Family movie nights are great! Not loading everyone into the car and racing through traffic, waiting in line for an overpriced ticket and questionable snacks on movie nights; though sometimes that’s a great idea at the right price and for the right movie. No, the kind of movie night where you get together in that big meeting room you call a living room and joke about what kind of movie, you decide, and then you curl up with your homemade popcorn, nachos or whatever; like a child snuggling up to you, perhaps using your lap as a pillow. That kind of family movie night.
Family activity planning that you can, in terms of budget, say yes is also hard to find. The average family needs funds just to get through the month; therefore, spending extravagantly on a night out, whether once a week or once a month, may be too costly for some. So what are the alternatives? Many! But family movie night is one of the most popular. If it wasn’t, companies like Blockbuster and Netflix wouldn’t be making any money. Yes, some lucky families won’t even have that much trouble choosing that movie if they’re a member of these movie streaming companies. Can you say children this is what they have “A” or “B” which will it be? They even have those Red Box machines now so for a dollar and a quarter you can buy a movie on your way back from the grocery store. It doesn’t get any cheaper than that, right?
Family movie nights are a great and affordable way to bond with your kids and learn a bit about their likes and dislikes. Not only that, but anything can happen in a movie. It could end up being an opportunity for your children to ask questions about difficult topics that they have been struggling with. You’ll be amazed at the questions that can and will come up inspired by a movie.
In the same way, movies are good times for you to impart, suggest, guidelines, don’t say rules, no, no, no, on how to make decisions to your child or children. Such as: you know you can’t really do “it” in the real world, just because you hear someone talking like that doesn’t mean you can do it well, and hey, it was silly that you would never do that, right? As a learning tool, movies are great for putting kids in age-appropriate situations and teaching them coping tools for those situations.
So don’t overlook the wonderful benefits that can be achieved by asking: who’s up for family movie night? Not only the cost will be something that will surely suit all budgets; but, you can learn and teach more than you could during the rest of the time you spend together as a family. If nothing else, cuddle time, even when they say they’re too old for that, is priceless.
