How We Built Intentional Family Time — And What It Taught Us

It’s 7:45 pm. Teeth are brushed, pajamas are on, and my youngest is negotiating for “just one more minute” before the towel comes out and objects disappear from the carpet in front of her. She squints, trying to remember what was there a second ago. This is family time — ten minutes we’ve protected almost every night for years, long before either of my daughters could tell time on their own.

Most families don’t choose their routine; it chooses them. Kids have school, parents have work, meals need to be made, and by the time the dishes are done, everyone collapses in front of a screen and the day repeats itself. We didn’t want to live a cycle that was simply handed to us, so early in our marriage — when our kids were still very little — we decided to be intentional about a few things that mattered most, like precious one-on-one time, family time, devotional time, less screen time and more outdoor time. It made a bigger difference than we expected.

On a typical day, my wife or I make breakfast, she drives the kids to school, and I head to work. When the kids get home, they get half an hour on their devices before homework starts, and I help as needed. My youngest has gymnastics twice a week; my oldest crochets and draws. We watch very little TV — maybe an hour on the nights my youngest doesn’t have practice. That’s our routine. Except…

The Bedtime Routine We Built on Purpose

We decided early in our marriage, when the kids were very little, that we would be purposeful about how we spent our time especialy with our kids.

Once the necessities were done — cleaned up, dressed, teeth brushed — we carved out a sequence of small, deliberate rituals:

One-on-one time. For ten minutes, I’d sit with one daughter while my wife spent time with the other, then we’d swap. The child got to choose the activity. We alternated who started with whom each night so it never felt lopsided. As the girls got older and the whole routine started running long, they told us they’d rather just have family time — so we let one-on-one time go. Kids grow out of things, and that’s fine; the goal was never to keep every piece forever.

Family time. Ten more minutes, but this time Mom and Dad chose the activity. Often it was a simple made-up game like “What’s Missing?” — we’d set objects on the floor, cover them with a towel, remove one, and see if the kids could name it. Other nights it was hide-and-seek or whatever silly thing came to mind. One of my favorites was reading from a story one sentence and guessing the story. Some stories we had read so many times, the kids had them practically memorized. The kids won this game more than the parents.

Story time. I’d snuggle with my daughters and read aloud, which eventually turned into working through a chapter at a time. Charlotte’s Web is still one of my favorite memories from those nights. I loved that story, as did my kids. I later wrote a whole post on The Importance of Reading Aloud: Benefits for Children

Family devotion. We’d read scripture, play a kids’ worship song, and pray together. As the girls got older, the song dropped away, and we added devotional books that still centered on scripture and prayer.

None of this happened perfectly every night. There were plenty of evenings when someone was cranky, the routine felt too long, or we skipped a piece because it had been a hard day. All too often, the kids were bouncing off the walls during devotions. What mattered wasn’t perfect execution — it was choosing to protect the time often enough that it became the norm rather than the exception. We were choosing our priorities and intentionally living by them, and we still are. The method or activities may change, but the priorities don’t.

Screens and the Outdoors, On Purpose Too. When TV entered the picture, we didn’t want it to be passive. I worried about the messages my kids would absorb without questioning them, so I started asking simple questions during and after: What choice did that character just make? What happened because of it? I wrote more about this approach in Active Viewing: How to Discuss TV Shows with Kids

We were just as deliberate about time outdoors. When the girls were babies, I pushed them around the block in their stroller most days. As they grew, that became trips to the park, walks where we intentionally noticed bugs and plants, and eventually camping trips and mountain hikes as a family. I wrote about why this mattered in The Benefits of Outdoor Play for Child Development

What We’ve Noticed

My daughters are tweens now, and we’re still doing versions of these same habits. A few things we’ve noticed along the way:

• They do well in school — which tracks with the research I cited in my other posts about how reading and time in nature support academic performance.
• They ask to go outside and go camping. They wouldn’t ask if the habit of outdoor time hadn’t become something they genuinely enjoy.
• They read on their own now, without being told to — my oldest is currently working through Little Women, and my youngest picked up Watership Down.
• They engage with scripture independently. My oldest has read the entire Bible in the King James Version on her own, which we credit partly to years of nightly devotion normalizing it as just part of the day.
• We get compliments on their manners, and in Sunday school, they’re often the ones helping the teacher because they know the material.

We don’t think any of this happened because we were extraordinary parents. We are far from perfect and have certainly made many mistakes. It happened because we picked a small number of things — connection, reading, faith, the outdoors — and consistently set aside time for them, even when it would have been easier not to.

If You Want to Try This

You don’t need to copy our exact routine. Start smaller:

1. Pick one 10-minute slot in your existing schedule — bedtime, after dinner, wherever there’s already a natural pause — and protect it before anything else gets added.
2. Choose one ritual, not five. Reading aloud, a made-up game, a walk around the block — pick the one that fits your family and do it consistently before adding more.
3. Be as consistent as possible. With any good habit, if you let it slip too many times, it will cease to be a habit. Children thrive on consistency and expect it. So value this time and guard it.
4. Let your kids have a say in some of it. Giving them a choice in even one part of the routine (like we did with one-on-one time) makes it something they look forward to instead of something done to them or demanded of them.
5. Expect it to change. What works when your kids are toddlers won’t look the same when they’re tweens. Let the routine evolve instead of trying to preserve it exactly as it started.
6. Don’t aim for perfect. Some nights will be rushed or skipped entirely. The habit is built by showing up most nights, not every night. The only one we did without fail was devotion, though sometimes we did it in the car.

If you need a few ideas, check out this blog.

The specific rituals matter less than the decision behind them: that family time wouldn’t just be whatever was left over after everything else was done. All habits begin with an intentional decision. Don’t let life just happen to you and your family. Be intentional about the choices you make to make your family great.