Our family often gets asked about our Intentional Family mindset and why we do what we do. We are excited to share they why’s and give you some insight to get started if you feel this would work for your family.
(And guess what? We know it will!)

Some Needed Background

My wife and I knew that we needed something more for our family. Being an elementary principal, involved in city events, on the community theater board, owning and running a small business, and active in my stake level church calling I am gone A LOT! My wife is also busy teaching piano, managing a church calling (RS President), and running any one of our 5 children that are still living at home around to their many varied events. PHEW!

We were pretty good at Family Home Evenings and had tried family councils (with varied success).

We heard about and tried out monthly parents/child interviews on Sundays to spend some parent/child time and help, teach, and express our love. (Maybe a post on this sometime- as they worked REALLY well, and our kids will now ask for them from time to time).

And, of course, family scripture study. We are fairly consistent as well- though looking back now, it was a speed reading event to “get it done” until just a few months ago.

Family prayers morning and night are also a constant. (And a constant battle to avoid “vain repetition” and truly speak with the Lord)

The Need For Something More

Even with all these good things, we, as the parents of seven children living at home at the time, realized that this still wasn’t enough to truly keep our family home-centered. The busyness of life was taking over, especially with our four older children.

One morning as I was scrolling down the endless feed of mindnumbing memes and other time sucks in Facebook, I happened to see a post by a very dear friend. Sharree has long been someone I admire and look up to in life. We were friends in college and she is still a close friend of our family today.

She always posts the most thought provoking spiritual thoughts that she has unearthed in her gospel study. And the one she posted that morning was the turning point for our family. She shared this life altering quote by William J. Doherty:

The Quote That Changed Everything

“Only an Intentional Family has a fighting chance to maintain and increase its sense of connection, meaning, and community over the years.

“An Intentional Family is one whose members create a working plan for maintaining and building family ties and then implement the plan as best they can. An Intentional Family rows and steers its boat rather than being moved only by the winds and the current.

“At heart, the Intentional Family is a ritualizing family. It creates patterns of connecting through everyday family rituals, seasonal celebrations, special occasions, and community involvement.

“An Intentional Family does not let meal times deteriorate into television watching. It does not let adolescents “do their own thing” at the expense of all family outings. {The family} is willing to look at how it handles Christmas or bar mitzvahs in order to make them work better for everyone. It has the discipline to stick with good rituals, and the flexibility to change them when they are not working anymore.”

I had to read and reread the quote. Intentional Family. It sounded right- it felt right. I needed time to think about this.

    I did some research on Mr. Doherty. I wanted to learn more about what being an intentional family was, what it really meant, and even bought his book, The Intentional Family: Simple Rituals to Strengthen Family Ties. Next, I searched the pages for more insight and direction on how to approach this with my family. I shared my thoughts and ideas with Allisha and we agreed that this was something we were going to do- Hughes Style.

(Please Note: Many links are affiliate links which allow us to offset the cost of running our site.)

Deciding to Be an Intentional Family

The easy part was deciding that we wanted to be an intentional family. The hard part was deciding what exactly that meant for the Hughes family. Allisha and I spent time discussing what we wanted it to be and look like. We then took two family home evenings to talk about what it means to be intentional and how it applies to being a family.

For us, we truly wanted to ensure our kids knew what the word intentional meant.
We looked up the word online.
Dictionary.com defines it as done..on purpose. Also listed are the synonyms deliberate, designed, planned. How perfect is THAT?
We talked about each word and how it could and should apply to the meaning of family.

The ‘Intentional Family’ Plan

Let me share hours of study and research with you on how we found a way to make it work for us. Remember, we are a super busy family, as are most families in today’s world. We knew it would have to be something that was discussed often in short bursts and yet we wanted to also engage in longer more structured activities.

To solve the longer, structured activities, we settled on one monthly activity. To decide these activities we handed out index cards to all the kids and had them list something they wanted to do as a family. It had to be something that was local (trips, etc. were to be planned far in advance) and could be done in a few hours or less.

