Crystal Lake Family Day, Oakland NJ
Coordinated by Crystal Lakes, and incorporating members from the Newcomers & Neighbor Club, the beach party and BBQ offered a great kick-start to the summer season. Americans are working longer hours, usually too many hours, and time for relaxation or recreation continues to dwindle.
As a society, we often work too many hours and we do not relax and recreate enough, alone or with families. While the phrase, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” may conjure up images of demented dad Jack Nicholson in The Shining, there’s a bit of truth behind it.
This past Saturday the Crystal Lake Beach Club was a place where families could gather, cook, play, eat,converse, and keep members of the community from falling into that “dull boy syndrome”.
Opportunities where parents and children can socialize together as a family helps build a stronger relationship, it allows for the development of deeper bonds, deeper trust. This may be common sense to most folks, but it took 10 years of research at Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse to reach the same conclusion.
Kids who eat dinner with their families from five to seven times a week are 70 percent less prone to substance abuse, half as likely to try cigarettes or marijuana, one-third as likely to try alcohol, and half as likely to get drunk monthly compared to kids who have family dinners fewer than three times a week.