IN A HEALTHY FAMILY EVERYONE SHOULD PARTICIPATE By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist Yes, many family psychology experts have accepted that everyone should do “their own thing” during their free time. This usually means the children are in many activities such as dance, sports teams, drama, bowling, weightlifting or modeling. While the parents have their own activities, clubs and regular activities to satisfy their own interests. Many families have outside helpers to complete almost all the necessary maintenance projects that keep up their homestead. Someone or a company maintains the outside and others do the inside of the home. There are organized activities to go to every day and night for each family member to be entertained in their so-called “free time.” Everyone has their own scheduled events to keep them interested, active and fill their time. Yet, there are things that must be done to keep up the homestead. Instead of using the many businesses to complete household tasks, parents could pass on their knowledge and skills to their children rather than use these specialists to perform various functions around the home. Yes, it is easier to bring in professionals, but it is a lost valuable opportunity to pass on the skills of the parents to their own children. Training one’s children to be self-sufficient has always been a goal of a thoughtful parent. Emphasizing the future skills that might be necessary and important in a child’s life is wise and prudent time spent. Spending time to learn a host of tasks such as cooking, cleaning, yard work, painting, or repairing things is necessary and invaluable to learn. Regardless of their family financial status, the children should learn skills and methods to complete tasks and projects should their family financial status change. By fathers and mothers passing their knowledge and skills onto their children it allows the next generation to be more prepared for future economic changes. Besides these valuable and necessary skills will give them a heads up in successfully completing many projects and activities in their future. By explaining, demonstrating and having children participate with them in as many home activities as possible parents allow the children to have their questions answered to better function when they reach adulthood. The greater the participation of the children of the family, the better prepared they will be to become high functioning adults. Having children help can slow down the completion of the tasks at first but prepares the children to be competent to take care of the constant number of tasks that arise around the home. Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers and blogs, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN and the latest book entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can see many of Dr. Maglio’s articles at www.drmaglioblogspot.com.