#71 Part II of V: Laughter And Shared Fun Strengthen Family Bonds

We make a case for play as a missing piece in strong, healthy family relationships, especially when life feels stressful and relationships feel strained. We share how to create fun without turning every gathering into a fixing session, and why joy can be both healing and holy. 

• why families who laugh together tend to gather more often 
• the difference between play time and problem solving time 
• how “hot topics” derail connection at dinners, holidays, and game nights 
• why laughter lowers defenses and builds an emotional bank account 
• simple ways to create fun: games, movies, walks, shared stories, new experiences 
• how traditions create belonging through consistency 
• why holiness and joy belong together, with faith based perspective on humor and delight 
• a practical challenge to plan one fun moment and avoid hard topics 

If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon KCoach.com. That's Sharon the Letterk Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard

Click the link below to set up a free discovery call to begin your transformation today.  Or email me @ smurph923.sm@gmail.com to find out more about how I can help.  

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Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to my podcast. My name is Sharon Murphy and I'm a certified life and mindset coach and I help women who seek to be happy and holy. Each week I'll bring you tools and insights to help you on your journey to the heights. I'm so glad you're here.

Two Ingredients For Healthy Families

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey everybody, welcome back. Last week I talked about the two essential ingredients for strong, healthy family relationships. The first one being tolerating disagreements, tolerating differences in opinions and ideas and values, as well as offering forgiveness. Strong, healthy families require those two things in order to thrive. You might survive, but in order to have a thriving, strong, healthy family relationship, those two things are necessary. Now I told you last week we're gonna have a five-part series, and I was gonna be diving into some of the more specific things that you can do to help strengthen your family and to go more deeper on some of those topics.

Why Play Makes Family Closer

SPEAKER_00 0:58

This week we're talking about something much lighter. Last week was a little heavy. I understand that. This week we're talking about something that I think a lot of people don't think enough about. And maybe this is part of your family's story. I hope it is, but maybe it's not. Maybe this is an area where you're like, boy, we could probably do a little better job on that. And that is learning to have fun together, learning to just play together, learning to laugh together. Have you ever looked at another family that seems to enjoy being together? Like they host a family gathering and everybody shows up. They just seek to do things together even when it's not forced. You know, they're like, what are you doing today? Or what are you doing this weekend? Meaning, you know, sometimes siblings get together without the parents, or adult kids just want to hang out with their parents. I'm sure you know some families like this, and maybe it's yours, which is great. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that is? What is it that these families do or what have they done to create this kind of family dynamic? In my opinion, I think this is a piece that I'm talking about today, which is play that needs to be present in order for families to want to do this thing. So think about it. We want to do things with the people we enjoy being with, people we have fun with, where that's kind of the way we're wired. I mean, of course, we want to have deep, meaningful conversations, we want to connect deeply. Absolutely. And that's all essential in family relationships as well. But today, I want to focus on play because I think it's really, really important that we understand that as a family dynamic, if we want our families to be strong, if we want us to endure and to actually enjoy each other, we need to learn how to add more fun, more laughter, more play into our lives. And I want to talk today a little bit too about what are some of the things that prevent this from happening and some of the some of the ways we can sort of block this or we can, even if we have good intentions, we're like, yeah, I'm gonna do that. Sometimes we walk away from those events or those evenings or those planned fun times, and we think that didn't go so well. Well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about why that might happen and what we need to do when we're actually supposed to be in play and what we're supposed to be avoiding during that time. When we talk about play and the importance of it, notice that we're not talking about being productive or problem solving. It's not, it's not about conflict resolution, and it's not about having that difficult conversation that you've been meeting to have. It's specifically time that you are setting aside for your family to just enjoy, to just play together, have fun together. You know, if you've taken if you're somebody who's taken vacations with other couples, you don't pick people to go on vacation with that you don't enjoy. There's certain people you're like, oh, it's fun to vacation with them. We have a great time. It's because things don't get too heavy. We don't talk about all these difficult things, right? You don't ever feel pressured, you don't ever have to be defensive. It's light, it's easy. That's the same kind of thing that we want to be creating within our

