No excuses

I've been working with National Family Week over the last couple of weeks. They've just done a survey which has highlighted that the average family spends just 49 minutes together every day, adding up to about 6 hours a week in total. Shocking! I can't believe that as a nation we aren't able to do better than that.

Yes, we all have time constraints. Yes, we are all very busy, (particularly our children with the myriad of after-school school activities that are on offer). But 49 minutes? I can only assume that although we may all be under the same roof for many, many more minutes, we are not in the same room, doing the same thing. What's more likely is that we are all glued to different screens in different corners of the house, in our own solitary worlds, bumping into each other for the occasional meal, the occasional break from our beloved technology.

It's a simple thing to remedy. You just have to make being in the same room more fun than typing on social networking sites using as many indecipherable abbreviations as you can, or collecting thousands of gold coins on a purple scooter dressed as a cyber-hedgehog. A bit of effort, a bit of imagination, and a bit of humour is all you need. So no excuses. Try playing any of the games on this blog if you're stuck.

If you need to get out of the house, away from household chores and the temptation of screentime in order to get your family minutes up, then make the most of National Family Week during the upcoming half-term. There are over five thousand events planned, most of them free, across the country. So once again, no excuses. Visit their website http://www.nationalfamilyweek.co.uk/ to find out what's happening in your area.