It’s hard enough when you’re in a bad mood yourself, but how do you deal when it’s the whole family down in the dumps?
One challenging thing about families is that there are usually a lot of different personalities. And each of those personalities have their own moods, quirks and peeves. Throw in different age brackets, levels of resilience and external stressors, then hey presto! You have a melting pot of emotions under one roof.
At any given time someone can be hurt, angry, silly, happy or hungry.
Scratch that. Someone is always hungry.
The thing about a bad mood is that it doesn’t just affect the individual. They rub against, and often off on, the people around us.
Emotional contagion
School holidays are the perfect example of how the emotional tone of the household can be set by one person. Ironically, spending extending periods of time together can magnify it tenfold and cause a disconnect in the household.
It only takes one person to be in a bad mood to have contagious effect. Unfortunately, it can then be very hard to come back from.
I have learnt that to break the bad mood cycle in my house, I need to add water. For some reason the beach, the pool or even the sprinkler in the back yard will reset the mood of my brood.
We can go from not wanting to breath the same air as each other to running, laughing and splashing together joyfully.
It makes us reconnect. Fortunately, we live close to the beach!
Family rituals help us reconnect
However, there are times when it’s not so easy to pile everyone in the car to head to the nearest water source.
Sometimes we need something else to get us all to calm down and reconnect.
At times like this I often resort to family rituals. For us that’s things like movie nights, roasting marshmallows in the backyard fire pit, a picnic on the trampoline or playing a board game.
Try one of these: The Top 25 Board Games for Upper Primary Children
I really like some of the family bonding games talked about here as well. My kids love a dance party so I will definitely be adding that to my bag of tricks!
You could also go for a walk, a bike ride or go for a drive.
Reset a family bad mood
These things don’t have to take hours or cost a fortune to reset a family bad mood. The important thing is to bring a sense of harmony back to the household. The best way to do this is to make sure everyone feels like a valued, heard and loved member of the family.
After all, isn’t that all any of us really want?
What does your family do to reset a bad mood?