Keep Fun Time Free Of Fixing

SPEAKER_00 3:52

family. And so if you're listening and you're like so many mothers out there, you're probably thinking, well, that sounds great, but my family has some real issues. We have a lot of strained relationships, we have some disagreements, there's hurt feelings that need to be addressed. And I I would offer you that I'm I'm absolutely sure that that probably is true because as I talked about last week, it's essential to understand that if you have a family and it's more than just you and your spouse, even if it is just you and your spouse, there's going to be disagreements. There's going to be hurts. There's going to be some things that are going on that are challenging, both in your own life and also to observe in the lives of others. But one of the greatest mistakes that we make in our families is that we start to, every single time we get together, every conversation, it could be a holiday, it could be just a family dinner or a phone call or, like I said, a text message, we think we need to solve this thing. We have these difficult conversations. I just want to offer you that in order for families sometimes to heal if you are going through some difficult things, it isn't always about having those difficult conversations or about addressing these things. Sometimes just being together and laughing together again can bring about great healing. It's also, we don't want to stay here. It isn't about neglecting the difficult conversations that need to be had. You know, you could be a family that spends a lot of time doing a lot of fun things, but there's a lot of unresolved issues. So there's definitely a place for that. There's a place and a time for those conversations. But when you're intentional about setting aside time for enjoying each other, then it's time to just set those conversations aside. And it will require some restraint, and it requires you to be very intentional about that. I had an episode, I think it's episode 38, and it was titled Rediscovering Joy: The Power of Play, Wonder, and Awe and Relieving Stress and Reigniting Your Faith. And I talked about the fact that we as adults have lost that sense in in some respects. A lot of people have. Maybe you're not one of them, but a lot of us have. And the importance of play and wonder and awe. Now, in there, that was it was more directed towards yourself and your own life. But today I want to tie this into the importance of within the family structure, within the family dynamic, and within those relationships. And so in there, I talked about how as children, we naturally play. We imagine, children laugh, they they make up games, they find joy in the simplest of things. And so we want to sort of adopt that same mentality as adults within our families. But unfortunately, so many of us, as we are, as we become adults, right? We're there's a lot of pressure. We have a lot more responsibility, no doubt. It's becomes a situation where we're always worrying or planning or managing, or if we're parents, we're trying to fix and we're analyzing things. We become very serious, especially as parents. And as parents, we absolutely carry the emotional weight of our families. So if our families are going through things, or if we have a child who's struggling, or maybe there's a conflict between two of our children or their spouses or something like that, a relationship, the natural tendency is we carry that emotional weight, whether they're having problems in their marriages or their finances, or maybe they're something with their faith. We also start to deal with things with our aging parents. There is a lot of pressure in life. And that's why I feel setting the a time aside for the play and for enjoyment and laughter is so necessary. I think that's all the more reason we need this. But what happens is if we're not intentional about setting aside time for play and enjoyment, we start to create unintentionally relationships that just start to revolve around logistics, right? Versus connection. We start thinking about how we can convince them of this or how we need to have this conversation. It becomes very transactional and we lose these connections. We talk about schedules or problems or, you know, even we might be trying to do good things. We're trying to process emotions, and I talk about that on here, and there's a time and a place for it. But again, not when we've set aside time for play and just enjoying one another, just enjoying the family dynamic. I think this is really important, and I think it's absolutely part of the way we were created for families. I