I love listening to experts talk about distractions. It seems that almost everything but one focus in your life can be classified as a distraction. Your children are needing you, your spouse needs your help or support for family issues.  Are those people in your life important to you? Do you know how much time is really spent interacting with each one of the family?

Years ago I remember something that Dr. James Dobson wrote about how few minutes fathers spent with their children. It was so pitiful. You cannot expect to be an influence in the family if you are not with them, talking and interacting with them, and just spending family time in a meaningful way.

The faster the pace goes in our lives the more some people feel they have to work all the time. I love reading, learning, and spending time educating and inspiring myself to do more, be a better person, and to help others by encouraging them. These are important, but our lives need balance.

When a family has a special needs child or is caring for a parent, it takes more from every person in the family to function well. Every task needs to be done, but not all by the same person. In fact, we need to evaluate how much each one of us participates in keeping the family together. There are lots of tasks that even young children can do. Helping with dishes, setting the table, scrubbing the toilets, and mundane jobs are all necessary to keep the house and ourselves clean. Keeping things clean is important for the health of the family.

Let's be sure that when a job needs to be done that we are all involved and no one person has too much of a load. You will hear me say this a lot because it is a shocking statistic, but caregivers are 67% more likely to pass away than the one they are caring for. Never let it be said by anyone in your family that helping care for each other is not an important job. Make sure you spend quality time relaxing and interacting with one another. Life is truly short!