Family bonding ideas with an only child

November 29, 2019 1:29 PM

My husband and I have a nine year old daughter. The three of us all have great 2-way relationships, but I find it hard to feel a sense of cohesion as a family. When the three of us are together, it's hard to all feel connected. Do other families of 3 find this? What has helped develop a sense of cohesion for parents with a single child?

my husband and daughter do fun things like go skateboarding or have other thrilling adventures. She and I spend lots of time doing art together or making things. He and I have great couple time when she is with friends. We all have a great time together with family friends.

But we find it really hard to spend good, connected time together when it's the three of us. When we are all together it feels like either he and I are trying to have an adult conversation, or one of us is talking to her. Having holidays it feels difficult because of this. I just don't know how to make it a 3-way relationship. Is this just the reality of having an only child?

Obviously we need activities together... but I'm interested in any ideas that other single child families have come up with to feel a sense of cohesion.

posted by beccyjoe to Human Relations (14 answers total)

Best answer: I don’t think it’s just having an only child. Me and my husband have 2 young children and we EACH get along with EACH child as individuals. And we get along with EACH other. And I am happy spending time with the two boys.... I’m not sure my husband has such an easy time when he had them both. But family time ESPECIALLY SUCKS. I’ll be following this.

We haven’t had much of a chance to spend time as a couple together with just one of the kids- so I can’t add any wisdom to your situation except to say that you are not unique and it may not have to do with having only one child.

I have a feeling that it’s probably a good idea not to try and really talk with my husband during these outings... I feel it would have a cozier feeling if we were just there and getting joy from the situation, but I haven’t found the key here. I send big big big hugs. It completely sucks not to gel as a family and, honestly, I cry.
posted by catspajammies at 1:40 PM on November 29, 2019 [7 favorites]

My son is 12. We play board games together - right now we’re into Sushi Go. Also we usually have one show we’re watching together - right now it’s Deep Space Nine. Both of those give us something to talk about together, or focus on together. And I count it as a win if we’re all in the same room together no matter what we’re doing.
posted by lyssabee at 1:51 PM on November 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

Seconding board games. Sushi Go is indeed a solid option for midrange/tween kids, and I'll also throw in a plug for the Forbidden Island/Desert/whatever series as being good for encouraging discussion and strategizing among the players without being too complex for kids or too dull for adults.

If your kids are older or better able to handle complexity, Pandemic is the classic form of the genre, and I've heard good things about Magic Maze as well, though I can't vouch for it directly.
posted by Scattercat at 2:10 PM on November 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm not a parent but some of my best childhood memories are of my sister and I helping out with cooking - especially making things like egg rolls or pot stickers. We would sit at the kitchen table with our cousins and while we were busy with our hands, we'd talk. The conversation doesn't have to be deep either - one of the more memorable occasions involved an argument over whether pineapples grew on trees or underground with everyone taking a side. My aunt let us argue for 45 minutes before setting us straight.

If your daughter is a reader, maybe do what the ladies at 36 Eggs do and figure out a menu based on whatever it is she's currently reading (or watching on TV), and make a meal together. Or choose a cookbook and make all the dishes from it. Youtube also has channels of kids cooking.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 3:12 PM on November 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Sorry if this sounds obvious, but my husband and I feel most connected to our kids when we all do something as a group, something we all enjoy and delight in, like visiting museums and going camping. Sharing our enjoyment or experiencing something new together helps us feel like a cohesive family.
posted by christinetheslp at 3:33 PM on November 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

Games are indeed excellent for this. Video games too, if you're so inclined. We're a family of three (kid is seven) and play a game with dinner pretty much every night (the Fluxx card games are good for this).
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:49 PM on November 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

My family is very similar to yours. We also have a 9-year-old daughter. Something we do together many evenings is that we read together. We all get together on our king-sized bed and we read. We might only do this for half an hour or so, but it's very cozy and pleasant.

This practice started when we would read to our daughter as a very young child. As she grew older, she became too big for us to hold in our laps, and now, of course, she reads on her own. However, she has to keep a reading log for school, and has to read most weeknights, for at least 20 minutes. It's great to know what she's reading, it's great for her to see what we are reading, and I'm getting a lot more reading done now that I read along with her. Give it a try!
posted by cleverevans at 4:11 PM on November 29, 2019 [11 favorites]

The main thing that felt like Family Time when I was growing up in a family of three was family dinner talking about our days, or the weekend mornings when we’d all hang out together reading with coffee/cocoa and sometimes talking about what we were each reading.

