Feeling Pretty Fortunate

My 17 year old (closer to 18 now) senior in high school has a pretty serious girlfriend. They really only get to see each other on the weekends and an occasional week night. But the skype and talk on the phone constantly.

I enjoy my kid's company. My son is funny as heck and my daughter is too. Our favorite family pass time is to compete on Jeopardy. We DVR it and watch 2-4 episodes at a time and keep score. Truthfully, we are all too dumb to get many answers right, but it is soo much fun.

I always call it "family time" and I always indicate how much I love having us all together, laughing and enjoying each other. We do other stuff like "family meetings" and card games, etc.

The cool thing is if his girlfriend calls when we are up to one of these activities, he will always answer the phone and sweetly tell her "it's family time, I'll call you back in ______."

I just find this so wonderful and such a display of love for the family. It touches my heart.

I recently added a card to the Positive Action Recognition poster in the kitchen, stating that I was proud and happy that he recognizes family time.

This, I realize is pretty rare for a 17 y/o. For this reason, it's help me to know that I am connecting with my kids. My kids see family as valuable.

I would say the key thing that I have done in this scenario is let my kids know how much I like them and how much I value their humor, the brains and their time.