3 Ways to Enhance Community in Your Family Life

Reaching out is a way to allow in. Trish Everett shows us how.

The huge list of tasks are brightly backlit on my computer screen. This assignment for the last subject of my masters is a monster. I thought that I had this under control but with two days before it is due, pre-school not on and only an evening to myself, I’m getting that falling feeling. How am I going to finish it?

My neighbour came to the door to say hi with her funky boots and an inquiring look. She heard my time/assignment dilemma and offered to watch my girls as they play between our two backyards. I also reached out to some friends for play dates and child minding and I asked the home-school year seven that I swap Italian lessons for baby sitting if she could help out. Then over the two days my girls had smatterings of time with some of their favourite people and I got some work done.

I hit send on my assignment at 5 minutes the deadline. It felt like a triumph for the whole team who had got me through this tight spot. I felt so supported by my little community around me. That evening I shared a dinner with my friend, I brought a quinoa salad and she made spicy beans and a salad from her garden. We ate to the chatter of our four children, telling stories, joking around and giggling. Feeling so grateful and supported.

I wanted to share this story with you because many parents tell me how they don’t feel supported enough and that they long for more community. Have you had these moments where something needs to happen but you have no idea how you are going to make it work? Or that you feel isolated and don’t have the support that you need to get through the day?

What helps to build a community around you, that you care for and that cares for you? I offer you these 3 ideas:

Spending time and sharing:

This can take so many forms, from sending a text, sharing a meal, having a cuppa together, sharing taking care of our kids. In my community I see parents doing mama (and papa) bakes, sharing child minding while taking turns to have a massage, a gardening group where they rotate gardens to work on together, taking care of each other’s kids to get…

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