Better Rhythms for a Better Year, Together

Family Rhythms for 2026: Five Practices That Make Room for Relationship

A new year brings new expectations and a chance to instill new ways of doing life, especially for busy families looking for a fresh start. If you’ve read what Jonathan Haidt had to say about the “great rewiring” of childhood and the way smartphones and social media reshaped adolescent life in the 2010s, you’ve felt the urgency. Families are fighting for attention, stability and joy in a distracted age. And if you’ve read Justin Whitmel Earley’s book, Habits of the Household,you’ve heard the hopeful counterpoint: the path forward isn’t mainly heroic intensity, it’s ordinary rhythms, repeated until they become a kind of household liturgy. Earley puts it plainly: “We are discipled by our normal.”

A thousand plans could be proposed for 2026, but most families don’t need another complicated system; they need a culture change. As Peter Drucker famously stated, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” But a family culture change can be a heavy lift for an active household. After all, life doesn’t stop to allow us to reset. Below are five practices, simple enough to try, sturdy enough to keep, that can shape a calmer, more connected culture for the home as well as a more faithful year for your family.

1) Make meals matter

This isn’t news. There is a popular maxim that those who eat together, stay together. Throughout Scripture, people often ate together. Jesus is seen at or around meals around 30 times in the Gospels. Meals matter, and in a world where everyone is “together” but apart, the table can become a quiet act of resistance. This isn’t because dinner is magic, but because it is available: recurring, embodied and relational. After all, we all need to eat.

There is a large body of research on the benefits of family mealtime. Research has shown that eating as a family can protect children and adolescents not just against poor diet and obesity, but also against risky behaviors and poor mental health and well-being. Likewise, a 2015 systematic review found that frequent family meals are consistently associated with better psychosocial outcomes for kids and teens. While the physical, emotional and psychological benefits of eating together are great, the real good news is that Christians have been making a practice of sharing a meal since the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!

For the Christian family, it can be tempting to turn dinner into a metric for righteousness, but this is merely legalism veiled in veal (or burgers). Eating together is an intentional act to reclaim meals as a reliable relational practice. Scripture treats ordinary food as spiritually meaningful: Jesus repeatedly forms people at tables, and the early church’s shared life included “breaking bread” together (Acts 2:42, 46). A table is one of the simplest places to practice presence, gratitude, confession, laughter, attention and worship.

Try this in 2026:

• Choose a realistic target: three shared meals per week (breakfast counts).
• Put one “question” in the middle of the table (high/low of the day; “where did you see God’s kindness today?”). Honestly, if you need help for this, you can always subscribe to our Friday Family Email.
• Start by making one dinner each week device-free in order to make the most of the experience (Ephesians 5:16).

2) Look to quit something each quarter

Most of us default to more: more activities, more commitments, more “good opportunities.” But a fascinating set of experiments published in Nature showed that people systematically overlook subtraction as a strategy, even when removing something would improve the outcome. The authors note that this bias helps explain why we struggle with “overburdened schedules.”

That’s not just a productivity problem; it’s a discipleship problem. Jesus talks about pruning the fruit-bearing branches. This means cutting back even good growth so that life can bear better fruit (John 15:2). And wisdom regularly takes the form of refusal: “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’” (Matthew 5:37). Quitting can be holy when it protects the weightier callings of worship, marriage, parenting, friendship and godliness.

Try this in 2026:

• Put a “Quit List” on the calendar every quarter (March, June, September, December).
• Ask two questions: What is draining our family’s joy? and What is crowding out our best “yes”?
• Quit one thing without replacing it for four weeks—just to feel the space. (Biblically speaking, church attendance is off-limits here.)

3) Practice saying “no” in order to say “yes”

Saying no isn’t mainly about efficiency; it’s about allegiance. I’ve tried to teach my kids from a young age that every “yes” they say to a choice is a “no” to every competing choice. Every “yes” is an allocation of affection measured in time, attention, money or emotional energy. Greg McKeown’s work on “Essentialism” has helped many see that clarity and trade-offs aren’t cruel; they’re necessary if you want your life to reflect your deepest values.

As believers, we should have an even more realistic and sobering understanding of this. Scripture points to the fact that we are stewards and our time is limited (Ephesians 5:15–16). The most faithful families are not the ones who do the most; they are the ones who practice the right kinds of “yes” with joy.

