family will do just that. It builds community within the family unit, and that in turn creates a confidence in young people that they will carry forever.
My husband, Chris, and I learned through our experience as parents that All-in Nights brought a healthy closeness within our family and a self-awareness for each member as an individual as well as an increased awareness of others.
Over the years, our All-in Nights helped Chris and me through the process of gradually “letting go” of our kids, which made it easier for them to move out and be productive, happy adults with our continued support as mentors.
how to begin
Here’s a plan for your first All-in Night (AIN).
Choose a night when everyone can be at home. Monday was the night for us, and there were no exceptions. We didn’t have visitors on this night, and no one went out for any reason. As you can imagine, this was difficult for a busy family of seven, but we did it!
Decide on a theme for each AIN and encourage each child to come up with a project through the week that’s related to that theme, which they can share with the rest of the family on your AIN.
Make the projects age-appropriate. While you will encourage your ten-year-old to do his AIN project on his own, you may need to help your four-year-old.
Don’t make the projects too complicated. A ten-minute presentation is long enough.
Have a special treat. We had fruit desserts every other night of the week, but we made AINs special—delicious ice cream or banana splits with all the trimmings! Also, the rule for us was that family members could enjoy the treat only if they participated in the activity.
Be flexible. Monitor your children’s behavior. Where we discerned a problem or an issue, or even if one of our children was a bit quieter, we could restructure or alter the AIN topic for that night in order to assist with that particular need.
Take time off. You can do away with AIN during the holidays to give everyone a break.
Don’t give up. In our family, AIN began with dinner together as usual. During the main meal, we would talk about the topic for the day and share answers. We did this to shorten the process, keeping it to the point, and going from person to person in turn. When everyone had had their turn, we enjoyed dessert together.
While eating our special treat, I would tell the kids about the following week’s topic, always keeping it short and simple.
choosing topics
Try to cover the various situations your kids are likely to face in life. This is a good time to share experiences you’ve learned from and tips that can help your kids to live full, robust lives.
Keep your long-range goal in mind as you discuss different topics each week. The objective is to help your kids develop lifelong attitudes and habits. You may have already taught your kids about principles such as kindness, courage, patience, and affirming others, but it’s great for them to be reminded and to have a chance for extra practice.
The principles taught in our AINs are values we all use in everyday life, but focusing on them during All-in Night provides a great opportunity to be more intentional in using them. We encouraged the principles to be put into practice for the coming week then received feedback the following week on how they all managed.
Following are some suggestions you can use for your own AINs.
Showing love. This topic will help each family member to recognize ways they can express love to others and how they like to be shown love. As parents, part of our job is to teach our kids how to love by being an example to them. If we don’t tell the people who are closest to us how we like to be loved, how are they supposed to know? Explain to your kids that during the coming week, they have to think of ways they like to be loved, and then share those ways with the family.
Public speaking. The ability to speak confidently in public will often give the speaker the edge in life in their work and career advancement. Encourage your children to come prepared to speak on a topic of interest to them for one or two minutes, depending on their age. When someone is passionate and involved in a subject, they will find it easy to talk about.
Ask your children to stand up while everyone listens, and during this time encourage the speaker to maintain eye contact with everyone, to stand with their hands still, and not to say too man “ums.” Give them a huge round of applause when they finish, and encourage them by discussing the good points from their talk.
Giving. There is an old saying that “giving is better than receiving.” As parents you can model this in many different ways and take your children along for the ride. You can take your children to a homeless soup kitchen where they can give out bags of homemade cookies, or take them to a nursing home where they will learn to love older people. There are so many needy people that the possibilities are endless. It’s a wonderful way to get children thinking about others and not just themselves.
Apologizing. You have probably already taught your children to say, “I’m sorry,” but it’s good to revisit the basics and talk about it together as a family, in a safe and open way. We demonstrated the art of saying sorry and showed them by example that it’s OK to make a mistake—even a downright horrid mistake—as long as they genuinely offered an apology and made every effort not to do that same thing again. Encourage your children to think of one or two examples of when they had to apologize and how it made them feel.
Introducing the idea
No matter how large or small your family, whether you have one parent or two, and whether you have one child or ten, the AIN principle can work for you.
Buy each person in your family a lined notebook. On the first night, each person writes his or her name on the cover. Encourage them to decorate it with stickers or their own artwork.
Write the current date on the first page, then write down several goals that they want to achieve during that year.
Younger children may simply scribble a pattern on the notebook while older ones may have goals such as “This year I want to read two books that will help me to grow as a person”; “I want to practice the piano five nights a week for half an hour”; or “I want to be a friend to Sally from school because she is lonely.”
Revisit these goals as a family every six months to see how much each person achieved.
Try All-in Nights with your family. I think you’ll like it!
