Studies have shown dramatic correlations between families who spend a great deal of time together and children who grow into well-adjusted, healthy, and successful adults. When you make your family a priority, you naturally spend more time with them. Spending more time as a family presents the opportunity for conversation. Communication skills and a trusting relationship between parents and children can do wonders for today's children who are being faced with ever increasingly challenging situations. Being able to turn to parents for guidance is what every child needs and every parent wants. The investment of time into your family is an investment into their well-being on a number of different levels.

Spending more time with family means that children are more frequently surrounded by the positive influences that parents can provide. Parents are the first figures from which children learn to model behaviors. From familial interactions children learn social skills, leading by example, problem solving, and a plethora of other vital developmental skills. Children also learn skills from parents who make family a priority that may not be immediately apparent. Some skills taught in the home at a young age can aid in a child's ability to grow into a self-sufficient adult. For example, families who have a meal together every day will be more likely to rear children that have at least a basic knowledge of food preparation, planning, and safety. Staying with the example of the importance of having family meals, research shows that frequent family dinners (five or more a week), are associated with lower rates of smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use in pre-teens and teenagers when compared to families that eat together two or fewer times per week. Obviously having a strong start in our youth gives us undeniable advantages as we become adults.

Making family a priority does not only mean scheduling certain times of the day for family, but it also means sacrificing on occasion to be with family on the spur of the moment. Making family a priority means constantly making an effort to put family first even if it means sacrificing time away from work, school or any other worthy activities. Families who do not make familial relationships a priority are not typically people who do not care about their family or who do not want to make relationships better, it is those of us who get overly occupied with good things that we believe (and really do) help our family. Making family a priority helps familial relationships in more ways than can be explained in this short article. But if you are willing to make the effort to re-examine how much time you devote to making your family a priority and make a change to put your family more as the focus of what you can do, you will not be unhappy with the results.