think it's part of God's design for us. God could have, he could have created a world that was purely functional, but he didn't. He gave us all sorts of things that give evidence to the fact that we are to enjoy our time here on earth, enjoy our lives. He gave us sunsets, he gave us music, there's beautiful flowers and landscape, the ocean, the mountains. You know, think about our children. They say hilarious things. For those of you pet lovers out there, dogs, how many silly dog or cat videos do you see online that people just laugh about, right? That's part of the reason, that's part of the draw for so many people in today's world that have pets is because they can laugh and enjoy. They do silly things. And so having a sense of humor and finding that same joy and delight and that ease within our families is so important to strengthen family bonds. It's so important. And we need to remember one thing is that our relationships, they are a gift. The people in our lives are a gift. They're not projects to work on, they're not problems to solve. You are not a problem to solve, your child is not a problem to solve, your spouse is not a problem to solve. Every person that we've been given within our relationships is a gift. Honestly, sometimes the greatest gift that we can give to another person, it's not our, it's not our correction or advice or our insight. It's just simply being in their presence and enjoying the gift that they are. One of the traps, even though we might know that this is important and we might set out to do this, we have great intentions. We invite people over, we invite our family over, and we're like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna have a game night. And all of a sudden at the end of the night, you're like, that did not go well. Things happened, somebody left, there was a disagreement, there was an argument. Maybe it's not even a family game night. Maybe it's just a child comes home and you're like, okay, great, I'm finally getting to see this child. And then all of a sudden you you start in on this difficult conversation, and then it just all of a sudden there's disconnection, the child's quiet, the child may leave, whatever it might be. It could be a family gathering, and all of a sudden, before you know it, you're discussing politics, there's family wounds, and there's just unresolved conflicts, and then it's all these, I'm just gonna say hot topics. And we know what those hot topics are, and they're different for every family, but we know the ones that maybe are going to be resisted or that are gonna raise the level of tension or disagreement. Again, there might be times for that, but we need to be very intentionable, tensionable when we're having those conversations. And it certainly is not when we're having large family gatherings or at holidays or birthdays or planned family game nights. Those are times when we need to set, we need to set those aside. And again, it's being very intentional. Many families would benefit greatly from just experiences being together where it's not centered around what needs to be fixed, what's wrong. And it's just avoiding each person taking that stance and understanding that we we're not gonna have that conversation. That's not what this is for. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. It's very clear for those members of the family and the people within your family to recognize that this is a fun evening or this is a fun night or we're just gonna enjoy this. And if things start to get a little bit heated, it's okay as the parent or somebody else to say, hey, we're not talking about that tonight, or hey, you know, not not now. It's okay to do that because what happens is when every interaction starts to revolve around a conflict or difficult topics are brought up, you know, within the family, what happens is the members of the family begin to associate getting together with feeling, you know, resentment or their emotional exhaust, you know, they're exhausted emotionally, or they just feel pressured or defensive. And that's not what we want. Guess what? The next time that you have a family gathering or you're invited in, they're gonna associate that. They're gonna make the connection that I don't, I don't really want to deal with that. I don't want to go there. Even if they're not even fully conscious of why they're deciding not to go, that's what they associate with family time. And so when families can learn to laugh together, to create memories together, and to just have fun, they begin to just, you know, make different emotional connections, right?

