The Hour that Matters Most

The following are excerpts from The Hour that Matters Most by Les and Leslie Parrott with Stephanie Allen and Tina Kuna.

When you're at home, you want to breathe deeply, lower your shoulders, and relax. There's a feeling of belonging, acceptance, and contentment. At least there should be. Healthy homes--homes that function as they should--refresh, recharge, and renew. They become places where children's identities find flight and values take root.

For Stephanie Allen, her own home was none of these things. As a busy working mom of two active kids, it was all Stephanie could do to keep up with the demands of the daily schedule. Church youth group, soccer practice, and school activities meant lots of time in the car, and very little time for real interaction among family members.

Stephanie longed for the kinds of relationships she remembered with her own parents and sibling when she was growing up: relationships built on conversation and connection--often forged around the dinner table. She remembered the way her family would linger after a meal just to talk and catch up, and she wished her own family could do the same. But after a long day at work and a couple of hours shuttling kids from one activity to the next, who had time for making elaborate meals? Some days it was all she could do to keep up with everything and get a meal on the table for her family. She realized that she needed a game plan.

Stephanie started meeting with a friend once a month to assemble meals for their families. "It was a great time for us to talk and laugh," Stephanie remembers. "And at the end of the day, we each had a month's worth of meals in our freezers, ready to pull out when we needed them. One less thing to stress about." Those monthly "assembly days" provided a sense of liberation from the dreaded daily chore of scrambling home after work to pull together a wholesome for the family....

"So many moms are working hard and trying to keep up, but it's really difficult," she says. "The bottom line is that we just want to raise great kids."

Creating Comfort
Chicken noodle soup, meatloaf, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, bread pudding, brownies, doughnuts, apple pie. These are commonly referred to as "comfort food," and with good reason. Most of us find great comfort in a tasty meal we've grown up with, a meal that doesn't have to be explained by Gourmet or Saveur magazines.

But true comfort, the kind that heals emotional hurts and turns around bad days, involves far more than our palates. One dictionary defines the word comfort as "a feeling of relief or encouragement," or "contented wellbeing." A quick review of the word's origin, though, uncovers a deeper meaning. We get the verb to comfort from the Latin com- + fortis, meaning "to make strong" (that is, like a fortress).

So to comfort literally means to make someone stronger. And that's exactly what you do for your children. Comfort fortifies their spirits. Whenever you encourage your children with uplifting words, console them with a tender touch, relieve their sorrow with your mere presence, support them with heartfelt praise, or provide a wholesome meal and the love that's served with it, you are helping to make your children strong.

What would strengthen your home?
If you pressed a magic button to instantly strengthen your home, what would it do? We don't mean the physical house. We mean the feeling, the chemistry, and the climate of the relationships within it. We're talking about the spirit of your home.

Would you want it to include more laughter? Meaningful and engaging conversations? Vulnerability and respect? Mutual support? These are the things most parents mention. And if you're like the hundreds of parents we've surveyed, you're likely to sum up the desire your have for your home by saying you want it to be the safest place on earth....

...Understanding what makes a healthy home is not the same as building one. That requires being proactive. And in the pressure cooker of our busy daily lives, being proactive is where most of us get bogged down. When emotions are frazzled, bills are mounting, and time is in short supply, doing something proactive can be the last thing on our minds.

But what if that doing were actually easier than you imagined? What if it took less time and were simpler than you could even believe?

That's where the hour that matters most comes in. Countless studies have shown that if parents could take only one proactive and practical step to engender family commitment, appreciation, affection, positive communication, time together, and all the rest, it would be to establish a regular dinnertime around a common table without distraction. One hour a few times a week. That's it.

Click here to learn more about The Hour that Matters Most.