After making sure everyone understood what “intentional” meant, how it applied to the family, and rules of listing ideas, we began.  

Each child gave ideas of what they wanted to do together: Basketball, Karaoke night, Hiking, Bowling, Golfing, Picnic, BBQ night, Make dinner together as a family, Trip to Joe’s Valley (a local reservoir), Video game night, Board game night, Family movie night, Night games, Swimming, Making homemade ice cream, Dodgeball/4 square, Water games, Yard games, Family 5K, Art night/drawing, Nickel City arcade, FHE with Grandma and pa, Fishing, Capture the flag, Movie night in the garage, Nerf gun war, Soccer game, BB gun contest. The cards went on and on.

One Vital Rule

VITAL RULE ALERT: When an activity is selected EVERYONE must participate and complaining is not allowed. While that seems like a far-fetched rule, it is pretty awesome how the kids will comply. Let me tell you that there is always drama during an activity. Someone gets upset and tries to stomp off. But, they are brought back into the area with a reminder that being intentional means following the rule that everyone must participate.

    As we started, we realized that we also wanted to do intentional service activities. We were hoping to do one a month along with our intentional family activities. It hasn’t worked out as nicely as we hoped, but we are getting there.
We handed out more index cards and went to work. Same rules, same idea, but now related to serving others. The kids really surprised Allisha and I!

     Pull Weeds, Visit Sick/Elderly, Random Acts of Kindness, Meal to a family/individual in need, Cookies for the Neighbors, shovel snow, yard work, FHE with another family, letter to missionaries, letters to grandparents, Pay it Forward (next # of people in line).

We have the cards, now what?

After we decided on our list of activities, we put them in an index card box. Pioneering, right? I mean, who even HAS index card boxes anymore! WE DO!

Now the fun part! During our first family home evening of the month, a card is drawn. Then, we review the calendar and a date is scheduled so there aren’t any conflicts.

    Allisha and I then devise a way to make the activity have a spiritual connection. And for us, as parents, this was just as important as the activity itself. Let me share some examples of the activities and how we connected them to a spiritual principle or teaching.

Activities + Connections = Success

-Karaoke Night- We sang all sorts of songs and music genres, everyone got to pick their favorite. Enforcing the rule of “everyone does it” was the focus of our first activity. We didn’t do a ton of “spritiual connection” on this one as it was the first one. But, we did talk about music and how it affects us.

-One activity was hiking together. Along with finding large, flat rocks, we simply enjoyed being in nature. It had to be one that they were willing to carry themselves for the entire hike. When we returned home (after a dislocated shoulder…long story) my wife had everyone gather at the table. She had paints and brushes out on top of layers of newspapers. She taught us about the mandala pattern (it is from the Buddhism faith- family, eternal, circle) and showed us examples. Then we painted our own design on our rock.

– For another activity, we made dinner together in teams of two. Each team had an assignment for a different part of the meal. One was the main dish, one was salad, one was drinks, one was dessert, etc. We went to the store and they had to find what they needed (within a given budget). Next, we came home and each team had to prepare their portion of the meal. We have a small kitchen, so it was a bit exciting working around each other.
As we enjoyed our meal, we talked about teamwork, responsibility, and the importance of doing our best with assignments.

In Conclusion

     This mindset, this focus on being intentional, has made a world of difference in our family.

    It carries over into how our children interact with each other- we ask if they are being intentional about being a family when they start teasing, being typical siblings to each other, or asked to support a sibling at a sporting or other event. Often times they will admit it is not and alter their behavior.

Is the Hughes family perfect? Heavens NO! Just come and spend an evening in our home. But, as we are taught in the scriptures, if we will “prove the Lord herewith” that we will rise up with the leavening of the gospel in our lives and we will be blessed just for trying. How can we go wrong? We are blessed JUST. FOR. TRYING!

So, here’s to being intentional with your family. Allisha and I wish you amazing success on the journey and can’t wait to hear of your success and struggles! We know that whatever you do, being intentional about it is the key.

The post Intentional Family 101 first appeared on HomeCenteredFamily.