Laughter Lowers Stress And Builds Bonds

SPEAKER_00 12:15

And it starts to, they start adding it. Think of it like a bank account. You do it one time and it was a great experience. Great. The next time you do it, it's, you know what, it keeps adding. The more you can have those gatherings and those times where you're enjoying each other, having fun together, laughing together, the more it's adding to that healthy emotional bank account. And they'll remember, you know, I like doing things with them. I I feel good when I'm with there and I feel good when I leave. That was really enjoyable. And that matters a lot. That matters a lot. Another thing is that laughter creates connection. Have you ever noticed how quickly laughter can change the atmosphere in a room? Think about a time that you know where somebody was having like a little bit of a heated conversation or something was going on, and there's usually somebody within the family that's kind of a mediator. They like to try and create harmony, and they step in and they say something kind of light or funny or they do something, or maybe even inadvertently, there's a child that does something silly and it draws the attention away from that heated conversation, and people start to laugh. The tension softens, defenses come down, people start to relax. Now, research consistently shows that laughter helps reduce stress and it strengthens social bonds. But we don't need re I mean, honestly, we don't need research to tell us this. We've all experienced it. I can tell you that myself personally, very often when my husband and I are gonna just watch a movie or something, and I'll just say, can we just put in something that's funny? I I just want to laugh. I don't I don't wanna it helps me to reduce the stress in my life. I know that for sure. But I want you to think about the last time that you laughed so hard that your stomach hurt. Think about it. Can you remember the last time you laughed so hard that your stomach hurt? And if you can't remember that, boy, I'm gonna invite you to really think about that. Because I I will admit in my own life, I it hasn't happened nearly as often as it should. But I do recall times where that has happened and I just cannot stop laughing and my stomach hurts. And honestly, it is like you just feel so good afterwards. It's similar to getting a massage or doing something like that. You your whole body just feels, you know, it's probably very, it's a just a good emotional response. I want you to really think about the fact of if you cannot remember the last time that you laughed so hard your stomach hurt, then this is probably an invitation for you to think about how you can incorporate more play in your own life. Because what happens is when you're laughing that hard, you're not worrying, you're not doing all the, you know, it's just joyful. And even the people around you, they might look at you and think you're a little crazy, but sometimes it's contagious. That kind of laughter, it can also be very healing for everyone within the family. It doesn't necessarily mean that all the problems are going to be solved, it doesn't mean that everything is gonna just be all great if you're dealing with issues within the family, but it does help to strengthen those bonds. It helps to build connection and it it just creates an atmosphere where they want to be. So, a little lesson for those of you out there who are mothers with adult children, parents of adult children. This is one thing that we tend to fall into, and it's this urgency to repair everything. And again, this is a block sometimes to those moments when we're trying to just enjoy being together and having fun. We have this urgency to try and fix things. Maybe it's two kids, two adult children who are having kind of not they're at odds or they're battling things. We want to try and repair that. Maybe it's an adult child that's dealing with something in their relationship. We want to sort of solve that. That's natural, but it doesn't always need to happen in that moment. You know, again, we need to be very intentional about when we're having those conversations, and they don't need to happen all the time. Because again, if that child or that person within your family begins to associate every encounter with you, even if it's you on an individual basis, with being confronted or challenged or, you know, that they feel pressure or judged, guess what? They're not gonna want to come around you. They're not gonna want to be around you. And so while those conversations definitely need to happen in certain situations, right, we need to be very careful that that is not all of the conversations we're having, every encounter. We need to make sure that we are spending just as much, if not more, time, listening and enjoying and laughing with our children and our family members, way more than we are in those difficult conversations, in those times when we really need to have the, you know, some healing or conflict resolution, right? It's not about interrogating or analyzing or fixing. If we can adopt a mindset where we really just need to focus on connection, there's things that you can do with your child. And if you're like, well, how do I hang out with them if where there's tension or there's things happening? Well, you could go out for coffee. Just sit and chat about anything. You know, just talk about something that you have in common with that person. Maybe it's if you're a father and it's a son, you can talk about sports, or maybe it's work. And if you're a mom, you can talk about anything they're doing in their life, you know, movies they're watching, books they're reading. There's many things that you have in common with your children or your siblings, and you can talk about those things. You can take a walk, you can just sharing a meal, anything. Those are all opportunities to try and connect without and enjoying each other, I should say, without having to bring up difficult conversations.

