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My Family Care asks Duncan: August is Family Month, the kids are home and often holidays are taken as a family, but spending time together as a family is important all year round. What benefits are there to spending time together as a family and what kinds of activities help to foster a positive family atmosphere?
Do we really want to spend all our free time together with the whole family?
We did not take many holidays as a family when I was a child - we lived on top of each other the whole year and August was the opportunity to get out of everyone's hair and do our own things.
My parents took it to a bit of an extreme - like putting me, at the age of 11, on a plane by myself to communist Czechoslovakia to stay with family friends. But it was absolutely brilliant - I saw Russian tanks! With four boys close together in age, we needed space and the summer was a time to fly from one individual activity to another.
Our family is a bit different - not so many children (two) and more widely spaced out in age. So doing some things all together is fun and we have done some big trips together. We travelled across the whole of Europe to Romania by train some years ago and spent a week on a donkey trek in the Romanian mountains. We are planning a visit to New Zealand together to see family there.
Bonding as individuals
But we also divide up. Every year we have two special weekends - when each parent goes off and does something with just one of the girls. Getting time alone with a child is pretty much impossible during normal work and school life and it is wonderful to discover particular things one enjoys with each child. With one of my daughters, I am visiting a European capital city each year - she is 16 and we have visited over 20 so far.
This year it is Bern and Valduz (in Switzerland and Liechstenstein, for those challenged by European geography!).
We like eating in nice restaurants and we like the small cities the best - Tallinn and Lisbon have been our favourites. It was in Lisbon that my daughter was served with a pudding that was on fire. Amsterdam with the canals, bikes and a cat refuge on a boat was pretty good too. With my other daughter it is quite the opposite. We camp in Wales, walk up mountains, eat in the tent and play ball with the dog.
What does the future hold?
As the girls grow up, they are starting to do their own things in the summer - after all, their holidays are massively longer than their parents'.
Camping trips with friends and language courses abroad - the first tentative steps into independent adulthood, punctuated by calls home to ask for advice and reassurance.
Every summer is different - the girls change so much from year to year. It won't be long before family holidays in the summer are a thing of the past.
Duncan Fisher, OBE, Father of two
