How to Bring Family Closer

Strong family bonds (纽带) can encourage better behaviors in children and teach them how to be a good friend. 【小题1】

Set aside time for family. 【小题2】By keeping this day on a regular schedule, everyone will know that they need to keep that day clear for family time. Then the entire family can get together for a fun activity.

Eat meals together. Choose a few nights during the week when you expect everyone to gather around the dinner table. Studies have shown that eating meals together has a positive effect on children’s physical and mental well-being. 【小题3】Don’t allow phones. What’s the most important is that you come together and enjoy a meal free of distraction (分心).

【小题4】Make cleaning your home a responsibility for the whole family. Create a list of housework and have everyone sign up. Then set up a time during the week or on the weekend when everyone can do their housework together.

Encourage support. Feeling supported by your family is one of the most important things in building strong family bonds. Bonds like these will last your kids a lifetime. They will enjoy these strong bonds when they are your age and even after you are gone. 【小题5】

One day while trying to print all the class worksheets we needed for the day, I found myself shouting at my printer in front of my son. “Why won’t this stupid thing print?” I shouted. My son came up to me quietly, saying, “Calm down, Mommy. Maybe if you don’t shout at the printer, it will work. You need to have patience.”

He was right. I needed patience-patience with this whole situation. I stopped myself, realizing this was not the behavior I wanted my son to see. He was also right that I needed to calm down. Just like what I told him to do, I took a few deep breaths and walked away from the collapsed printer. Later that day when we were outside, I tried to keep the sense of calm I had slightly achieved. Once I blocked out all the anxiety over the virus, school, and my work-I found the afternoon peaceful and pleasant. I played flying disc with my son, simply enjoying each other’s company while the birds sang. It was an everyday moment I’ll never take for granted again.

From then on, things got a little easier. I started to give myself, and everyone else, some favour. I stopped holding myself to my perfectionism standards with every little thing because they were truly impossible to keep to.

With that favour, I changed my focus. Getting every school worksheet done correctly is not important. Neither is cleaning the house. And, apart from getting fired, neither is my work. Spending time with my family, and staying healthy emotionally and physically, became my main concerns. We took walks. We danced our hearts out during the Disney Family Sing-Along. We got up early and walked secretly into our backyard with telescopes to bird watch. Who knows, birding may be the new hobby we’re never giving up.

When my dad was first diagnosed with cancer and had radiation, I pushed my whole family to start eating more fresh produce (农产品) and preferably organics. My mom really improved her cooking from the roasted slice of pork and frozen-veggies dinners that I had fallen in love with. Dad said he had never eaten so well.

My dad had been an IBM guy, who often said, “People never change,” but he became skilled in overall treatments and began to take well-informed control of his own course of action. I wasn’t thinking too much of his changes, but he had survived cancer for over 10 years, constantly learning, running his charity golf events, doing a bit of travel and always looking pleasant and smiling.

My dad and I decorated a farmhouse in 2012, and I started taking care of the orchard (果园), shaping rows for crops and a herb garden, and learning to care for four red hens. Bringing farm-fresh food to my family was a way I could contribute to dad’s health as well as his enjoyment of life, take a little work off   my mom’s hands, and sit and chat about something other than cancer.

The idea for this business came from what we learned about the role of food in health. My dad’s doctor told him that eating fresh produce could help resist cancer. Dad helped me set up the farm and worked till just a few days before he passed. But all of what I do here is based on experience, research, and strong   values.

We learned more than I ever wanted to know. But the goals of this farm developed as we learned, and here we have it: Produce with a purpose — fresh produce, grown for disease-fighting and preventive health value, delivered with easy but crazy — delicious recipes as well as support, encouragement, overall thinking and even a bit of humor.