Simple Ideas For Family Play

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So let's talk a little bit about what this looks like in real life within your family dynamic. Children, obviously, I said this earlier, they love to play. What do they want to play? They want to play games, they want to create games, they want to do silly things. Honestly, the same holds true for adults. Adults need to play as well. And I think a lot of adults in right now are starving for it. And I'm not, again, I'm not talking about, you know, the Gulf League or that those are all ways that you can have your own adult time and enjoy yourself, but seriously just having fun doing things. And so here's a couple of things that I'm gonna offer you just for ways that you might incorporate this within your family. It could be family game nights, which can include board games, card games, trivia games. It can be like some silly party games. The goal isn't competition, it's not about who wins, it's about just interaction and connection. Now, I have to say, our my family, Chris and I, my husband and I have been very intentional about trying to have evenings where we just get together and just do fun things. Whether if it's nice outside and we're outside doing things, we like to play, you know, like cornhole or pickleball or bocce ball. There's just different things that you can do. But in when it's colder outside where I live, it's cold outside a lot. It's not very nice. There's a lot of board games, card games. We do all different sorts of things, and it it changes based on who's here and what we're doing, and we're usually pretty flexible. And most of the time, it's great. It really is. I will say we do, I said the goal isn't competition. I will say, in all honesty, we do struggle with this one. Myself being a major culprit, I'm very competitive, and a couple of my kids are, and so my husband is really good at kind of mediating that and he keeps things very smooth and mellow. But anyway, so that's an area that we need to work on because sometimes we do get a little bit too tense. But either way, as long as everybody just kind of can just push it aside and and move on. Those are just some ideas. Now, another thing, maybe you're not much of a game person. Maybe that's just not the way your family dynamic works. That's just not the way everybody likes to spend their time. You could do something like family movie nights, just pick a family favorite comedy or a classic movie, make some popcorn, turn off your phones, maybe that's what you prefer to do. Either, either way, you're connecting through that movie. Another thing is just maybe even taking a walk. It depends. If if there's only if you're trying to do something enjoyable together and maybe it's just with one child or just a couple of children, just going for a walk together. Walking side by side is less intense than sitting face to face sometimes. And the conversations can tend to flow easier. My husband and I, we have a place north of where we live and it's on a lake. And a lot of times we'll do that in the evening when we're together with our family, and we'll after dinner just say, let's go for a walk. And we kind of take up most of the road. It's a very small road that goes around the lake, so there's not much traffic. And we usually just have light conversation and kind of laugh, and everybody's just walking and talking, and it's just a great way to kind of connect and bond. Another thing that you can do is just revisiting old family stories, and that can be as simple as just like pulling out old photo albums or telling stories about some past family vacations, any sort of shared family experience. It could be like funny moments from childhood. So, one of the quickest ways to create connection within your family is through shared memories. And I think this is really important for parents to remember is that sometimes we forget to bring up stories and share things of our own lives. Our kids really enjoy that. We've shared that with my husband and I and some of my siblings. We've shared that with our parents and said, you don't talk about this stuff enough. Like kids want to hear the stories from their parents as well. And it's just very engaging. But you can also just talk about things within your family dynamic of remember when so-and-so did this, or those are great ways to sort of strengthen those family bonds and to laugh and enjoy. You can also try some new things together. That can be a great thing. You can just, you know, go to local, local things. I don't know if there's festivals or whatever that might be taking place. You can go bowling, any sort of sporting event, explore a new town. Definitely family vacations are really, really beneficial. But you know, maybe that's not in the in the works for you right now, depending on where you're at in your life. So it can be much smaller things, but just taking the day or a weekend or something and just going exploring and trying something new can be really, really fun. I'm reminded of a time years ago where we went to Niagara Falls. It was a last minute trip. And in fact, my husband and I will say we've done that a few times in our life where we've pulled together a trip within like the last like two weeks pre prior to, and we just took a summer vacation with our kids, and they tended to be some of the most fun vacations we had. But this particular One, we went to Niagara Falls and then we ended up going to Mackinac Island and we went out to the island. And I remember I said to my husband, I want to rent some bikes for the kids. And the kids talk about that so often, how much fun it was riding those bikes. A couple of my kids went off and adventured and cut through the middle of the island to meet us on the other side. They got lost, took an adventure. And we've talked about that, I can't even tell you how many times, how fun that was to take the bikes around the island. So sometimes just doing something new like that together can be really fun to build, you know, strong family bonds. Another thing is I just said about trying something new, but uh actually, traditions can be really, really important. And so when you, you know, I hear people saying like we should start a new family tradition. It's not about starting a family tradition, it's about committing to a family tradition and making it stick. Because starting then doesn't matter. A tradition means it's something you do all the time, it's the consistency. So if if you're gonna do that, then you need to commit to it so that everybody knows what to expect. In our family, we've had a family trip to Florida. Usually it's on the spring break, but it's been around Easter traditionally, and it's been happening since 2009, I think. And every year, everybody's like Windsor, Florida. They know that this is what we do and they look forward to it. So those kind of traditions are really important. And there's been times throughout the years where one or two of my children couldn't make it for various reasons. They were at college or one of them was, you know, maybe for work, or there was just different things. And every single time the next year, that child's like, I'm coming, I'm not missing again. Those sort of things are just really, really important. And when we're there, it's all play and fun. We really just there's a lot of card games, there's a lot of volleyball, there's just we enjoy our time together. So that's part of the key element. And I I want to just say I mentioned a few things. I'm just offering you some things that have worked for my family within the context of my family. We've done a lot of things that haven't worked. And so I'm not trying to make it seem like we're doing this perfectly because we're not. But those are just some ideas for you. So some it could be something as simple as like a pizza night. I know a family where every other Wednesday, or every Wednesday, I think, she makes a meal and invites the family in. Her all her adult children, grandchildren, everybody's invited there. And they know that on Wednesday nights they can go to their moms. Whoever can make it. No pressure. But they do that. Could be a Sunday ice cream run, it could be like annual family tournaments. I talked about in a previous episode how my parents held an annual golf loading for a number of years. And whoever could make it, we had printed up t-shirts, and we just, my mom would give away prizes and do silly things for, you know, different events on the golf course. Those were things that people really are within the family, even the grandkids and cousins, they really enjoyed that. Could be a holiday scavenger hunt, you know, anything. The tradition itself really doesn't matter as much as the consistency because they people don't want to miss it. If it becomes something that's part of the tradition and they know everybody else is showing up, they want to be there because it can create anticipation and it also creates a sense of belonging.