FWIW, which may not be much as every family is different, my experience as a child was that when my sister arrived we felt significantly *less* like a cohesive family once she was a toddler. Partly due to blended family stuff, and partly just personalities, at that point my experience of my family became that each kid sort of bonded to a different parent and from then on most activities and conversations split up along those lines. Basically stayed that way until I left for college, at which point my parents and sister developed their own new three-person dynamic.
posted by Stacey at 4:25 PM on November 29, 2019

Obviously we need activities together... but I'm interested in any ideas that other single child families have come up with to feel a sense of cohesion.

I think family time at that age is unavoidably activity based. You might try creating family traditions around activities, like family pizza night/movie night on Fridays, or Saturday baking or whatever, but all three of you need to be all in, even the parent who is not really into it.

I mean, some people saying "my best family unit memory from childhood is X" may never have considered how completely boring X was for the adults involved. Many grownups have fond memories of playing Candyland or whatever on family game night, but it's probably not until you yourself pull out Candyland or Chutes and Ladders or Sorry in a fit of parental desperation that you understand how truly dull that was for everyone but childhood you. And that's okay -- sometimes it's just about spending time together as a family rather than making sure the grownups are entertained.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:39 PM on November 29, 2019 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for these great responses. I'm glad I'm not alone!

@catspajammies I really appreciate your comment - that it's not just a one-child family that finds this - what a comfort to know! We have always been happy with one kid, but I had really wondered whether we would have more cohesion with 2 - so thanks for weighing in.

Also - great ideas about finding a show to watch together, games to play, and structured conversations to have at dinner.
posted by beccyjoe at 5:09 PM on November 29, 2019

I think I know what you mean. And I figure it's a little bit "two's company, three's a crowd." We are a family of 3 and daughter is almost nine. We do games together as well, and we like to hike together and camping is probably where all of us really work together and have the most fun. But sometimes it is just harder around the dinner table every night to feel like we are connecting. And, yes, she gets bored/annoyed with "grown up talk" but, you know, learning how to sit and listen to something that is not about you or directed at you is part of learning to be in the world. So, we try to round-robin the conversation but also do make her sit, bored, sometimes while we talk.

One thing I think I picked up from a mefite for dinner is we sometimes do a thing where we take turns and rank our day on a scale of 1-10 and then we tell about something "interesting" about the day and then let others ask us questions about our day.

We also do family reading time in bed some evenings and we all watch "Great British Bake" together.
posted by amanda at 5:24 PM on November 29, 2019 [2 favorites]

Bake Off is also often part of our family time, too. Sunday mornings (for some reason). It usually starts as a me + kid thing but the tradition is that daddy inevitably shows up by the time the technical starts and gets sucked in as well.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:47 PM on November 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

You need group in-jokes. They go a long way.

Are you all with very good boundaries? Maybe they are a little too high. Allow for a little emotional enmeshment - ask your daughter to help plan a birthday surprise for dad; dad listen to daughter vent about mom; describe the other parents good qualities and so on.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:04 PM on November 30, 2019

Best answer: I have an 8 year old son and was a single mom for several years, I have a strong bond with my son and I wanted to make sure my new partner didn't feel shut out when we moved in together. They have a close relationship and their own activities too. Lately we've been doing Friday night movie nights where we order pizza and take turns picking a movie and it's nice for feeling that family togetherness and my son looks forward to it all week. We've been watching movies like Home Alone, Disney classics, there are lots of good family movies on netflix. We make sure we include seasonally appropriate choices too. I's fun sharing some of the classics with him and these movie nights have led to some shared inside jokes.

In warmer months we have fires in our yard (normal/legal here ymmv) where we sit around the fire and roast marshmallows and work on the fire.
We do hikes/little day trips in the summer.
Going to a market can be nice on weekend mornings, you can all get the food/drinks you like and check out stores relevant to your interests but are together.
We go to a few takeout places together where we similarly can all get what we want but are together.
We have a cozy living room and all gravitate to the couch in the evenings. We can all be on our devices or books but feel close, I don't know if we're atypical in that none of us are bothered by the other's phone/device use generally.
posted by lafemma at 5:33 PM on November 30, 2019