Try this in 2026:

• Create a household “rule of life” sentence: “In this season, we prioritize ______.”
• Use the buffer of time and a consistent script: “Thank you, let me check our family calendar and get back to you.”
• Build a “yes list” first (worship, rest, family dinners, friendships, unhurried time with kids). Let that list guard the calendar.

4) Combat FOMO with JOMO

FOMO (Fear of missing out) is fueled by the feeling that life is happening somewhere else—and your peace depends on keeping up. JOMO (Joy of missing out) is the retraining of the soul to be content in the right place, with the right people, doing the right thing, even when something else looks more exciting. In a 2024 Washington Post Well+Being piece on the concept, JOMO is described as “not only not fear that we are missing something important, but actually enjoy missing something.” The article notes that research on JOMO is still developing, but frames it as a practical reframing that helps people stop living in constant comparison and “Instagram reel” anxiety. Of course, opting out doesn’t solve everything. But it supports what many families intuitively know: intentionally missing some things can protect joy, presence and bandwidth for what matters most.

For Christians, JOMO isn’t merely a wellness tactic; it’s a discipleship posture. The freedom to say, “This is enough,” because God is enough (Psalm 73:25). Choosing “the one thing necessary” overanxious distraction (think Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38–42). Learning contentment with joyful limits (Philippians 4:11–13). In 2026, a family practice of JOMO might look like one tech-free evening per week, a standing “no-plans” night to be together, or simply a shared script that says something like: “We’re not missing out; we’re choosing in.”

Try this in 2026:

• Start somewhere: pick one weekly “small JOMO.” This could look like a half-day without social media or a phone-free outing, and gradually grow it.
• Teach your kids a simple liturgy: “We’re not missing out; we’re choosing in.”
• Practice Psalm-shaped contentment: “Whom have I in heaven but you?” (Psalm 73:25).

5) Embrace the inconvenience of relationships

Relationships are inconvenient because love is inconvenient. Time, attention, emotional labor, forgiveness, follow-through — these are costs. But the costs are the point: effort ascribes value. If you want a family culture marked by honor and warmth, you cannot build it on leftover minutes.

Sherry Turkle argues we’re in a crisis of conversation. Too many people are physically present but mentally elsewhere. She calls for renewed face-to-face dialogue because it forms empathy and allows us to get to know others better as well as understand ourselves even more. Andy Crouch adds that when teens were asked what they most wanted to change about their relationship with parents, their top answer was essentially, “spend less time on your phone and more time talking to me.”

Scripture frames this kind of embodied, interruptible presence as love. It tells us to “love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10). And Hebrews links perseverance to showing up for one another (10:24–25). The inconvenient phone call from a friend in distress, the unplanned visit to someone who is sick or lonely, the long conversation with your child late at night. These are not disruptions to the Christian life; they are central marks and practical applications of our faith.

Try this in 2026:

• Choose one “inconvenient” relational practice: Sunday lunch with someone, weekly hospitality or a standing friend-check-in.
• Protect a daily “open door” margin (even 20 minutes) where a child can interrupt you without competing with a screen.
• When you’re tempted to avoid others, pray like this: “Lord, help me love with my time and see others the way you see them.”

In 2026, don’t aim for the perfect schedule or an unbreakable plan. Aim for faithful patterns. Make meals matter, subtract on purpose, say no for the sake of better yeses, trade FOMO for JOMO and embrace the holy inconvenience of relationships. Trust that God meets ordinary families in everyday moments, because that’s where he loves to do His forming work.

Mike Handler serves as the Chief Innovation and Chief Communication Officer for Awana. Serving with the Awana ministry since 2011, Mike has been involved with bringing change to the methodology of the Awana ministry while still holding firm to the biblical vision of equipping and resourcing churches to reach kids with the Gospel and form them into disciples who have a lasting faith in Jesus.

Prior to Awana, Mike served as a pastor and church planter as well as the principal of a creative agency. Mike is the co-author of “Forming Faith” and “Resilient” as well as the co-founder of the Child Discipleship Forum. Mike, his wife Erin, and their four kids feel blessed to have relocated to Franklin, Tennessee from the Chicago area, but they miss Chicago food and sports.