Faith Says Joy Belongs Here

SPEAKER_00 25:09

I want to talk about our faith and how this ties in because I think sometimes we mistakenly believe that holiness means seriousness. We can read the lives of the saints and think, boy, these people were spending all their time in prayer. They did, you know, we when we read about today is the feast of John the Baptist, when I'm recording this, you know, it doesn't seem like he was probably having a whole lot of fun. And so we start to imagine that our lives need to be very serious, but we don't know the whole story. We don't know the whole picture. Now, if you're somebody who's watched it, who has watched the series The Chosen, no matter how you feel about it, it has done one thing for me, which has been very helpful, is that I do now see Jesus in a different light than I did from previous traditional movies that were made about him. I see him as much more personable, I see him laughing, I see him joking around, I see a sense of humor. And that I think really does reflect who God is. We're made in God's image and likeness, and we have a sense of humor. So therefore, that came from God. Also, there's a lot of saints out there that if you really study the saints, you will have you will see a different story. Because there's a lot of saints that were known for their joy, their sense of humor, and definitely their ability to delight in God's goodness. The patron of this podcast title, Saint Pierre Giorgio Frosati, was known to be very joyful. He was always, he had a pipe in his mouth, he was a young man, but he would walk around singing songs. He was a very joyful, fun-loving person. And joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We need to remember that. And joy and play reminds us that our lives are not just merely something to survive, but something to receive. And so we believe that every good gift, as Catholics, every good gift comes from God, and laughter is a gift. Therefore, laughter comes from God. Friendship is one of those gifts. Family is one of those gifts. These are gifts that we've been given. And so if we're trying to grow in holiness, one of the things that we need to do is to stop trying to fix everything and to simply enjoy what God has already given us. Enjoy those gifts, enjoy the people in our lives. If you're somebody who's listening to this and you're smiling because you're thinking, well, I already do these things, well, great.

Start Small With One Play Challenge

SPEAKER_00 27:18

I really do hope that's the case. But if you're listening and you're thinking, yeah, but you know, Sharon, we've done these things in the past, you know, we haven't done these things in the past, maybe, or we've done these things and they ended badly. Or if I haven't done them, you know, there's been so many past hurts. How do I even start? There's so much conflict and wounds within my family, it's too late. There's so much division. And I'm here to tell you that that's not true. The best thing you can do is just begin. Just invite. Start small. The next family gathering, maybe it's a holiday or a birthday, or maybe it's just any random day, just let the hard conversations go. Begin to build this foundation of creating time for just fun in your family, to just enjoy being together. You can start this now and you'll start adding to that emotional bank. And you'll start to form this connection and this association that your family members have that says, that was really fun. That was enjoyable. I want to do that again. Right. So it's it might, like I said, depending upon where you're at in your family, it might take some time to build that. But every time you do this, and every time you're intentional about having a nice time together and a fun time together, and you leave all hard conversations aside, you don't try and control or direct or manage or fix or judge, when you let all of that go and you just enjoy yourself, you're beginning to build a strong foundation. And it will build upon each other. It's gonna get easier and easier and easier because they'll wanna be with you. So for this week, I want to just leave you with a challenge. And I want you to try and create one opportunity for whether it's enjoyment or laughter or play or however you want to apply it to your life. But here's the important thing is that you need to make the agreement with yourself that you're not gonna bring up any difficult topic. You're not gonna say anything or address anything that you know is not going to land well or that's not gonna be received well, or that might create tension or conflict or defensiveness. You're not gonna do it. Not during the game, not during the walk, not whenever you're together. Just enjoy being with that person or those family members. Allow the relationship to be bigger than whatever problems you're dealing with, whatever problems they're dealing with. Allow laughter and have a sense of humor, allow joy to be present. You may be surprised at how healing that can be in your relationship. As we wrap up, it's easy as parents to believe our primary job is to manage or guide or correct or repair, but our relationships don't thrive when we're always working on them. Relationships thrive when we build connection and we experience life together. And part of that is when we're laughing together, when we're creating memories, when we actually start to learn to enjoy being together. So this week, just resist the urge to fix or analyze, or resist the urge to bring up that difficult topic or conversation. Instead, choose to play, choose laughter, choose joy. So I want to thank you so much for listening today, and I hope that you can find some joy and some laughter, some fun, some play within your day, within your week, and within the next months. And until next time, onward and upward, my friends, to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today.

Where To Connect And Support

SPEAKER_00 30:28

If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon KCoach.com. That's Sharon the Letterk Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.