Healthy Families Can Cope With Uncertainty 

We are in the midst of raging waves delivering bad news and uncertainty.  Healthy Families know how to roll with raging waves and uncertainty.  Healthy Families know and accept they cannot change the rolling waves; they have been working together to build a set of beliefs, principals and skills that keep their boat from capsizing. Think of a sail boat - there are 8 pieces that make up the design.  What keeps the boat steady is what you don’t see. It is the size of the keel, which provides an underwater balancing force that keeps the boat from tipping over.

You can’t build a boat in a hurricane with winds and rough seas. You must build a boat when the weather is good in preparation for the storms and uncertainty that will surely come with life.  Informed Families’ mission is to help you build a healthy family structure. We provide lots of information and tools, but you have to access the information and start building your very own healthy family structure.  

Informed Families/Florida Family Partnership is teaming up with Family Table Time to help families bond, communicate better and deal with difficult scenarios.

Back to school time is a stressful time for many families. With schools reopening for the first time since March or continuing remote learning, many families are more anxious than usual. Family Table Time’s unique, dinner table conversation starter toolkit can help families better navigate this stressful time together. Conversation starters for the month of August include Back to School and Fears & Anxiety.

Americans continue to celebrate essential workers keeping the country going during the coronavirus pandemic. McDonald's provided essential workers with free 'Thank You Meals'. Starbucks offered all front-line responders a free tall brewed coffee.Give Essential, a new nonprofit that boxes up people's extra household items to donate to those on the front line, was recently profiled on ABC News (see the coverage here). We are continuing to demonstrate our capacity to come together and support others during these unprecedented times.

Informed Families, the National Family Partnership and Family Table Time are also saying thanks and giving it up for front-line workers. While families are away from the office and school, these heroes put their health on the line to keep us safe, happy and healthy.  When you buy a six-month subscription to Family Table Time, the family of an Essential Worker will receive a six-month subscription for free. You can designate the family to receive this gift or select an option to send  it to an essential worker who needs it.

Orginally published in Miami Kids magazine. 

Summer is finally here! We are all ready for a much needed break from homeschooling, and looking forward to some fun. However a less structured day, and minimal supervision can spell trouble for some kids and teens.

“It’s hard to keep tabs on your kids in the summer. Having family rules are essential all year, but perhaps even more so during the summer. They help keep kids, especially teens, out of trouble and give parents a little bit of peace of mind that their kids know guidelines exist and hopefully will be followed,” said Peggy Sapp, Informed Families President and CEO.

Establishing family rules are important. What are your rules? If you want to learn how to set and establish rules, contact Mery Dominguez at mdominguez@informedfamilies.org or 305-856-4886 about joining an Informed Families’ Parent Peer Group.

Spending time together as a family is great too. If you are looking for some ideas, don’t worry we have got you covered. Check out the list of activities of family-friendly summer activities below.

Fathering Lasts a Lifetime and Beyond

We are celebrating dads this month - Father's Day is June 21st. Two months in lockdown because of COVID-19 has really shifted the perspective of some fathers. Parenting is a hard job, and we always hope for the best.After raising our two daughters, my late husband Neil and I helped raise our seven grandchildren. It’s not easy being a dad. But it is the most important thing you can do. I think Neil said it best in the article below.

Peggy 

It’s National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week, a week focused on connecting teens with science-based facts about drugs and alcohol.

Here are some more fun ways your family can participate in National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week:

• Play Kahoot! E-cigs, Vapes and Mods: What Do You Know About Vaping?
• Take the National Drug & Alcohol IQ Challenge Quiz 
• Play the Jeopardy-style interactive game: Drug Facts Challenge
• Print a "Not everyone's doing it" placard or pledge card and tweet, snap or post a photo on social media! Make sure to include #NDAFW in your posts.
• Join a Twitter Trivia Challenge hosted by NIDA and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) on Friday, April 3, at 3 p.m. EDT.  Follow the hashtag #NDAFW and answer multiple-choice questions about drugs and alcohol.
  

Congratulations to the winners of the Family Day Photo Contest: Heidi Hernandez from Naples, FL; Timmy Kutz from Naples, FL; and Tatiana Vuono from Miami, FL. The winners, who were randomly selected, each win a $100 gift card generously donated by Publix.

Freedom Middle School in Orlando, FL won the grand prize for schools by having the most entries in the State of Florida. They will receive a $250 Publix gift card.

Informed Families Ambassadors at schools across the state encourage parents and families to eat dinner together on Family Day and up to four times a week.  Many of the schools in our network have also started Family Day traditions of their own.

In Orange County, Apopka Memorial Middle School celebrates Family Day with a Spaghetti Dinner served by their Informed Families Youth Ambassadors.  Citrus Grove Middle School in Miami-Dade hosts a Spaghetti Dinner that all parents are invited to as well. They encourage parents to sign the Informed Families Family Day pledge at the event.

We loved seeing so many of your beautiful #FLFamilyDay dinner photos on social media last year. So we’ve decided to hold another Family Day photo contest.

Take a photo of your family eating dinner together and then post it on the Informed Families’ Facebook page, send it to us in a Facebook message, or post it on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #FLFamilyDay. It’s that simple.

Three winners will be randomly selected to receive a $100 Publix Gift Card. The Florida school with the most entries will receive a $250 Publix Gift Card. The contest ends September 30^th.

We can’t wait to see the family dinner photos you share this year! Take a look at some of our favorites from last year.

An Easy Way to Improve Parent-Child Communication  

Do you want to stop school violence and a host of other dangerous behaviors? Eat dinner with your children.

Did you know if you eat dinner together as a family four times a week that your kids are 50% less likely to use drugs and engage in other risky behaviors?

Many people think they don’t have time to eat dinner with their children – well just imagine how much time you will spend sorting out your child’s problem behaviors?  And guess what, some behaviors become chronic and don’t get sorted out so you will be living with them for a life time.

Eating dinner together provides an opportunity for family members to come together, strengthen ties and build better relationships.  Communicating early and often makes it much easier to tackle conversations around tough topics, like substance use, when the time comes. If your kids aren’t used to talking to you about their day when they are 8 or 10 years old, it's much harder to start at age 12-14.

Our Family Day campaign promotes frequent family dinners as a way to prevent risky behavior in kids. On September 23rd, join millions of families across the U.S. to Stand Up for Sitting down to dinner. Enjoy a meal together with your family and talk to each other, electronics-free.

Peggy